A frequently asked question of late has been, “what is the role of the Group structure in Michigan Wing?”
Groups are authorized to be established by CAPR 20-3 with five or more units or where geographic conditions dictate. In Michigan, all of our Group boundaries are the same as the Michigan State Police District boundaries. This is to simplify the liaison with the MSP Lt responsible for coordinating Emergency Management and Homeland Security matters within the district. Ideally, the Group Commander and Group ES Officer have made contact and remain in contact with this officer and brief each other regularly on training, exercises and other matters.
The Michigan State Police is the primary state agency that we work with on missing aircraft searches, ELT searches and whom county and local officials can contact to get our assistance on missing person searches. This is the same with requests for other types of assistance such as Disaster Relief, Counter Drug and Homeland Security. The State Police are also our interface with other State agencies requesting our assistance under our Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the state.
Groups are an extension of the Wing, responsible for their subordinate units and interfacing with the communities inside of their boundaries not supported by a unit. They expand the span of control of the Wing Headquarters and Commander. Groups are primarily responsible to start new units in areas where they do not currently exist and coordinate common activities within the group. They are responsible for holding regular meetings of their subordinate commanders and staff, either face to face or telephonically to share information and ideas. The Group staff can provide training to new unit staff officers and provide oversight as needed.
In short, the role of any echelon in CAP, including the Group, is to organize, train, and equip their people to perform the missions CAP has taken on. Corporate vehicles and aircraft remain assigned to the Wing Headquarters but are hosted by local Groups and units who in coordination with Wing Headquarters assign a vehicle or aircraft custodian as needed. The vehicle or aircraft custodian is assigned ADY to Wing Headquarters as the custodian of a specific vehicle or aircraft. Vehicle custodians work for the Wing Transportation Officer. Aircraft custodians work for the Wing Aircraft Maintenance Officer. Scheduling of vehicles is with the individual custodian. Scheduling of aircraft is currently on line in the WMU.
Mission activation is from the requesting agency to the Wing Alert Officer on duty. The duty officer either takes Incident Command of the mission or locates a more appropriate IC to handle the mission. For an ELT mission, the IC will generally alert the resources closest to the search area directly and attempt to back fill everyone else by e-mail on what is occurring. On larger missions, like missing aircraft or missing persons, the IC will generally put out e-mails and attempt phone contacts with Group and unit alerting officers. Daily updates by e-mail can then be expected. As we get more familiar with Codespear as an alerting tool, we will be able to utilize that to its full potential. As we acquire more of the Find-Me-Spot beacons, we will all be able to follow our resources on line. As always, actual missions take precedence over training missions and Air Force assigned missions take precedence over all other missions.
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