Each week until Dec. 1, Civil Air Patrol National Headquarters is working through a historical timeline titled “Be a Part of the Story,” now in its fourth feature and sixth tile: “Helping America’s Youth Soar, Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” The tile declines to define soaring. It is more precise about the calendar.
Headquarters reports that more than 1 million cadets have participated since 1942, after which they become lawyers, join the military, or turn into pilots, doctors, bankers, or professors. The one refrain, heard time and again, is that they couldn’t have done what they do now without Civil Air Patrol. The organization treats this sentence as both finding and method.
Living Proof, Grade O-8
The exhibit is Maj. Gen. Regena M. Aye, national commander and CEO, who started as a Kansas Wing cadet in the 1980s, commanded the wing from 2008 to 2012, commanded North Central Region from 2016 to 2020, and is now in the middle of a four-year term running the institution that taught her to run institutions.
“Over time, I grew to love all of Civil Air Patrol’s missions, but what drew me to CAP was leadership,” she told the VOLUNTEER in 2017, in an issue celebrating the 75th anniversary of Cadet Programs. Leadership has since been supplied in increasing denominations. She remains in awe of the opportunities afforded CAP youth today, a posture that travels with the position.
What has not changed, Aye says, is the impact. Cadets join quiet and unsure of themselves and emerge as capable leaders prepared to make a difference in their schools, communities, military service, and professional careers. A statistically quieter subset emerge as national commanders. Aye has watched countless young people complete this transformation, most recently from the office that certifies it.
Elizabeth Hornbach, senior program manager for cadet curriculum and learning development, said that when she entered the professional workforce in her 20s she realized she had already developed skills many of her much older coworkers were still learning, and attributed the foundation to real-world leadership opportunities as a cadet. She now manages the curriculum. The coworkers have not been asked for a rebuttal.
Cadet Col. Saul Andio of the National Cadet Advisory Council presented a report this year to CAP’s Senior Advisory Group in Washington, D.C., during Winter Command Council, which is the cadet program’s idea of placing youth in proximity to people who already agree with the report.
The Age Floor Falls; the Promotion Chart Does Not
The program began on Oct. 1, 1942, when General Memorandum 58 authorized any existing squadron to form a counterpart cadet unit for ages 15 to 18. Maj. Earle L. Johnson, the first national commander, and Capt. Kendall K. Hoyt, the national intelligence officer, had noticed that young people also wanted to contribute to the war, provided the contribution could be scheduled weekly. Cadets learned leadership, meteorology, military law, customs and courtesies, drill, first aid, Morse code, and signals. More than 20,000 were trained in the first year. The figure climbed toward 80,000. On March 8, 1944, the effort drew the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose inbox that spring was not otherwise empty.
A 1946 congressional charter made aviation education an official purpose. The International Air Cadet Exchange began in 1948. In 1954 the age band became 15 to 20; it later became 13 to 21, producing 52,977 cadets in 1964, the most since the war. In 1995 the floor dropped to 12. The organization’s answer to each decade has been a younger minimum age and another training module.
Under John V. “Jack” Sorenson, styled “the father of the Modern-Day Cadet Program,” youth training was rebuilt around four developmental phases of increasing responsibility, leading, for those who finish, to cadet colonel and the Gen. Carl A. Spaatz Award, named for the Air Force’s first chief of staff, who chaired CAP’s National Board from 1948 to 1959. Aye is often present when the award is conferred. She recently stood with Cadet Col. Richard R. Griffith; Aye and both of Griffith’s parents are also Spaatz recipients. The terminal honor of the youth program is, in at least one documented household, hereditary.
During the Vietnam years, membership fell. Youths cited anti-military sentiment, too much classroom study, and too few field activities. Headquarters promoted orientation flights, summer encampments, composite squadrons, and scholarships, which is to say it prescribed more Civil Air Patrol. In 1978, cadets holding the Gen. Billy Mitchell Award who enlisted in the Air Force became eligible to enter at E-3. They still are. Cadets now make up about 10 percent of each Air Force Academy class. These are the figures produced when the refrain is asked for a spreadsheet.
The four pillars presently in force are Leadership (uniforms, customs, self-paced exams, and the gradual privilege of managing younger people in the same uniform), Aerospace Education, Physical Fitness tests required for promotion, and Character Development discussions of integrity, volunteer service, excellence, and respect. In 2020 the curriculum added interactive online modules, so the military-style promotion system could also be completed in a browser. “Our programs just keep getting better with time,” Aye said. Time, in this usage, is coterminous with her term.
Assets, Kits, and the Occasional Exit
There are 38 CAP school units nationwide, with 1,722 cadets and 255 adult members, installed in high schools for which Junior ROTC was not logistically viable. Students wear uniforms on designated days, practice drill, study aerospace textbooks, and test for promotions during or immediately after the school day. The arrangement offers the Civil Air Patrol environment to campuses that could not be assigned the other environment.
Nearly 37,000 youth now serve in the ranks. Under Aye, the Cadet Protection Program has been expanded to nurture this asset. Training Leaders of Cadets, in person and online, exists because success also depends on the adults, a conclusion the organization reached after several decades of cadets.
Aerospace education currently occupies 900 squadrons, about 4,100 aerospace education officers, and an additional 4,400 educators who did not have to buy a uniform. Aerospace Connections in Education sends K-6 teachers more than 20 lessons per grade plus custom foam gliders so the youngest student can experience “flight.” ACE Plus puts cadets and senior members into classrooms. Aerospace Education Membership admits teachers, homeschool parents, museum directors, librarians, and Scout leaders who would like the kits without the missing-aircraft work. Aerospace Education Excellence requires six activities and a two-hour capstone. STEM Kits cover robotics, rocketry, circuitry, and flight simulators. Teacher Orientation Program flights place educators in CAP aircraft so that flight dynamics may return to the lesson plan as a personal anecdote. Headquarters notes that ACE, STEM Kits, and ACE Plus impact hundreds of thousands of additional youth beyond the cadets, which is the authorized way to count people who did not join.
After CAP became a Total Force partner in 2015, cadet training shifted toward cyber, robotics, space, and STEM, as Total Force partnerships tend to require in writing. Maj. Scott Kaplan, national program manager for the Geospatial Program, reports that since 2018 the Geospatial Damage Assessment Team has supported 71 disaster events and thousands of volunteer hours for FEMA. Cadets from the inaugural National Geospatial Academy this past summer were in the field three weeks later for floods in three states, a tornado, and a hurricane. The career field, as listed, includes geospatial analysis, cartography, geodesy, Earth and orbital science, surveying, emergency management, crime analysis, forestry, and geology. The academy is three weeks; the list is longer.
Hawk Mountain Ranger School in Kempton, Pennsylvania, spent a week this past summer on military-style medical training, one of about 40 National Cadet Special Activities offered in 2026. National Blue Beret, among the oldest, still occupies two weeks in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Cadet Wings, cyber programs, and leadership academies are cited as evidence that the range of incredible activities has broadened, a claim no prior national commander is on record disputing.
The named graduate who left the building is 1st Lt. Taylor Coffey, captain of the Colorado Springs Cadet Squadron’s Wolf Pack, which Maj. Bill Blatchley guided to CyberPatriot championships in 2012 and 2017 and seven national finals. Coffey went to the Air Force Academy to become a cyber security officer and now serves as an offensive cyber operator with the 315th Cyber Operations Squadron at Fort Meade, Maryland. Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Bernie Skoch, CyberPatriot’s first commissioner and now a member of the CAP Board of Governors, said CAP is the spark that lights the fire. Headquarters is able to produce the fire by name.
The rest of the million are lawyers, bankers, professors, and the 37,000 who have not yet had to decide. The anniversary series will continue until Dec. 1. The cadet program will continue until the age floor, the kit catalog, or the supply of quiet teenagers is exhausted, whichever the regulations permit last.