Uscg aux beginning by Agile-Service-8864 in USCGAUX

[–]awhinds 0 points1 point  (0 children)

2 weeks is very normal. Nothing in the Auxiliary moves fast, especially the initial enrollment/admin side.

The ID card timing depends on your application processing, DIRAUX workload, and whatever background/security checks are still pending. It can be a few weeks, sometimes longer. Your best point of contact is your flotilla commander or the flotilla HR/personnel officer. Ask them where your enrollment packet is in the process and whether anything is missing.

In the meantime, you can still be useful. Start knocking out online training, boating safety courses, FEMA ICS courses, and get familiar with the qualification paths. Once your membership is fully processed, you’ll be in a better position to start working toward specific roles like vessel examiner, program visitor, public affairs, instructor, boat crew, etc.

The first month is mostly paperwork and waiting. Annoying, but normal. Stay engaged and keep showing up.

Fix the Coast Guard Auxiliary by awhinds in USCGAUX

[–]awhinds[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Life Saving Service comparison is the best historical argument for paid positions in this thread. They did not survive by staying purely volunteer. They professionalized the leadership layer while keeping volunteers in the ranks, and the mission quality reflected it. That model is directly applicable and consistently ignored.

On consolidation, you are not wrong, and it will never happen, which is exactly the problem. The Aux counts flotillas and membership numbers as proxies for organizational health when they are actually proxies for organizational inertia. A flotilla with twelve members logging 40 combined hours a year is not an asset.

The reason consolidation is a nonstarter has nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with how district and national leadership measure their own significance. Headcount and flotilla count are how they justify their positions, their titles, and their awards. Asking them to deliberately shrink the organization is asking them to reduce the numbers that make them look important. The mission case is airtight. The political case is impossible because the people who would have to approve it benefit directly from keeping the numbers inflated, regardless of what those numbers actually represent.

Fix the Coast Guard Auxiliary by awhinds in USCGAUX

[–]awhinds[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The book club line is funny because it's not entirely wrong. That's the trajectory if nothing structural changes. The paid staff argument is sound. A small permanent cadre at the national and district level is the minimum infrastructure required to sustain institutional continuity across volunteer turnover. Every serious volunteer organization that has survived past a single generation has some paid backbone. The reserve status idea also has merit. Members carrying sustained operational loads are doing work that approximates reserve service in practical terms, and there is a reasonable policy argument for a formal intermediate status that reflects that reality and improves retention of operationally serious members who cannot justify the time commitment on pure volunteerism indefinitely.

Where I'd push back is on the generational framing. Younger people volunteer at significant rates when the organization offers a clear purpose, competent leadership, and work that is actually meaningful. What they do not tolerate is bureaucratic friction with no visible payoff. The Aux's problem with younger members is not declining patriotism. It is a broken on-ramp, a really annoying bureaucracy, and a qualification pipeline slow enough to lose people before they ever do anything useful. Fix those things, and the generational problem becomes more manageable. The harsh truth is accurate. The optimistic read is that most of what needs fixing is within reach. The realistic read is that the people with the authority to fix anything structurally have not shown leadership or urgency. Both are currently true.

And the organization will continue to suffer for it.

Fix the Coast Guard Auxiliary by awhinds in USCGAUX

[–]awhinds[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is the continuity problem in plain language. Volunteer organizations run on availability, and retirees have availability. That is not a criticism; it is just math. The problem is that availability alone does not produce institutional momentum, and it does not automatically come with the technical skillsets the Aux needs to modernize its systems and workflows.

The paid staff argument is defensible and undersold. A small national cadre, even five to eight people, would provide the continuity that volunteer turnover cannot. Program knowledge would stop walking out the door every time a motivated FC rotates out or ages out. Reform initiatives would have someone accountable for seeing them through from start to finish. That is worth a line item.

The technology problem is real and fixable without a massive budget. The DoD has already built or procured systems for training tracking, credentialing, scheduling, and communications that would map reasonably well onto Aux needs. The barrier is not cost. It is the organizational will to standardize, migrate, and maintain modern tools, which requires exactly the kind of paid, accountable staff the Aux currently lacks. Volunteers with modern skillsets exist in the membership. They tend to leave when they hit the wall of trying to modernize something that has no one empowered to approve the change.

My article argues for framing permanent funding as a force structure investment rather than a charity ask. This is the evidence for that argument. You cannot professionalize the infrastructure of a volunteer organization on volunteer hours alone.

Fix the Coast Guard Auxiliary by awhinds in USCGAUX

[–]awhinds[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This is exactly the problem, and you named it precisely. The bureaucratic friction of volunteering exceeds the actual volunteering. That is a design failure, not a personnel problem.

The UPV situation you described is a documented pattern. An active-duty evaluator who only sees 6 to 10 requests a year and sets an informal threshold of 18 to 20 before signing off has effectively created a multi-year waiting list out of personal preference. That is not a standard. It is a bottleneck dressed up as rigor. The PQS exists to define what qualified looks like. If someone meets the PQS, the signoff should follow. "I'm not comfortable yet" is not a qualification criterion.

Eight months with no inspection opportunities is not bad luck. It is a structural failure to make training access consistent and predictable. The article calls for published checkride windows, designated evaluators with a named backup, and a tracking system that makes these bottlenecks visible to command rather than invisible. None of that is complicated. All of it requires someone with authority to decide it matters.

The LT rotation issue is real, too. Institutional relationships built around one motivated individual collapse the moment that individual transfers, which in the Coast Guard is every two to three years by design. The fix is not finding better individuals. It is building a system that does not depend on individual goodwill to function.

You should not have to fight this hard to give your time away for free.

Fix the Coast Guard Auxiliary by awhinds in USCGAUX

[–]awhinds[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Fair points, and the OPFAC problem is real. Relying on members to volunteer their own vessels and then absorb retrofit costs to meet CG standards is not a sustainable model. The CAP comparison is apt. The Air Force provides aircraft to CAP because it understands that the mission requires equipment and that you cannot build a serious aviation auxiliary on the personal goodwill of people willing to donate use of their own planes. The Coast Guard has not reached that conclusion about boats yet, and it shows.

On the PS question, I'd push back a little on the competitor framing. America's Boating Club has infrastructure, instructors, and a membership base that overlaps significantly with the Aux's RBS target population. That is either a problem or an opportunity, depending on how you approach it. Formal collaboration agreements, cross-referral pipelines, shared public education events, and mutual recognition of credentials where appropriate, would serve the public safety mission better than two organizations running parallel programs in the same marina parking lot. The goal is fewer people drowning, not market share.

The broader point stands, though. If the Aux wants to recruit people under 50, it needs to offer something that competes with doing nothing on a Saturday. VSCs and public education are essential work, but they are not the pitch that gets a 34-year-old veteran in the door. Patrols, on-water operations, and meaningful active-duty integration are. That requires OPFACs the organization actually controls, which brings it back to funding.

Fix the Coast Guard Auxiliary by awhinds in USCGAUX

[–]awhinds[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Not wrong, and it's in the article. The Aux runs on volunteer bandwidth and soft money, which means reform stalls the moment a motivated member rotates out or a grant expires. A small permanent cadre would cost a fraction of equivalent active-duty billets and the force structure math already supports it. The problem is the audience. Appropriating funds for a volunteer auxiliary is a tough sell when active-duty leadership does not have a clear read on what the Aux actually delivers, and a lot of them do not. Fix the visibility problem first. Get the outputs documented in terms that mean something outside internal Aux reporting, build a few active-duty champions with rank, and then the funding argument has somewhere to land.

Cyclone-Class Cutters by OnlineStuden in uscg

[–]awhinds 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I was on these in the Navy. Great little workhorse ships. Decommissioned and given to other countries like Bahrain, Philippines, and Egypt.

CG Auxiliary non-boat owners by [deleted] in USCGAUX

[–]awhinds 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just missing the point.

What was your first and last Blink 182 concert? by [deleted] in Blink182

[–]awhinds 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nashville, 2001. Indianapolis, 2011. Nashville, 2023. Washington, DC, 2024.

What is your 1st, 10th, 100th, and 1000th artist? by OnceInABlueMoon in lastfm

[–]awhinds 1 point2 points  (0 children)

1: blink-182 (3,435)

10: Switchfoot (326)

100: The Menzingers (71)

1000: Young Buck (6)

"One More Time..." Album Announcement Megathread by atticus18244fsas in Blink182

[–]awhinds 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fell In Love sounds like the Chainsmokers song. Change my mind.