CAP Statesboro Composite Squadron

he Civil Air Patrol (CAP) is a volunteer organization, organized as a non-profit 501(c)(3) corporation. The CAP is the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force. The CAP National Headquarters is located at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. The CAP has the world's largest fleet of single-engine, piston aircraft (535); controls the Nation’s most estensive communications network, and utilizes over 1,000 emergency services vehicles. There are currently more than 56,000 members, including 27,000 cadets ages 12-21. These volunteers make up 1700 units that are organized into 52 Wings, and eight geographic regions.

The United States is divided geographically into areas known as regions. These regions are not constituted as separate legal entities. Each region is known by the geographical locale of the United States it encompasses. CAP wings are positioned within these regions.

There are 52 wings in CAP, one for each state, the District of Columbia (which includes the Washington, D.C., area), and Puerto Rico. A wing is comprised of the wing headquarters and all units within its geographical boundaries unless otherwise prescribed.

Wing commanders may form groups when the wing geographical area or the number of units in the wing is too large to permit the wing commander to exercise effective supervision directly over squadrons and flights.

The squadron is the community-level organization of CAP. Wing commanders may activate squadrons whenever there is a minimum of 15 members in a unit, three must be seniors.

There are three types of squadrons:

Senior Squadron -- comprised entirely of senior members;
Cadet Squadron -- comprised primarily of cadets with a minimum of three senior members to meet supervisory, administrative and training requirements for cadet program activities;
Composite Squadron -- comprised of both senior members and cadets, and conducts both senior member and cadet program activities.
There is also a unit known as a flight. The flight is the smallest CAP membership unit authorized and must contain a minimum of eight members, three of whom must be senior members. Typically a flight is organized in sparsely populated areas where there are insufficient numbers of individuals to make up a squadron.