I meant CAP.
They may not be a military organization, but they are a program that is administered by the AF regardless of what their missions are.
Incorrect. CAP has a BoD upon which USAF sits and has significant influence, but is neither under UCMJ nor direct USAF administration.
USAF is tasked with *auditing* CAP by Congress who provides a completely separate and non-military budget for CAP. That budget flows-through USAF but cannot be diverted to other USAF projects.
CAP Regulations are not written by USAF. USAF only audits CAP for compliance.
USAF provides liaison officers at the National and sometimes State levels but has been reorganizing that structure over the last few years. CAP has bounced around from Training Command to various other USAF org charts and unless something changed, was headed for the same overlying command structure as Guard units.
Effectively the only people who need to know or care are upper command levels in CAP so they know who they're talking to and why, if approved by National. But other than that, for all intents and purposes, CAP writes its own Regs and is simply audited by USAF who can temporarily turn off the money spigot for problems seen. That's close enough in a nutshell.
There's more to it including formal MOUs, etc. An example is use of NTIA frequencies instead of FCC ones. That's via an MOU.
Congress could just as easily declare Earnst & Young do all the auditing and hire a private contractor for operations evaluations if they chose to do so.
CAP has to self-insure day to day non-mission activity for example. You're not a Federal employee and you're only covered by Federal insurance when you're authorized and qualified to be working on a live USAF mission, for example. And here, CAP has flown a lot more hours this year as a State entity under State government than USAF.
A somewhat workable analogy exists in wild land fire fighting. You can both be an employee of a City FD and working a wild land fire under USFS and their qualifications. Another way to look at it is that USAF is a customer of CAP as well as its auditor. Strange but true. In States where CAP has a dual-hatted command structure and is also a State agency, like here, CAP National sets a price for the State to pay for use of aircraft. State can call a mission, pay the bills, and USAF will have virtually no role in it other than to audit results. MOUs between Counties and the State mean that Counties and even municipalities can request missions. There are strict rules about those missions however, including CAP personnel are not deputized law enforcement and can't act as such, for one example.
This isn't even 1/2 of it. If you're bored I can get you in touch with a former CAP Wing level Legal Counsel. They attend long sessions about the legal relationships at conferences. "Auxiliary" means about as much as a drop of pee off of a bridge into the Mississippi when it comes to the actual legal relationships.
