October 14, 2025 2 minute read
An Unmanned Odyssey: The Civil Air Patrol’s Drone Dreamland
In a dramatic shuffle at the venerable Civil Air Patrol (CAP) National Headquarters, where the echoes of WWII propeller engines reverberate in perpetuity, a man with a résumé as long as a TSA line, Chief Master Sgt. Mark Lahan, has emerged as the CAP’s first-ever national emergency services officer. A role as mythical as a golden unicorn, and twice as exciting.
“I am incredibly tickled and utterly flabbergasted to be contributing in yet another box on the organization chart of an entity that I’ve admired since my first flight in 1980’s prehistoric iation training ground, San Jose,” Lahan expounded with the gritas one reserves for knighthood ceremonies. Hing slipped from a CAP colonel’s epaulets to those of a seasoned noncommissioned officer in a mid-July transformation that only the U.S. Army could orchestrate, Lahan is now at the helm of a three-person dream team. This includes the mysterious William J. Evans, the new sUAS program manager, who seems to bring a builder’s toolkit and a penchant for acronyms.
Terry McCaffrey, CAP’s own Nostradamus and operations director, prophesied, “These two positions are as essential to our 2026 galactic plans as are karaoke fundraisers.”
Lahan’s voyage took root in the gritty soil of Lowell, Massachusetts, then sprouted to California’s sunny squadrons. Hing graced the Army since the era of cassette tapes, he catapulted through airborne divisions, drizzled his presence on lands as varied as Middle Earth, Egypt, and a mysterious “Panama,” becoming an action-figure hero of cultural sensitivity and diverse teamwork.
In a transformation akin to an action movie montage, Lahan operated the RQ-11B Ren and RQ-20 Puma like a kid with RC cars, dabbling in everything from HF radios to satellite systems (which, as everyone knows, are catnip for military types). His pivot from Army to CAP feels analogous to moving from the block party to organizing Thanksgiving dinner.
William Evans, the new face of sUAS, comes as the latest messiah of unmanned systems. With fifteen years of playing real-life Risk with unmanned aircraft, Evans boasts a biography peppered with terms like “master trainer” and “program manager,” titles that only occur after multiple tours with more operations than a hospital annexe.
The duo of Lahan and Evans is tasked with overseeing an entire fleet of drones with unparalleled enthusiasm, somehow convincing the world that CAP’s drones deserve more attention than Justin Bieber’s next tattoo. Evans promises to sprinkle the CAP universe with safety procedures and maintenance routines as rigorous as Olympic gymnastics, ensuring each volunteer, from cadet to commander, intimately knows his or her way around a joystick.
One can only imagine Evans staying up at night, sculpting Standard Operating Procedures, dreaming of data-driven fleet health, and knitting little drone jumpers for cold missions. His vision of a utopian drone ecosystem is curiously infective.
Updated: October 14, 2025