No direct association with boy scouts, but one of the other squadrons I recall had an eagle scout/cadet colonel. The religious angle wasn’t anything official, they just “happened” to mostly be catholic, most of the people with actual air force experience were academy graduates and catholic, our chaplain was catholic (and an F-4 pilot during the Vietnam war (had to check dates)). I didn’t learn till much later in life that this is all fairly related. It’s actually an official program tied to the air force, so the uniforms, saluting, marching, PT, etc are all “kinda” real. You pass tests x, y, and z and you get promoted. Pass the first major test and you enter the enlisted ranks one rank higher like maybe the eagle scout thing? It also potentially could provide you with the necessary connections to actually get a state rep to forward your application to the actual academies, or if you want opportunities to play with search and rescue stuff or something.
I don’t know if I had the idea first or my grandfather, but when I was 12 or 13 I had a brochure show up for the program. Told my grandfather, who was an army sergeant way back, and he was very into me doing this. Also him and his wife are Catholic, so the religious angle didn’t seem that weird to me or him at the time. He paid all the dues and volunteered there to manage the uniform inventory, essentially the quartermaster, though he didn’t bother “joining” the adult program with a rank and blah blah blah. But since he was there he was privy to behind the scenes drama that he didn’t tell me about until I left the program.
Anyway, most of the kids that showed up there were maybe not dumb, but not super academically talented. Also the difference between a 13 year old and a 17 or 18 year old is so massive, but you were treated as peers. I had an easy time passing all the aerospace/leadership exams, and eventually I got in slightly better shape doing the PT stuff, so I had an easy time climbing ranks. Some older kids that progressed more slowly seemed to resent that, but the “adult” part of the org seemed to encourage me to continue doing that. I kinda stopped progressing eventually because of peer pressure and the desire to hold myself back long enough to earn my stripes one way or another, and this made the adults irritated. To this day I’m not totally sure why, maybe funding or something else is determined by cadet progress?
The “bad parts” I alluded to above had various degrees of badness.
At the low rung, there were some weird stupid power politics going on with the adults, and some of them lacked certain kinds of comprehension. I once worked a parade (watch a post for a couple hours, tell people not to drive through x, easy enough). I got into some kind of situation where at 13 I worked 12 hours out in the sun alone in different places because this woman from another squadron that I did not know (former enlisted air force) said to do so. She was all bark and orders, and I was of a mind to do what I was told (discipline, right?). Some degree of heat stroke, no water, etc were involved and she treated it like my 13 year old self was the problem. Well, as an adult now, I think that’s farther than you go. I recall my grandfather being a bit pissed about it. Adults on power trips that shouldn’t be in charge of kids (or possibly anyone), etc.
Mid rung was weird favoritism for certain kids. If they came from certain families they get easy treatment, better clothes/gear, oh you don’t have to make your bunk, clean the bathrooms, etc. And it was really nested into the behavior patterns. Families that had actual air force officers in them were also golden, though those families also tended to actually have some discipline. On one hand, that seems like not a big deal. One family was basically in charge of our unit, and had three sons make it into commissions. And they did useful things for the community like actual search and rescue work, etc. However, all of this leads into…
There were a few adult officers sleeping with 14 to 16 year olds, and apparently this was kept quiet. Happened repeatedly with a few specific officers. This made a lot of other things make sense in retrospect. I never knew great details, but combine that with knowing about all the Air Force academy rape allegations and cover ups it all kinda fits together now.