I still don’t understand the policy of the Army at the time to allow disabling of ADS-B Out in civilian airspace. I can understand in wartime.

The idea is that you're supposed to train as you fight.

Wasting innocent civilians out of sheer stupidity, checks out.

I get that but in DC airspace near Reagan?

Yes, you're right, lousy airspace design. Flown perfectly the chopper should have been no closer than 75' from the airplane if everyone is flying exactly on altitude (which never happens, you have to give at least +/-50'). Couple that with the difficulty of picking out an airplane against the hundreds of backlights of the valley and disaster was inevitable.

Within reason, which is why soldiers train with blank-firing adapters and blanks, and not live ordnance when simulating combat.

Turning ADS-B on/off likely has zero effect on the training/fighting relationship.

Its a switch in the cockpit. Does train as you fight mean you gotta hit the chaff dispenser aswell? Wheres the line?

Almost certainly moving after this fiasco.

> Doing so was Army protocol, meant to allow the pilots to practice secretly whisking away a senior government official in an emergency.

1: You don't want to do that for the first time in wartime.

2: In case you've been living under a rock, we are at war with Russia right now. We just haven't declared war.

I fail to see how flying untracked in a public airspace 8000km away from Moscow has anything to do with the US being in a new cold war, I don't see what good it brings, especially if it's to play hide and seek around a civilian airport

The Russian Embassy is pretty close as is the Chinese. That said, they could easily track military helicopters with or without ADS-B Out.

Easily? I suppose a surveillance radar on the roof of those embassies wouldn’t go unnoticed.

American embassies do this worldwide, famously spying on Angela Merkel from the Berlin Embassy (probably). [1]

[1] https://www.duncancampbell.org/content/embassy-spy-centre-ne...

True, train as you fight. But this was like a check-ride for the young Captain. ADS-B Out didn’t need to be off.

If we haven't declared war we're not at War. Words mean things.

Especially in this era when this administration seems to be gearing up for military action in domestic spaces when Congress has declared no war.

At war with Russia, or at war with Ukraine? It's hard to tell these days.

Why is there a flight path along the Potomac river, right in front of a landing strip, at landing altitudes?

The article claims the helicopter was higher than it should have been, but isn't it safer to fly high across the airport if you're crossing?

There's a lot going on in a small area there. Even without helicopters, the main runway (01/19) is the busiest runway in the nation, and it points directly at a no-fly zone over the white house, so the approach has a complicated turn at the last moment. Directly across the river, there's a military base with a heliport. And those helicopters often transport important individuals inside of those areas and to areas up and down the river. Those helicopters aren't just casually flying through, they are doing things in the immediate area.

Just as an example, look at a map and take note of where DCA is, where the Marine One hangar is, and where the White House is. All of this stuff is right around the airport.

Doesn't fully explain why the military flight path runs right on front of the landing pattern for the main runway. Even with the proximity to each other, i don't see how that was necessary

This accident didn't involve the main runway, but runway 33. Although -- look at a map -- runway 33 points across the river to a military base with a heliport. It seems obvious as to why military helicopters would have to be there.

Now, this particular flight wasn't landing there, but I don't think it is in any way confusing as to why military helicopters are in this area or taking these routes.

This is inherently very complicated and high volume airspace, and there is a lot of helicopters because there are important leaders who use military helicopter transport, not commercial airports, but many of the places they might be landing are all around DCA.

> This is inherently very complicated and high volume airspace, and there is a lot of helicopters because there are important leaders who use military helicopter transport, not commercial airports, but many of the places they might be landing are all around DCA.

Three are occasional news articles and sci-fi worlds advocating for flying cars to replace normal cars. I imagine that would actually be like this situation but a gazillion times worse, rather than the promised elimination of traffic jams.

Actually, its a great way to eliminate traffic jams. The vehicles involved in the collision will naturally exit the roadway. So long as the flame and smoke don't obscure visibility, traffic will unjam itself.

The naturally exiting vehicles then just rain debris down on whatever unsuspecting .

My question would be “why not close down Reagan?” especially now that the DC Metro runs to Dulles. Yes, yes, Congress likes to fly into Reagan. Too bad.

Not only does Reagan have the same design problem as LGA and SFO (built before jetliners, runways too short), it’s incredibly close to restricted airspace. No civilian needs to fly into an airport that close to DC.

The area has enough traffic to support three airports, and all three (DCA/IAD/BWI) carry between 26-27 million passengers a year, each. I don't think you could close one of them without some significant disruption to service.

Travel in/out of IAD from DC can take an hour, which is obviously why people there prefer DCA. And the flights there are all short-haul anyway, so many are the types of flights people are doing on short turnarounds.

the military gets what it wants in DC, and the pilots were too comfortable and on different radio systems (helo can’t hear airplanes and vice versa, air traffic control is their intermediary)

A disaster waiting to happen in retrospect. Similar issues at other airports like runway incursions, especially at crowded small airports like SFO and LaGuardia with antiquated runway layouts.

FTA:

data recently analyzed by the board revealed that National Airport was the site of at least one near collision between an airplane and a helicopter each month from 2011 to 2024

I would say that statistic in and of itself qualifies as a "disaster waiting to happen". I agree that we should wait for the full report, but I don't think the GP is using hyperbole in this case.

Relying on seeing another aircraft in the air at night is pretty much a disaster waiting to happen.

You don't see aircraft at night, you see lights. And they're over a city--a gazillion lights. Thus all you really see are moving lights. But if two objects are on a steady collision path neither moves relative to the other. Thus both sets of pilots would simply have seen stationary lights, invisible against a sea of stationary lights.

> Let's wait for the investigation to complete before we opine on what is or isn't a "disaster waiting to happen."

Yes. The info still isn't that good.

That said, allowing helicopter operations underneath a final approach path is iffy. Ops.group has a discussion.[1]

[1] https://ops.group/blog/the-dangers-of-mixed-traffic/

The helicopter did not cross the airport. The helicopter crossed the approach path to the airport, it was supposed to stay low enough not to be in the approach path. Then the pilot steered around the wrong plane and blundered right into the plane that they were supposed to be avoiding.

Politicians wanting contradictory things, oops.

It's "safer" not to do a lot of things you do in military aviation, for one. And second, the flight path was deliberately plotted out requiring aircrew to maintain certain altitudes and stay within certain lateral boundaries to avoid other traffic. This is no different than any number of corridors like it around the country.

At some point, it's like saying "isn't it 'safer' not to take the freeway because everyone drives so fast?"

Training to evac politicians from what I understand. From wikipedia:

> "The helicopter was part of the Continuity of Government Plan, with the flight being a routine re-training of aircrew in night flight along the corridor."

Continuity of Government Plans is what they do when nukes get launched or a 9/11 sort of thing happens.

Should the people who had the most ability to prevent a global nuclear war be survivors of one?

That seems like a misalignment of incentives.

Not sure what the next best option here is. There was a thought experiment once where it would require the president to kill the key holder in order to launch a nuclear attack (the launch codes would be embedded in the designated key holder's heart). In theory this would make sure the president knew the seriousness of his or her actions, but it was never seriously considered as a protocol.

The US's ability to respond to a nuclear attack is a deterrence to one beginning in the first place.

The chain of command is designed to be resilient enough to do so without having to bail the VIPs out of the frying pan they landed themselves and the rest of the world in.

They need to have as much skin in the game as everyone else.

OTOH, turning "instigate a nuclear war" into a way to assassinate specific people also seems like a bad idea?