“If they didn’t exist, why do the USMC have to put out a message to end them?”
Kind of reminds me of the line in A Few Good Men, “If you gave an order that Santiago wasn't to be touched and your orders are always followed, then why would Santiago be in danger?”
Egotists / Narcissists / Sociopaths all shape their environment and perception of it to their desired reality. That doesn't mean others share that perception, but "they" don't care. "I was for it when it was the way to get promoted, I'm against it now...no, wait, not only am I against it, it never existed at all." Too many years of being surrounded by staffers / hangers'on who validated his disconnected from reality worldview no matter how "off" it was. The worst part? The general is a product of the "system". He is one example of many who currently inhabit positions of responsibility in DoD...military officers and civilians. The needed course correction to the "system" is going to be very difficult and will take a lot longer than we all think. The best time to start is right now.
He was a very interesting man. Best dinner I've ever had was at The Commander's Palace Chef's table in New Orleans with him, NavSea 00, and NavSea EA. RADM Meyer drank Long Island Iced Tea. No thank you!
Good reporting and analysis, Commander Sal. To me, the biggest tragedy is the shockingly blatant dishonesty and cowardice of a Marine Corps general officer. This is tragic and unprecedented. Until now, the USMC was the only service which consistently produced flag officers with integrity I could admire and trust. I hope this low life is one of the first to be fired.
As a Naval Aviator, I too served under multiple Democrat and Republican administrations, and I too followed legal orders that I did not always approve of, including some orders in support of "equity." In my case, I risked my life to babysit an "equity beneficiary" on a six month cruise, who got vertigo every time we got into instrument flight conditions. Essentially, I was flying single-pilot in the most hazardous deployed conditions imaginable - absent actual combat. I thank God that we survived that cruise without incident and that the "beneficiary" was promoted into ground positions that did not require flight into instrument conditions. I am also VERY thankful for our return to meritocracy!
CDR SALAMANDER! Thank you so much for bringing this to the fore! We have been talking on Substack’s Marine Corps Compass Points about just this very issue. This is not the first time General Smith has made amazing statements, but as noted here, he is a product of the times. The Corps currently cannot meet its Title X statutory mandates in regard readiness and in short hand to be America’s 911 force in readiness, that it more or less has been for decades. Generals Berger and Smith are responsible for the terrible condition of the Corps through the development of the now debunking of their Force Design 2030 plan. General Smith and every flag officer in the Corps need to undergo a thorough vetting and most need to resign and retire. General Smith by the way, suffered a widow maker heart attack, and had to have major heart surgery to correct a condition. He refused to resign and refused to say when he would return to full duties, it was no one’s business. Well in a sense who could blame him, HIS boss the SecDef went missing for a week, and it was nobody’s business, including the SecDef’s boss, the President! You can’t make this stuff up. Aviation Sceptic is correct, course correction will be hard and take time, but the best time to start is right now. Thank you agin for this detailed review of the matter with General Smith. In short he hand he needs to go. In another day and time a real Marine General would resign and say thanks for the opportunity and apologize for screwing things up. Not this guy, he will have to be shown the exit.
I am so angry at leaders in positions of responsibility taking time off. I didn’t take more than a couple days off while i was in charge of America’s great men/women. If you’re ill or need a vacation resign!!
Exactly. As commissioned and non commissioned officers we are given a sacred trust and to misuse that trust and or take advantage of that trust and postion is basically dereliction of duty. We can only hope that the DOD train can be put back on the right track.
I beg to differ. He is a product of human beings. Like any other organization populated by human beings the military has good apples and bad apples. Always has, always will. I am a fan of the West Point honor code-- "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do." Unfortunately, there is far too much tolerance in the military for those who lie and cheat. After all, you wouldn't want to ruin someone's career over a little white lie, eh?
Take a star, take an exit, take note for every other weak and lying non-leader. There are enough peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches running around that Hegseth is gonna have a tough time with the whole “root and branch” thing. Lord knows he’s got the top cover to do it, let’s pray he does. I would like to see the look on CQ Browns private face this week though, would tell a lot.
Went to bed with and woke up to the most grim horrific nightmare on the local news. The busiest airport runway in the country in the most restricted airspace in the nation. While one does not want to point fingers of blame, anyone who watches ADS-B Exchange with any regularity knows that the military choppers fly on the right by Andrews AFB and there is a freaking runway on the left so close you can almost reach out and touch it and every plane coming in at 300 feet is 99.9% chance heading for that runway. What sort of "training" was going on in the dark and in that restricted airspace that ended up with 67 dead people? We know DEI infected the FAA to a disgusting extent, where actual qualified people were denied air traffic control positions in favor of the people who qualified on the color bar. But that flight out of Ft. Belvoir.... the Sikorsky appeared to speed up and close in on the airliner. What was going on there? Was this another situation where DEI really should be spelled DIE? None of this makes sense when you look at the situation. Clear night. Not a cloud in the sky. Phib, you aren't finished with DivThurs. Not by a longshot.
The news is focusing on the blood in the headlines and generally short on operational details. Juan Browne did a nice update a few hours ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouDAnO8eMf8
Apparently the helo was in a helo lane over the river. People have said that that lane is 200 feet to the water (can't confirm), but the collision was at 400 feet. Helo also wasn't running ADS-B because reasons and apparently VH-60s don't have TCAS.
Someone showed what was said to be a recording of the ATC radar showing collision alert for 27 seconds before the crash.
Do we know what the TCAS advice was? Seems to me that at 300-400 ft AGL on approach, the instinctive response my any pilot is to pull up. After all, at 300 ft, in an airliner, you can't get under your problem without facing uglier ones 5 seconds later.
As a left seat pax on a lot of Army LOH trips in the dark, the place of safety always seemed to be to go lower
Under 1000 feet I have been told there are not resolution advisories. You just get traffic warnings. But if the helo didn't have TCAS or ASD-B active apparently the TCAS on the jet wouldn't have reacted at all. Best guess of Army helo pilots is that the helo pilots were tracking a jet taking off and never saw the jet landing.
I have been turned down for a job because I was "white" even though, years later, it turns out what I suspected all along, that I was by DNA arguably Black!
But it's premature to latch DEI's corrosive effects to this tragedy directly.
The Helicopter One VFR route needs to be restricted when RWY 33 circle to lands are in use.
Actually, I'm amazed it already wasn't. At any other airport that I'm aware of, crossing a Final less than a mile out would require permission from the tower. More than once I've heard a tower tell a helo (news helos) to wait a bit for a gap.
Why not at DCA? Even in the best case, the vertical separation between the 200 foot ceiling of the route and the RWY33 final is way inside the rules.
The voice recordings clearly show the DCA tower controller was allowing the helo to continue to provide his own separation.
Pretty obvious that it's a normalized procedure there.
Is it a reluctance to restrict the movements of the VIP squadrons at Anacostia and Belvoir, so a variance was accepted?
There was a longer shore to go down to cross over to the VA side of the Potomac. WHY THERE? It's not like it's a new airport, or there isn't a pattern of Mil flights going up the east side of the river, or that it's busy or that Ft. Belvoir isn't in the same place it always was. None of this makes sense with the thousands of planes and choppers that go through there a month. Tragic. And having come in on more than one flight on RWY01 and 33 now I'm more nervous to fly there.
So, you will have a harder time getting a flight there!
I think the DEI talk in this situation right now isnt warranted. I can't get around the fact that an established VFR corridor is allowed in such close proximity to the approaches in the south and southeast sides of the river.
All times I've been there, and looked across the river at Anacostia, I've just ASSumed
there were positive control protocols for traffic deconfliction in place, and not an always open VFR corridor that is WAY inside standard separation distances.
I also have 5th cousin hits that lead back to John Settle through his white children.
So that tells you what happened there!
To top it off, his wife at the time of when he owned Minerva had been married to a gent who was in the extended maternal family of my adopted mother. That husband died and she then married Mr. Settle. Also, turns out that her father was hanged in Charleston for murdering a slave.
The odds of that last connection are crazy, as I was born in Lima Oh, and adopted in Dayton. Go figure!
So, somebody wants to lecture me on being "Diverse"?...
Heh. I think we all know what happened everywhere. To be a bit crude, the One-Eyed Trouser Snake is color blind and opportunistic. I get a kick out of organizations like the DAR and the Daughters of the Confederacy and the pride they take in their (assumed) lineage.
So an Aunt in my adopted family (maternal side; 'Aunt Lois' Mrs. Cherry Crawford) was President of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the mid '60's...
And no. She wasn't racist at all, as I well remember she thought the sea changes going on with Blacks gaining the rights and freedoms at the time were long overdue.
Hard line historical narratives miss all the "fuzz' of such nuances that are really the story as it happened.
"For example, the largest study of African Americans to date, based on autosomal short tandem repeat (STR) markers, found an average of 14% European ancestry with a standard deviation of approximately 10%, and a range of near 0 to 65% [1], whereas another study based on ancestry informative markers (AIMs) found an average of 17.7% European ancestry with a standard deviation of 15.0% [2]."
So, I find it a real hoot when i see the stone racists of today...like this person...
Trump has already blamed DEI, why wait for an investigation? I knew someone here would bring up the crash.
If you blame DEI for something like that, you have to find the woman/minority/disabled individual somewhere near the accident to scapegoat.
Press reports have already said one of the Blackhawk pilots was a woman. We might not find out what happened in the cockpit (do military UH-60s have flight recorders?) but it will be politically expedient to blame her and nit-pick her record for previous errors without regard to however outstanding her overall flight record and experience was. I say that as someone who flew UH-60s flown by women numerous times in Iraq. So let's see how an army pilot gets maligned, not fairly because of mistakes, but based on identity.
Same with the ATCs working that night. God forbid a dwarf (as Trump mentioned were among the DEI goals) was one of them!
This kind of thing, scapegoating, is going to have a devastating effect on the morale of maybe more than half the people in the military and federal government. Women, blacks, Hispanics, and dwarves working as GS-12s are going to feel a target on their backs.
As a woman, I would quit a job before I thought I was only chosen for XY chromosomes and that standards were lowered or fudged to accompany me, especially if lives were on the line. It has already been discussed before the inauguration that many many thousands of qualified persons were denied positions as ATCs because they wanted to give that job to (checks notes) BLIND and MENTALLY ILL people. So lets not ignore that the tower at DCA was understaffed that night. Maybe if they had let some qualified ATC personnel man it instead of focusing on diversity quotas, there may have been two people guiding traffic in AND out instead of one.
https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/1885306661834785082 And sorry, is this how you drive a car? You see lights coming at you so you proceed without caution? I thought a helo could slow and stop and hover mid-air, not speed up toward the oncoming lights.
01/758 (A0380/25) - RWY 15/33 CLSD. 30 JAN 15:23 2025 UNTIL 01 FEB 23:00 2025. CREATED: 30 JAN 15:23
2025
[edit]
Helo traffic is suspended around DCA as well.
So good on 'em.
No way in hell that runway will reopen anytime soon.
Wanna go to DCA? Expect to pay more for fewer flights, probably as I type.
Meanwhile, as of yet, no mention of how the most unsafely engineered airspace anywhere was allowed to be concocted.
And what's with the "PAT" helos insisting on maintaining VFR status with separation distances that would get any "high wing-low time" duffer like me violated.
Check out what happened the day before the accident involving another PAT callsign helo and a Republic Airlines RJ which caused it to go around.
To expand on previous comments on previous days: Human behavior 101 (obvious to all): You get more of what you reward, less of what you punish. This type of behavior has been "rewarded" with upward mobility and promotion. Removal from position, clearly stated reason being for poor performance, "lack of confidence", cause, etc. is a necessary first step in changing systemic behavior via "punishment" to get a different behavior. OBTW, his removal in such a fashion would be a "good start".
Has General Smith, or for that matter, any USMC GO, stood up and decried the lack of Deep Draft Amphibs on the deployability of the Corps? Just sayin, but the Few and the Proud are landlocked like the Big Green.
Has General Smith, or for that matter, any USMC GO, stood up and decried the lack of Deep Draft Amphibs on the deployability of the Corps? Just sayin, but the Few and the Proud are landlocked like the Big Green.
pity when military leaders turn out to be such cowards
Lincoln nods his head in agreement.
“If they didn’t exist, why do the USMC have to put out a message to end them?”
Kind of reminds me of the line in A Few Good Men, “If you gave an order that Santiago wasn't to be touched and your orders are always followed, then why would Santiago be in danger?”
I dislike that movie.
It should be called Meathead (Rob Reiner) joins the Marines.
Others disagree. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj90ww3ld3ro
Egotists / Narcissists / Sociopaths all shape their environment and perception of it to their desired reality. That doesn't mean others share that perception, but "they" don't care. "I was for it when it was the way to get promoted, I'm against it now...no, wait, not only am I against it, it never existed at all." Too many years of being surrounded by staffers / hangers'on who validated his disconnected from reality worldview no matter how "off" it was. The worst part? The general is a product of the "system". He is one example of many who currently inhabit positions of responsibility in DoD...military officers and civilians. The needed course correction to the "system" is going to be very difficult and will take a lot longer than we all think. The best time to start is right now.
Pity to have such :leaders" as Gen Smith. Reminds me of the sign on RADM Wayne Meyer's office at NavSea -
"Integrity is like the shore of a rocky island, once left you can never return".
Following book came out last summer, was interesting, if not as technical as I'd hoped.
The Origins of Aegis: Eli T. Reich, Wayne Meyer, and the Creation of a Revolutionary Naval Weapons System
He was a very interesting man. Best dinner I've ever had was at The Commander's Palace Chef's table in New Orleans with him, NavSea 00, and NavSea EA. RADM Meyer drank Long Island Iced Tea. No thank you!
That must have been interesting!
Good reporting and analysis, Commander Sal. To me, the biggest tragedy is the shockingly blatant dishonesty and cowardice of a Marine Corps general officer. This is tragic and unprecedented. Until now, the USMC was the only service which consistently produced flag officers with integrity I could admire and trust. I hope this low life is one of the first to be fired.
As a Naval Aviator, I too served under multiple Democrat and Republican administrations, and I too followed legal orders that I did not always approve of, including some orders in support of "equity." In my case, I risked my life to babysit an "equity beneficiary" on a six month cruise, who got vertigo every time we got into instrument flight conditions. Essentially, I was flying single-pilot in the most hazardous deployed conditions imaginable - absent actual combat. I thank God that we survived that cruise without incident and that the "beneficiary" was promoted into ground positions that did not require flight into instrument conditions. I am also VERY thankful for our return to meritocracy!
Cowardice, indeed. Bravery is needed in Pentagon offices as well as the battlefield. We also call that “integrity”.
Same here Jimmy.
CDR SALAMANDER! Thank you so much for bringing this to the fore! We have been talking on Substack’s Marine Corps Compass Points about just this very issue. This is not the first time General Smith has made amazing statements, but as noted here, he is a product of the times. The Corps currently cannot meet its Title X statutory mandates in regard readiness and in short hand to be America’s 911 force in readiness, that it more or less has been for decades. Generals Berger and Smith are responsible for the terrible condition of the Corps through the development of the now debunking of their Force Design 2030 plan. General Smith and every flag officer in the Corps need to undergo a thorough vetting and most need to resign and retire. General Smith by the way, suffered a widow maker heart attack, and had to have major heart surgery to correct a condition. He refused to resign and refused to say when he would return to full duties, it was no one’s business. Well in a sense who could blame him, HIS boss the SecDef went missing for a week, and it was nobody’s business, including the SecDef’s boss, the President! You can’t make this stuff up. Aviation Sceptic is correct, course correction will be hard and take time, but the best time to start is right now. Thank you agin for this detailed review of the matter with General Smith. In short he hand he needs to go. In another day and time a real Marine General would resign and say thanks for the opportunity and apologize for screwing things up. Not this guy, he will have to be shown the exit.
I am so angry at leaders in positions of responsibility taking time off. I didn’t take more than a couple days off while i was in charge of America’s great men/women. If you’re ill or need a vacation resign!!
Exactly. As commissioned and non commissioned officers we are given a sacred trust and to misuse that trust and or take advantage of that trust and postion is basically dereliction of duty. We can only hope that the DOD train can be put back on the right track.
"he is a product of the times."
I beg to differ. He is a product of human beings. Like any other organization populated by human beings the military has good apples and bad apples. Always has, always will. I am a fan of the West Point honor code-- "A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do." Unfortunately, there is far too much tolerance in the military for those who lie and cheat. After all, you wouldn't want to ruin someone's career over a little white lie, eh?
Take a star, take an exit, take note for every other weak and lying non-leader. There are enough peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches running around that Hegseth is gonna have a tough time with the whole “root and branch” thing. Lord knows he’s got the top cover to do it, let’s pray he does. I would like to see the look on CQ Browns private face this week though, would tell a lot.
Dishonest is the kindest spin that can be put on the Commandant's attempt to mask involvement. Lacking moral courage may be better phrasing.
By now the new SECDEF should have fired a lot of flag officers beginning with the CJCS and Admiral Lisa not just take down a couple of paintings.
I hope he wasn't so exhausted by the confirmation process that he has forgotten why Trump nominated him in the first place.
I just hope Trump didn't end up with another Mad Dog full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
Hope is not a strategy.
He seems to think he is also his own press secretary so he is already misunderstanding his role. Or is he?
Went to bed with and woke up to the most grim horrific nightmare on the local news. The busiest airport runway in the country in the most restricted airspace in the nation. While one does not want to point fingers of blame, anyone who watches ADS-B Exchange with any regularity knows that the military choppers fly on the right by Andrews AFB and there is a freaking runway on the left so close you can almost reach out and touch it and every plane coming in at 300 feet is 99.9% chance heading for that runway. What sort of "training" was going on in the dark and in that restricted airspace that ended up with 67 dead people? We know DEI infected the FAA to a disgusting extent, where actual qualified people were denied air traffic control positions in favor of the people who qualified on the color bar. But that flight out of Ft. Belvoir.... the Sikorsky appeared to speed up and close in on the airliner. What was going on there? Was this another situation where DEI really should be spelled DIE? None of this makes sense when you look at the situation. Clear night. Not a cloud in the sky. Phib, you aren't finished with DivThurs. Not by a longshot.
The news is focusing on the blood in the headlines and generally short on operational details. Juan Browne did a nice update a few hours ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouDAnO8eMf8
Like any accident, I'd respectfully suggest we wait a few more days until the frenzy of the press recedes and actual analysis begins.
Concur
I was pilot member on three investigations. Your comment is spot on.
Ah, the voice of reason and rationality. You are not going to win any popularity contests that way, "respectfully" or not.
Apparently the helo was in a helo lane over the river. People have said that that lane is 200 feet to the water (can't confirm), but the collision was at 400 feet. Helo also wasn't running ADS-B because reasons and apparently VH-60s don't have TCAS.
Someone showed what was said to be a recording of the ATC radar showing collision alert for 27 seconds before the crash.
Do we know what the TCAS advice was? Seems to me that at 300-400 ft AGL on approach, the instinctive response my any pilot is to pull up. After all, at 300 ft, in an airliner, you can't get under your problem without facing uglier ones 5 seconds later.
As a left seat pax on a lot of Army LOH trips in the dark, the place of safety always seemed to be to go lower
Under 1000 feet I have been told there are not resolution advisories. You just get traffic warnings. But if the helo didn't have TCAS or ASD-B active apparently the TCAS on the jet wouldn't have reacted at all. Best guess of Army helo pilots is that the helo pilots were tracking a jet taking off and never saw the jet landing.
I understand they were closing on each other, and the UH60 Pilots were wearing Night vision?
Perhaps the CRJ turned on his landing lights, blinded the helo and he pulled up into the glide slope?
another guess with little info :)
Can't imagine they would've been wearing night vision in the dazzle of all the lights there.
[edit: I guess SecDef Hegseth said that NVG's were in use...Wow. Seriously??]
Also, this was a VH-60 "Gold Cap" VIP transport.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1idq43f/army_vh60m_takeoff_video_same_configuration_as/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
And right at a busy airport bumping heads with the arrivals?
The approach in use was to RWY01 and DCA offered the accident flight the circle to land RWY 33.
It's a common procedure at DCA as it helps facilitate departures on RWY01, which were getting backed up at the time.
TCAS RA is disabled below 1000 feet.
The helo crew may have been looking at the next aircraft coming down the chute on the RWY 01 approach.
The RJ crew was seconds away from flaring to land, and at no other controlled airport would one ever find VFR traffic crossing at their altitude.
Hopefully in very short order those thoughts will be a distant memory once meritocracy returns to DoD and the US in general.
I am as implacable foe of DEI as anyone here.
I have been turned down for a job because I was "white" even though, years later, it turns out what I suspected all along, that I was by DNA arguably Black!
But it's premature to latch DEI's corrosive effects to this tragedy directly.
The Helicopter One VFR route needs to be restricted when RWY 33 circle to lands are in use.
Actually, I'm amazed it already wasn't. At any other airport that I'm aware of, crossing a Final less than a mile out would require permission from the tower. More than once I've heard a tower tell a helo (news helos) to wait a bit for a gap.
Why not at DCA? Even in the best case, the vertical separation between the 200 foot ceiling of the route and the RWY33 final is way inside the rules.
The voice recordings clearly show the DCA tower controller was allowing the helo to continue to provide his own separation.
Pretty obvious that it's a normalized procedure there.
Is it a reluctance to restrict the movements of the VIP squadrons at Anacostia and Belvoir, so a variance was accepted?
There was a longer shore to go down to cross over to the VA side of the Potomac. WHY THERE? It's not like it's a new airport, or there isn't a pattern of Mil flights going up the east side of the river, or that it's busy or that Ft. Belvoir isn't in the same place it always was. None of this makes sense with the thousands of planes and choppers that go through there a month. Tragic. And having come in on more than one flight on RWY01 and 33 now I'm more nervous to fly there.
Well, as the say, safety is written in blood.
I suspect we will see capacity restrictions put in place at DCA as an immediate reaction, and the Circle to Land and RNAV RWY33 not authorized...
https://www.flightaware.com/resources/airport/DCA/IAP/ILS+OR+LOC+RWY+01/pdf
https://www.flightaware.com/resources/airport/KDCA/IAP/RNAV+(GPS)+RWY+33
But the Helo One corridor will remain unchanged.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3gD_lnBNu0
So, you will have a harder time getting a flight there!
I think the DEI talk in this situation right now isnt warranted. I can't get around the fact that an established VFR corridor is allowed in such close proximity to the approaches in the south and southeast sides of the river.
All times I've been there, and looked across the river at Anacostia, I've just ASSumed
there were positive control protocols for traffic deconfliction in place, and not an always open VFR corridor that is WAY inside standard separation distances.
Here is the book on the subject...
https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Order/FAA_Order_8260.3D1.pdf
"I suspected all along, that I was by DNA arguably Black"
Sicilian, perchance? Reminds me of a Christopher Walken scene--
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wax15NklZh4
Actually, solid slave heritage...
This bit of enduring case law revolves around a dispute on the ownership of a slave named Minerva:
https://case.law/caselaw/?reporter=ga&volume=8&case=0201-01
She was one of my 5th great-grandmothers.
I also have 5th cousin hits that lead back to John Settle through his white children.
So that tells you what happened there!
To top it off, his wife at the time of when he owned Minerva had been married to a gent who was in the extended maternal family of my adopted mother. That husband died and she then married Mr. Settle. Also, turns out that her father was hanged in Charleston for murdering a slave.
The odds of that last connection are crazy, as I was born in Lima Oh, and adopted in Dayton. Go figure!
So, somebody wants to lecture me on being "Diverse"?...
https://as2.ftcdn.net/v2/jpg/00/64/26/61/1000_F_64266120_Hj9NhEz0E3BKX3XMopAcFAHgcRjIDKoL.jpg
"So that tells you what happened there"
Heh. I think we all know what happened everywhere. To be a bit crude, the One-Eyed Trouser Snake is color blind and opportunistic. I get a kick out of organizations like the DAR and the Daughters of the Confederacy and the pride they take in their (assumed) lineage.
More of my 'Diversity'...
So an Aunt in my adopted family (maternal side; 'Aunt Lois' Mrs. Cherry Crawford) was President of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the mid '60's...
And no. She wasn't racist at all, as I well remember she thought the sea changes going on with Blacks gaining the rights and freedoms at the time were long overdue.
Hard line historical narratives miss all the "fuzz' of such nuances that are really the story as it happened.
My first thought as well, lol:)
The average African American has approximately 14-17 percent Caucasian in their DNA admixture:
https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-2009-10-12-r141
"For example, the largest study of African Americans to date, based on autosomal short tandem repeat (STR) markers, found an average of 14% European ancestry with a standard deviation of approximately 10%, and a range of near 0 to 65% [1], whereas another study based on ancestry informative markers (AIMs) found an average of 17.7% European ancestry with a standard deviation of 15.0% [2]."
So, I find it a real hoot when i see the stone racists of today...like this person...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfCupHW8W44
learning The Truth of the Matter. (make sure you watch this vid...Its rich!!!)
https://www.facebook.com/FindingYourRootsPBS/videos/angela-davis-learns-her-fourth-great-grandfather-served-in-the-american-revoluti/691564222713037/
Now. Who owes whom Reparations!!??
gotta hear him say it lol... https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1885004323186229349
Trump has already blamed DEI, why wait for an investigation? I knew someone here would bring up the crash.
If you blame DEI for something like that, you have to find the woman/minority/disabled individual somewhere near the accident to scapegoat.
Press reports have already said one of the Blackhawk pilots was a woman. We might not find out what happened in the cockpit (do military UH-60s have flight recorders?) but it will be politically expedient to blame her and nit-pick her record for previous errors without regard to however outstanding her overall flight record and experience was. I say that as someone who flew UH-60s flown by women numerous times in Iraq. So let's see how an army pilot gets maligned, not fairly because of mistakes, but based on identity.
Same with the ATCs working that night. God forbid a dwarf (as Trump mentioned were among the DEI goals) was one of them!
This kind of thing, scapegoating, is going to have a devastating effect on the morale of maybe more than half the people in the military and federal government. Women, blacks, Hispanics, and dwarves working as GS-12s are going to feel a target on their backs.
As a woman, I would quit a job before I thought I was only chosen for XY chromosomes and that standards were lowered or fudged to accompany me, especially if lives were on the line. It has already been discussed before the inauguration that many many thousands of qualified persons were denied positions as ATCs because they wanted to give that job to (checks notes) BLIND and MENTALLY ILL people. So lets not ignore that the tower at DCA was understaffed that night. Maybe if they had let some qualified ATC personnel man it instead of focusing on diversity quotas, there may have been two people guiding traffic in AND out instead of one.
https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/1885306661834785082 And sorry, is this how you drive a car? You see lights coming at you so you proceed without caution? I thought a helo could slow and stop and hover mid-air, not speed up toward the oncoming lights.
Whelp...
Just as I suspected...
01/758 (A0380/25) - RWY 15/33 CLSD. 30 JAN 15:23 2025 UNTIL 01 FEB 23:00 2025. CREATED: 30 JAN 15:23
2025
[edit]
Helo traffic is suspended around DCA as well.
So good on 'em.
No way in hell that runway will reopen anytime soon.
Wanna go to DCA? Expect to pay more for fewer flights, probably as I type.
Meanwhile, as of yet, no mention of how the most unsafely engineered airspace anywhere was allowed to be concocted.
And what's with the "PAT" helos insisting on maintaining VFR status with separation distances that would get any "high wing-low time" duffer like me violated.
Check out what happened the day before the accident involving another PAT callsign helo and a Republic Airlines RJ which caused it to go around.
https://youtu.be/huVFZ__q2rI?si=3P4JGO2-O39P4EUG
Going around on the Potomac Visual? With 50 plus souls on board? Yeah! That's a real safe evolution.
But let's not get positively controlled!
I'm calling it. DEI isn't the culprit here. DC Centric hubris is.
To expand on previous comments on previous days: Human behavior 101 (obvious to all): You get more of what you reward, less of what you punish. This type of behavior has been "rewarded" with upward mobility and promotion. Removal from position, clearly stated reason being for poor performance, "lack of confidence", cause, etc. is a necessary first step in changing systemic behavior via "punishment" to get a different behavior. OBTW, his removal in such a fashion would be a "good start".
And really? THIS??? https://nypost.com/2017/03/29/silencing-an-american-hero-the-shame-of-the-naval-academy/ Pitiful. Absolutely pitiful. They aren't fit to tie Mr. Webb's shoelaces.
That was disgraceful
The roaches are running for the shadows. There will be more.
If the overhead lights can't reach 'em, switch to a flamethrower.
Has General Smith, or for that matter, any USMC GO, stood up and decried the lack of Deep Draft Amphibs on the deployability of the Corps? Just sayin, but the Few and the Proud are landlocked like the Big Green.
Exactly
Has General Smith, or for that matter, any USMC GO, stood up and decried the lack of Deep Draft Amphibs on the deployability of the Corps? Just sayin, but the Few and the Proud are landlocked like the Big Green.
Like Ocasio-Cortez the General was morally right, even if his facts weren’t.
Leadership with such a superlative grasp of the moral high ground like this is what we need in our politicians and war planners.