“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 approve of, in support of "equity." In my case, I risked my life to babysit an "equity beneficiary" on 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.
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.
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.
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 approve of, in support of "equity." In my case, I risked my life to babysit an "equity beneficiary" on 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.
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.
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.
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
gotta hear him say it lol... https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1885004323186229349
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.