Something
of a mystery has emerged after a brief lockdown of the White House and U.S.
Capitol due to an alleged violation of the heavily restricted airspace over
Washington, D.C. this morning. Reports now indicate that a
flock of birds, a weather balloon, or something else besides a plane or
helicopter, appears to have triggered the alert, which sent fighter jets and
helicopters scrambling into the air. Whatever the case, the incident
underscores the very real challenges involved in protecting the skies above
the nation's capital, and short-range air defense,
in general, especially as novel threats, such as increasingly capable small unmanned aircraft,
continue to emerge and evolve.
Some of the first reports of a
potential aerial threat emerged just before 8:30 AM local time in Washington,
with the U.S. Capitol Police and U.S. Secret Service subsequently restricting
access to various sites and telling individuals at the White House and Capitol
Building to shelter in place. Within 45 minutes, the U.S. Capitol Police said
that the situation had passed "without incident" and the lockdowns
ended shortly thereafter.
Before
the lockdowns ended, the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command
(NORAD),
responsible for coordinating the defense of airspace in both countries,
including over Washington, D.C., Tweeted out that "We have tasked aircraft
to respond. More details to follow."
From USCP:
8:27am - report of a possible aircraft in restricted airspace
USCP began monitoring situation for potential threats, restricted access to Capitol Complex buildings
9:12am - the situation was cleared "without incident"
8:27am - report of a possible aircraft in restricted airspace
USCP began monitoring situation for potential threats, restricted access to Capitol Complex buildings
9:12am - the situation was cleared "without incident"
We have tasked aircraft to
respond. More details to follow.
"Senior
officials across the interagency are monitoring the situation on a national
event conference call. NORAD aircraft are on site and responding. Plane is not
considered hostile at this time," the command said in a second Tweet that
it subsequently deleted for unspecified reasons. U.S. Northern Command posted a
nearly identical version of this statement on Twitter, which is still
available. Pentagon spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Chris Mitchell also told CNN virtually
the same thing at the time.
Senior officials across the
interagency are monitoring the situation on a national event conference call. @NORADCommand aircraft are on site and
responding. Plane is not considered hostile at this time.
At the time of writing, neither the
Pentagon, U.S. Northern Command, nor NORAD has issued an official press release
regarding the incident. "NORAD responded to an event in the Special Flight
Rules Area surrounding Washington D.C. this morning. NORAD directed @USCG
rotary wing aircraft to investigate and the event was resolved without
incident," NORAD said in another Tweet at 12:50 PM, local time.
NORAD responded to an event
in the Special Flight Rules Area surrounding Washington D.C. this morning.
NORAD directed @USCG rotary wing aircraft
to investigate and the event was resolved without incident. The defense of
Canada and the United States is NORAD's top priority.
The
U.S. Coast Guard rotary-wing asset was almost certainly that service's MH-65 Dolphin helicopter
that is based at Coast Guard Station Washington, D.C., which is collocated with
the U.S. military's Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling. This helicopter also operates
at times from a separate site at Reagan National Airport. The MH-65, among its
missions in the area, is on call to specifically to intercept low-and-slow
moving targets.
Fox News also
reported that unspecified fighter jets and a U.S. Capitol Police helicopter
responded to the incident. It's not immediately clear if the Capitol Police has
a helicopter and this may have been the Coast Guard's MH-65. The fighter jets
in question were almost certainly the F-16C Vipers from
the D.C. Air National Guard that sit on alert at
Andrews Air Force Base in order to respond to just these kinds of situations.
Ground-based
air defense systems that also help protect the capital were also no doubt on
alert during the incident. Sara Cook, a CBS News producer
covering the White House, also Tweeted out a picture showing a glimpse of
an AN/TWQ-1 Avenger point
air defense system that is positioned on top of a building within line-of-sight
of the White House.
The
AN/TWQ-1 is more typically seen mounted on a Humvee, but can be positioned in
fixed emplacements, as well. It is armed with the two four-round launchers for
the FIM-92 Stinger missile
and a .50 caliber M3P machine gun. National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile
Systems, or NASAMS,
which include ground-based launchers that fire the AIM-120 Advanced
Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM), are also part of this greater
integrated air defense network around Washington, D.C.
.@SecretService
statement on this morning's lockdown at the White House:
“The White House was locked down this morning due to a potential violation of the restricted airspace in the National Capital Region. The lockdown has been lifted at this time.”
“The White House was locked down this morning due to a potential violation of the restricted airspace in the National Capital Region. The lockdown has been lifted at this time.”
Spotted during the lockdown:
a missile battery in position atop a building across the street from the White
House
As for the actual target that these
assets were search the sky for, at no point during the incident did any U.S.
government agency identify the threat beyond the statements that it was a
"plane," which NORAD, at least, has now deleted. Sam Sweeney, a D.C. Morning
and transportation reporter at ABC7 television
in Washington, subsequently Tweeted out, citing unnamed sources, that a
"flock of birds appearing on radar" had been the real culprit.
JUST IN: The security scare
that put the White House in lockdown today was possibly caused by a flock of
birds appearing on radar. NORAD confirms no aircraft violated D.C. airspace and
scrambled jets never located a plane.
An
unnamed NORAD spokesperson told NBC News that
"a flock of birds or a weather balloon" might have been responsible.
However, "the comments you’re seeing about a flock of birds is
speculation,” another unidentified NORAD public affairs officer told Gizmodo after
those initial reports. "I cannot confirm or deny that it was a flock of
birds," they added.
The
employment of the MH-65 to intercept whatever it was that appeared on the radar
screens indicates that the target, real or not, was seen as moving
low-and-slow. This is backed up by another CNN report,
citing an unnamed U.S. Capitol Police source that described the radar track as
a "slow-moving blob." That same story said that another unidentified
U.S. government official said that the Federal Aviation Administration had said
that air traffic controllers never saw the alleged track on their radar
screens, either.
Additional
reporting from Fox
News indicated that it might have
even come to a virtual stop, "hovering"
over a particular part of Washington, for a brief moment. Yet another unnamed
source told this outlet that it might have been a "weather anomaly."
While
it still remains unclear exactly what happened and why, the incident, and these
sometimes conflicting reports, highlight the difficulties the U.S. government
faces in protecting the nation's capital against aerial threats, especially
smaller and unmanned aircraft. This had already become notably apparent
after Doug Hughes,
a former postal worker turned political activist, infamously flew a
gyrocopter into D.C.'s restricted airspace and landed on the
Capitol Building's lawn in 2015. He had hoped to deliver letters to every
member of Congress in protest of what he said was widespread corruption and
dysfunction. Hughes subsequently pled guilty to one felony charge and spent 120
days in prison, followed by a year of probation.
That
incident had called into question the utility of one sensor system that seemed
ideally suited to detecting exactly this kind of intruder. The Joint Land
Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor System, or JLENS, a
radar system on a tethered aerostat that was already long-troubled at the time.
JLENS was supposed to use its elevated position to have a better chance of
spotting small, low-flying threats, such as cruise missiles.
A
JLENS system had gone into operation at the U.S. Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground
in Maryland, some 60 miles to the northeast of Washington, on an experimental
basis just a month before Hughes' flight to the capital. The Army subsequently said that
JLENS hadn't been operating that day at all.
The U.S. government did subsequently
make improvements to the air defense network in and around Washington, D.C., an
area referred to collectively as the National Capital Region. This included the
addition of systems better suited to spotting and tracking targets with smaller
radar cross-sections, such as ultralight aircraft and drones.
Unfortunately,
that increased sensitivity to small targets also increases the chances of false
alarms, which appears increasingly likely to be what occurred in this most
recent incident in the skies above the nation's capital, whether it was a bird,
a balloon, or something else. It's possible that in the wake of the
unprecedented mass suicide drone and cruise missile attacks on
oil-related infrastructure in Saudi Arabia in
September that U.S. forces in the National Capital Region are on especially
high alert with regards to anything that could be a similar type of
attack.
Depending
on the exact circumstances, a flock of birds, for instance, might look the same
to radars as a swarm of drones. It would also hardly be the first time that
radars have mistaken large birds for potential threats. In one particularly
notable instance in the 1950s, a formation of Canadian geese triggered an alert from
personnel working NORAD's Distant Early Warning (DEW)
Line radar network, who initially mistook them for a mass of Soviet bombers.
When
it comes to the air defense network around Washington, D.C., even if it does
detect a real threat, how to respond remains complicated. Firing surface-to-air
or air-to-air missiles at a target over a heavily populated area, especially at
a low-flying target, raises inherent risks of
causing collateral damage. Employing automatic cannons or machine guns from
aircraft or emplacements on the ground still present dangers to innocent
bystanders.
There
is also the question of whether large scale attacks, especially those involving
groups or fully networked swarms of small drones, would simply overwhelm these
defenses. This is major issue for the U.S. military, among others, on the
battlefield, as well, something you can read about in more detail in this past War Zone feature.
A multitude of potential solutions, many of which would be complementary in a
layered air defense network, are emerging, including various combinations of
sensors, electronic warfare
countermeasures, and weapon systems,
including lasers and high-power microwaves.
Some of these systems have already become part of the expanding defense
ecosystem for countries looking to protect critical domestic
sites or events that
may be in or near sprawling urban areas. That's a trend that will only continue
in the future.
AP
A
counter-drone system in place at Gatwick Airport in the United Kingdom after
reports of small drones shut down flight
operations there for a period in December 2018.
All told, whether it was a flock of
geese, a weather balloon, or something else floating in the air that triggered
today's lockdowns in Washington, D.C., the incident shows the complexities of
protecting the skies above the seat of the U.S. government, as well as what the
United States has already done to mitigate those threats and where there might
be room for even further improvement.
Contact
the author: joe@thedrive.com
Ingen kommentarer:
Legg inn en kommentar
Merk: Bare medlemmer av denne bloggen kan legge inn en kommentar.