Comment by firesteelrain
8 months ago
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.
8 months ago
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.
The ADS-B transponder tells other planes where you are. It doesn't tell you where the other planes are. Turning it off when there are civilian planes doesn't improve your ability to aviate. it just hurts the situational awareness of the civilian planes who aren't supposed to be learning how to fight.
ADS-B goes both directions - you can broadcast, and you can listen. In this case, having it on would've told the Blackhawk crew a plane was way closer than they thought, even if the Blackhawk had broadcasting off.
8 replies →
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.
The article says the reason is a bit different - that the route they were practicing is (in theory) sensitive information.
> But the Black Hawk did not operate with the technology because of the confidentiality of the mission for which the crew was practicing. That is because ADS-B Out positions can be obtained by anyone with an internet connection, making the system a potential risk to national security.
Seems like leaving it in listen-only mode would be wise, though.
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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.
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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.
Wasting innocent civilians out of sheer stupidity, checks out.
> 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.
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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.
For how many years was the United States engaged in a declared war, and for how many other years did its military engage in substantial operations?
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>"We just haven't declared war."
Then we're not at war. Hope this clears things up for you!
By this standard, the US has not been at war since WWII. This is an absurd result, so I conclude that the standard is wrong. Official declarations of war have become decoupled from actually being at war.
At war with Russia, or at war with Ukraine? It's hard to tell these days.