Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

nones-leonard.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 228 posts

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#41

Post by chucksmash »

thepasswordis wrote: post #23
pivo wrote: post #18

I've just finished reading, "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service" by Carol Leonnig [0]. In that book the author describes an incident on September 12, 1994 [1] in which a pilot landed a small plane in front of the white house. Secret Service members she interviewed were dumfounded that they were asked there to run to the white house roof with rifles to protect the building, and that there were no such…

>The book makes it clear that the Secret Service is constantly underfunded and sorely lacking in modern technology, with agents sometimes having to use their personal car to transport the people they're protecting because their official cars aren't working. Maybe the answer is to cool it with the idea that government officials all need to have large personal protective details. Isn't that the job of the police? And a…

> Maybe the answer is to cool it with the idea that government officials all need to have large personal protective details. Isn't that the job of the police?

So like Shinzo Abe?

Edit: I picked Shinzo Abe because it was a recent example I felt people would be familiar with, but honestly it seems like any notoriety at all is dangerous. Someone assassinated MLK Jr's mother[1] while she played a church organ. Relying on the general reasonableness of other people doesn't seem to scale at all.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/22/obituaries/m-w-chenault-4...

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#42

Post by BWStearns »

blamazon wrote: post #9
knodi123 wrote: post #8

> "Airline pilots are the best at what they do and have spent years honing their craft." And apparently one of those rare and vital skills is filling in the gaps when talking to air traffic controllers who are not competent to communicate life-or-death information.

Why are we still doing air control with competitive real time voice radio anyway? Can we not engineer in some queued delay of planning? (I know nothing of the vagaries of air control)

Airplanes live for decades (probably a fair amount are going to pass the 100 year mark) and so backwards compatibility is a huge issue for adding any tech into the system.

Radio works pretty well and it's flexible. Imagine some asshole is flying a drone around on short final. It's easy enough to say "Hey heads up everyone, there's a DJI buzzing around at 200'", but with a more streamlined system there might not be an easy way to communicate that, and if you have the new system and radios then you still need to commmunicate everything on both while everyone adopts the new system.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#43

Post by itslennysfault »

godshatter wrote: post #25

Shouldn't the dispatcher have given more precise directions than "follow the river"? If they had said "take a right and follow the river", this wouldn't have been a problem. I suppose they were used to professional pilots knowing what was meant, but they were already working to fit a small plane into a larger system presumably filled with mostly larger jets from commercial airlines that flew in and out of that airpor…

Honestly, I'm surprised by "follow the river" as a flight instruction. That sounds like the directions you'd get from someone that doesn't understand cardinal directions. "Turn right at the gas station, then turn left at the big oak tree" or something.

I have no experience with flying, but I assumed it would be a heading / cardinal direction and not "turn right at [landmark]"

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#44

Post by phpisthebest »

pivo wrote: post #18

I've just finished reading, "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service" by Carol Leonnig [0]. In that book the author describes an incident on September 12, 1994 [1] in which a pilot landed a small plane in front of the white house. Secret Service members she interviewed were dumfounded that they were asked there to run to the white house roof with rifles to protect the building, and that there were no such…

>> book makes it clear that the Secret Service is constantly underfunded

it is critical that we recognize a few truths before we declare something "underfunded"

1. No amount of funding will ever "be enough". Government programs and depts expand to meet their budget + 25-50%... so they are always underfunded, you can increase a budget by 2x, 3x, 5x, and the very next year they will be claiming "we do not have enough money"

2. Where is the money going.... Often in government budgets essentials (like fleet repair) are cut in favor of non-essentials in order to make the budget issue into a "crisis". It is much easier to blackmail the public /congress/ who ever that is controlling the budget with "We have to use our personal cars" instead of "We had to give up our Cappuccino's" . Just because essential services are being cut does not mean nonessential services have. This is seen in local government often when they cut the big 4 (schools, fire, police, roads) first because it is easy to pass a tax increase for those 4 items than any other local service / program.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#45

Post by euler_angles »

pivo wrote: post #18

I've just finished reading, "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service" by Carol Leonnig [0]. In that book the author describes an incident on September 12, 1994 [1] in which a pilot landed a small plane in front of the white house. Secret Service members she interviewed were dumfounded that they were asked there to run to the white house roof with rifles to protect the building, and that there were no such…

In the present time, there is an air defense network around Washington DC. It uses the NASAMs system. Anything that is determined to be a threat can be engaged with surface launched AIM-120C missiles.

https://www.kongsberg.com/kda/what-we-do/defence-and-securit...

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#46

Post by vt85 »

thepasswordis wrote: post #23
pivo wrote: post #18

I've just finished reading, "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service" by Carol Leonnig [0]. In that book the author describes an incident on September 12, 1994 [1] in which a pilot landed a small plane in front of the white house. Secret Service members she interviewed were dumfounded that they were asked there to run to the white house roof with rifles to protect the building, and that there were no such…

>The book makes it clear that the Secret Service is constantly underfunded and sorely lacking in modern technology, with agents sometimes having to use their personal car to transport the people they're protecting because their official cars aren't working. Maybe the answer is to cool it with the idea that government officials all need to have large personal protective details. Isn't that the job of the police? And a…

[dead]

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#47

Post by mannykannot »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #11

The FAA representatives terrible attitude aside, I sense there's something that is being left out. When the author states "I filed a visual flight plan and we were on our way. " that would seem to indicate that he looked at a chart, saw the restricted airspace, and planned his takeoff and turn appropriately. From the information given, I think the FAA rep was a douche but the author clearly did not plan his route pro…

> The FAA representatives terrible attitude aside...

If this pilot did anything like this today, he would be in for a lot more trouble than a tongue-lashing over the phone. I don't know what the range of prescribed sanctions for this sort of infraction were at the time, but I suspect the person handling the case was exercising some discretion in choosing to respond with nothing more than a verbal dope-slap.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#48

Post by jefftk »

pja wrote: post #35
godshatter wrote: post #25

Shouldn't the dispatcher have given more precise directions than "follow the river"? If they had said "take a right and follow the river", this wouldn't have been a problem. I suppose they were used to professional pilots knowing what was meant, but they were already working to fit a small plane into a larger system presumably filled with mostly larger jets from commercial airlines that flew in and out of that airpor…

They probably assumed that a) the pilot knew about the exclusion zone (kind of a big deal!) and b) you follow a river downstream (usually) so their instruction seemed (to them) unambiguous.

> you follow a river downstream (usually)

Weird; I don't have that connotation of "follow" at all.

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#49

Post by hotpotamus »

phpisthebest wrote: post #38
thepasswordis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The book makes it clear that the Secret Service is constantly underfunded and sorely lacking in modern technology, with agents sometimes having to use their personal car to transport the people they're protecting because their official cars aren't working. Maybe the answer is to cool it with the idea that government officials all need to have large personal protective details. Isn't that the job of the police? And a…

General rule for me is If any person has soooo much power we need a dedicated team of people to protect them continuously, that person has too much power and the solution is not ever-increasing amount of security, but ever decreasing amount of power to that individual

I wonder how big Musk or Bezos's security teams are?

Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)

#50

Post by nivenkos »

chucksmash wrote: post #41
thepasswordis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The book makes it clear that the Secret Service is constantly underfunded and sorely lacking in modern technology, with agents sometimes having to use their personal car to transport the people they're protecting because their official cars aren't working. Maybe the answer is to cool it with the idea that government officials all need to have large personal protective details. Isn't that the job of the police? And a…

> Maybe the answer is to cool it with the idea that government officials all need to have large personal protective details. Isn't that the job of the police? So like Shinzo Abe? Edit: I picked Shinzo Abe because it was a recent example I felt people would be familiar with, but honestly it seems like any notoriety at all is dangerous. Someone assassinated MLK Jr's mother [1] while she played a church organ. Relying o…

Or Olof Palme.
Post reply on HN