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

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

#131

Post by rtkwe »

francisofascii wrote: post #79

After looking at the map I am a little confused on which river. Sounds like he took off in a NE direction and the ATC's command to "follow the river" meant follow the Anacostia river NE. Maybe the pilot was confused by the Washington Channel and started to follow that when he turned left?

They say they lined up on runway 18 which is now runway 19 so they were flying almost directly south. That doesn't really clear up how they had any ambiguity about what direction they should go to follow the river though because for a decent ways you're already following the river downstream.

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

#132

Post by LarryMullins »

phpisthebest wrote: post #78
pixl97 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do you plan to deal with the continuation of government and nuclear weapon problem?

>>how do you plan to deal with the continuation of government Federalism. The Federal Government does far too much and most of its function should be left to State and Local governments. >>and nuclear weapon problem? MAD is a terrible strategy, and I dont think our Nuclear weapons serve the function many believe they do.

What, besides MAD, has prevented Putin from using tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine?

inb4 "they don't work anymore", Russia has a mature nuclear industry and huge stockpiles of nuclear material. They're more than capable of making nuclear bombs which work.

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

#133

Post by LarryMullins »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #81
boeingUH60 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bet it's large but nothing close to that of the President and other top government officials. For example, the U.S. government is currently paying $2 million per month to protect former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo due to Iran threats[1]. That's the former, now think of what it'll cost to protect the current Secretary plus all the private travel costs on that giant Boeing 757. 1- https://www.pbs.org/newshour/p…

It was revealed a few years ago Zuckerberg was paying about 20M per year on security. That’s almost 2M per month…

It seems likely he gets less bang for his buck. The Secret Service is a much larger organization so they can take advantage of economies of scale. On the other hand, government agencies can be very inefficient when permitted to be, so who really knows.

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

#134

Post by LarryMullins »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #128
ok_dad wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is that the people with their finger on the missile trigger knew the aircraft was no threat due to radar and visual interceptions and decided not to launch a dangerous missile into the middle of a huge city full of important officials since moving the President and other important officials to a basement would be sufficient to protect them from a Cessna. Instead, they waited for the plane to come down some…

> knew the aircraft was no threat A Cessna intentionally crashing into the White House is no threat? Especially if packed with explosives?

> since moving the President and other important officials to a basement would be sufficient to protect them from a Cessna.

I think it's safe to assume that the bunkers under the White House are sufficient protection against as much explosives as a Cessna could possibly carry. The plane itself will do almost no damage, it's a flimsy thing built light out of aluminum and it's not even fast.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Tampa_Cessna_172_crash#/m...

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

#135

Post by ihattendorf »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #128
ok_dad wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is that the people with their finger on the missile trigger knew the aircraft was no threat due to radar and visual interceptions and decided not to launch a dangerous missile into the middle of a huge city full of important officials since moving the President and other important officials to a basement would be sufficient to protect them from a Cessna. Instead, they waited for the plane to come down some…

> knew the aircraft was no threat A Cessna intentionally crashing into the White House is no threat? Especially if packed with explosives?

Not if you have ample time to move everyone to safety before it arrives. Seems a good trade off to make if you aren't confident what the pilot's intentions are instead of just blowing them out of the sky.

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

#136

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ok_dad wrote: post #112
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 answer is that the people with their finger on the missile trigger knew the aircraft was no threat due to radar and visual interceptions and decided not to launch a dangerous missile into the middle of a huge city full of important officials since moving the President and other important officials to a basement would be sufficient to protect them from a Cessna. Instead, they waited for the plane to come down some…

> people with their finger on the missile trigger knew the aircraft was no threat due to radar and visual interceptions and decided not to launch a dangerous missile

I don't think we have evidence of this. The simple truth is the U.S. government doesn't fortify against domestic enemies in a systematic way.

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

#137

Post by mulmen »

beebmam wrote: post #98
phpisthebest wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>how do you plan to deal with the continuation of government Federalism. The Federal Government does far too much and most of its function should be left to State and Local governments. >>and nuclear weapon problem? MAD is a terrible strategy, and I dont think our Nuclear weapons serve the function many believe they do.

If the federal government should be reduced in power, then why should state or local governments have any more power over individuals?

Because I have more power as a voter and constituent to influence policies that affect me.

At a national level I am 1 of 331,900,000.

At a state level I am 1 of 7,739,000.

At a county level I am one of 2,252,000.

At a city level I am one of 733,919.

At a neighborhood level I am one of 82,123.

I have four orders of magnitude more influence over my city council rep than I do over my president.

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

#138

Post by [deleted] »

sobkas wrote: post #120
beebmam wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the federal government should be reduced in power, then why should state or local governments have any more power over individuals?

> If the federal government should be reduced in power, then why should state or local governments have any more power over individuals? Because the smaller government is (federal>state>local) the resources needed to hollow it out and made into puppet also drop.

[deleted]

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

#139

Post by lazide »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #125
thepasswordis wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a continuation of government reason why every former president continues to have a full time secret service detail?

They are bodyguards. Ex-presidents pissed off a lot of people, domestically and internationally, when in power. They are much more likely to be targeted for murder than the average citizen.

They’re also just high profile.

Some random whacko thinking you’re in a love affair with their crush (cough like Jodie Foster/Reagan) is enough to catch a bullet. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hinckley_Jr.]

Whack jobs are a real problem.

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

#140

Post by tjohns »

jcrawfordor wrote: post #82
itslennysfault wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]"

This is a fairly common instruction from a controller in my experience, at least when dealing with small aircraft that they know are flying VFR. Traditional VFR navigation ("pilotage") is mostly based on finding landmarks anyway. Flying in another city with a runway pointed towards a river, "turn after the river," "report crossing the river" are common instructions. Other landmarks popular with controllers include th…

Indeed. Popular landmarks used by ATC in the SF Bay Area include a sunken ship in the middle of the bay, a (particularly large) church, a community college, an AT&T telephone office, the KNBR antenna, and major freeways. Among others.

It's different when flying IFR, but pilotage is an important part of VFR navigation.

It's also worth noting there's an IFR visual approach plate for DCA that basically says the same thing - "follow the river":

RIVER VISUAL RWY 19 - https://www.fly.faa.gov/Information/east/zdc/dca/atcCharts/D...

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