Interestingly, the US Coast Guards only “no fail” mission is providing rotary wing air intercept capability to the air defense network. In the National Capital Region they have helicopters that get scrambled as part of the air defense response to go intercept air targets that a slow and low. Basically anything that it would be hard for a fighter jet to pull up along side and match airspeed with. The Coast Guard helos don’t have any air to air weapons capability, their main purpose is to prevent false positives. They can get real close and relay information to the air defense folks who have access to weapons systems, and also a helicopter suddenly appearing next to you with a signboard saying that you need to turn immediately is a pretty good indicator to a weekend warrior that they are not supposed to be flying there.
My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)
111–120 of 228 posts
Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)
#112I'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 somewhere (on the lawn, it seems) and arrested the person inside.
Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder how big Musk or Bezos's security teams are?
Who cares? The perennial mistake is believing that if any of these guys get capped, it's some irreparable loss to society. It's not. Let them play the odds of life like the rest of us do. A society that depends on strongmen isn't a free society.
I think there's merit to at least forestalling rule-by-assassination.
Like, yes, I would not mourn a lot of people who end up having protective details. But I absolutely don't want to live in a world where all it takes to change a policy is one particularly motivated sociopath. Keep in mind that John Hinckley Jr's assassination attempt on Reagan wasn't out of disagreement with Reagan's policies, it was to impress Jodi Foster. A nobody's obsession with an actress is really, REALLY not the thing we should allow to materially affect our civilization.
I think there's a good argument to be made that the WWII-era Japanese government became the one capable of its atrocities in China specifically because assassination was so frequently employed to check to its power.
Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)
#114I'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...
A launcher is visible on Google Maps, and is still there. I drove by it today.
Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or Olof Palme.
On the other hand... Indira Gandhi.
She might have escaped her fate if she had replaced her Sikh bodyguards with non Sikhs after Operation Blue Star that removed a militant Sikh religious leader and his followers from the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assassinating the president has little to do with denying him the power of the presidency, and more to do with what he is a symbol of. Kind of like how 9/11 wasn't about killing some office workers
Symbols can be powerful... That is the issue, the foundational principle of the United States was that we were a federalist system with a weak and narrowly defined federal government. The office of Presidency should be inconsequential to the Everyday citizen of either the US or the world. The fact that we continually shift more power from Local / State government, then from Congress to the Executive is the exact reas…
> The fact that we continually shift more power from Local / State government, then from Congress to the Executive is the exact reason the president is a "Symbol of Power"
This is all rank and dubious speculation wrt your general rule about POTUS needing a dedicated security team.
Hell, Duane Johnson needs a dedicated security team.
If you are positing a federal government so weak that POTUS is not widely known within the U.S. population, you're political views are more radical than you're letting on.
Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)
#117I'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 m…
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Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
So how do you plan to deal with the continuation of government and nuclear weapon problem?
For many years the secret code to launch nuclear missiles was for a long time 00000000 https://sgs.princeton.edu/00000000 Now they claim they changed it, but be sure that if the president is dead the military have some workaround to launch the misiles.
Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)
#119Another clueless VFR pilot in Washington DC restricted airspace. This reads like pre 9/11 procedures.
Hearing from Oklahoma City FAA 3 weeks later has to be pre-9/11.
Currently, operations to and from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, DCA, are "limited to DCA Approved Carriers."[1] There's a huge restricted area covering the whole Washington area and special ID and approval procedures. Any aircraft out of place gets an F-16 and a Coast Guard helicopter escort. (Used to be two F-16s, but the Coast Guard is more used to dealing with the lost and clueless.) This has happened hundreds of times, and now the FAA makes anyone who wants to fly anywhere near Washington take a course on how to do it.
[1] https://www.faasafety.gov/files/gslac/courses/content/405/13...
Re: My grandfather was almost shot down at the White House (2018)
#120Earlier 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?
> 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.