//The Wire//2300Z January 30, 2025//
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//BLUF: COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT COLLIDES WITH ARMY HELICOPTER IN WASHINGTON D.C.//
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-HomeFront-
Washington D.C. - At approximately 9:00pm last night, American Airlines Flight 5342 collided with a VH-60M Blackhawk helicopter while on short final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA). Both aircraft collided catastrophically, with the debris field largely landing in the Potomac River southeast of the airport. Following the incident, an extremely large scale Mass Casualty (MASCAL) Incident was declared, leading to a large inter-agency rescue operation. Throughout the night, 28x fatalities were reportedly recovered from the involved aircraft. This official casualty figure is expected to rise as the manifest of the American Airlines flight indicated 64x souls onboard at the time of the incident, and 3x crew onboard the Blackhawk. So far, no survivors have been reported from either aircraft. AC: Due to water temperatures being at freezing levels, even if anyone did survive the initial violent collision it is extremely unlikely for anyone to have survived being immersed in water at these temperatures for any length of time.
Regarding the manifest of the Blackhawk, few details have been released due to both the privacy considerations for the families, as well as security concerns. The VH-60M helicopter in question was a US Army helicopter from Bravo Company, 12th Aviation Battalion operating out of Davison Army Airfield in Fort Belvoir, VA. This airframe was operating under the callsign of "PAT25", functioning as one of the Priority Air Transport aircraft for VIPs throughout the National Capitol Region (NCR). Per the latest information released by authorities, no VIPs were onboard at the time of the incident as this was a training flight.
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Analyst Comments: At the moment, there are no indications of malign action regarding the collision of AA5342 and PAT25. So far all indications line up suggesting that not only was this a tragic accident, but that the potential for this exact scenario to happen has been many years in the making.
Right now, one of the more overwhelming aspects of this accident is that of engagement farming, outrage-baiting, and the spread of generally false information. Or course, the question on everyone's mind is "How could this have happened?". Unfortunately, when it comes to Army aviation, especially within the National Capitol Region (NCR), this mishap is completely within the realm of possibility.
Over the past few years, it also became popular for military aviation to fly without their transponders on, or perhaps more accurately, without using ADS-B transponder modes. In short, few military helicopters even have ADS-B, and those that do have been less inclined to use it. As much outrage abounds regarding this helicopter "flying dark" one must remember that most military aircraft do not have even have ADS-B transponders equipped, rather relying on different transponder modes to make their presence known to aircraft around them. As such, the absence of ADS-B data on public flight tracking websites does not automatically mean that the aircraft was "flying dark", they could have been using a different transponder mode that wouldn't show up on many public websites.
