Army Black Hawk helicopters known as “gold-tops” operating out of Davison Army Airfield at Fort Belvoir, Va., are regularly used to ferry senior military officials to different installations and often make flights to and from the Pentagon, a former senior Army official told Blaze News. Casey Wardynski, former assistant secretary of the Army for manpower and Reserve affairs, said gold-top VIP flights operated by the Army 12th Aviation Battalion are a normal part of traffic in the busy but highly controlled air corridor surrounding Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport near Washington, D.C. “These are going to be some of the most experienced and senior pilots in the Army,” Wardynski said, “because they’re flying secretary of defense, secretary of the Army, chief of staff of the Army, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, these kind of folks around to various locations in the vicinity of Washington helicopter range. And they're going to be doing it day and night.” The air corridor is 'very highly controlled.' A U.S. Army VH-60M Black Hawk helicopter on a training exercise collided with a civilian regional airline jet inbound from Kansas late Jan. 29, erupting in a fireball and sending both aircraft into the Potomac River. Sixty-seven people were killed, including three Army soldiers, 60 airline passengers, and four airline crew members. There were no survivors. American Eagle Flight 5342 left Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport in Wichita at 5:18 p.m. CT and was scheduled to land at Reagan National at 8:57 p.m. ET. The aircraft was a Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet operated by PSA Airlines flying as American Eagle, American CEO Robert Isom said. Wardynski said this type of military brass shuttle service using Black Hawk helicopters is common. “It’s not unusual for them to be flying in and out of the Pentagon at night, dropping off VIPs,” Wardynski said. Two U.S. Army pilots and a crew chief operate a VH-60M gold-top Black Hawk helicopter past the Thomas Jefferson Memorial on March 25, 2024. Photo by Senior Master Sgt. Nicholas A. Priest The Army has only a few true gold-top Black Hawks, he said. “There aren’t many. They’re for the chief of staff in the Army, secretary of the Army,” Wardynski said. “I flew on a lot of the regular Black Hawk flights in that battalion, probably 20 or 30. But that helicopter is pretty much to Black Hawks what the president’s limo is to Cadillacs. It’s pretty tricked out.” Some training missions, such as for continuity of government, are always carried out at night, Wardynski said. 'This is an airfield unlike any other in the United States.' “If they're practicing for a contingency mission, which the one that was in question here was what’s called continuity of government, which essentially means moving key people out of the Pentagon to alternative national military command sites because some serious things are happening in the United States,” he said. “They have to do that at night.” The gold-tops fly under a “PAT” call sign, which stands for priority air transport, he said. “So when they’re on the FAA radars, it’s going to show ‘PAT’ as their private call sign. And if you're in Washington, you see a lot of PAT flights,” Wardynski said. The air corridor is “very highly controlled,” said Wardynski, who said he has been a passenger on gold-top Black Hawks operating along the Potomac River. “Since 9/11, Washington, D.C., has been under integrated air defense by the U.S. Army and some Air Force assets,” Wardynski said. “So you don't stray off course. “You fly up the river or you fly down the river, and you come into Reagan either from the north or from the south, and you don’t deviate,” he said. “And if you do, you’re on air defense radars and people are going to get excited fast.” Reagan National Airport is unusual for the heavy level of commercial air traffic, the restricted airspace, and a lot of helicopters, he said. “This is an airfield unlike any other in the United States in terms of the amount of control exercised by FAA and to some degree the military,” Wardynski said. “The amount of helicopter traffic is extremely unusual, because you’ve got the Park Police, the National Guard, Pentagon people, and of course Metropolitan Police flying all over there.” Wardynski said a proficiency training flight would practice “for some sort of wartime environment in which D.C. might be blacked out. The airport’s blacked out; there are no aircraft in the air.” The U.S. Coast Guard investigates aircraft wreckage in the Potomac River near Washington, D.C., on Jan. 30, 2025.Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Brandon Giles/U.S. Coast Guard via Getty Images The Black Hawks do not have collision avoidance systems like commercial aircraft, Wardynski said. Although even those systems are unpredictable at low altitudes, he added. If the helicopter pilot and crew were training with night-vision gear, that can complicate the flight due to light sensitivity and depth-of-field issues, he continued. “The light really flares, and that can be disorienting, but that's why you practice,” Wardynski said. “It’s just maybe practicing right next to one of the busiest and most complex airports in America would be something you don’t want to do any more.” A former U.S. Army special operator with years of experience on Black Hawk missions flown in and out of Fort Belvoir, said issues with the regional jet, the Black Hawk, and air traffic control could have played significant roles in the crash. “Because the airline pilot had the right of way and was on final descent below 500 feet, [the airline crew] were not performing ‘heads-up checks,’” he told Blaze News. “They also had precision ground approach radar, which should have warned them of another craft in such close proximity.” The source said the helicopter crew’s possible use of night-vision gear in this environment would be “incomprehensible, because of the restricted peripheral vision.” Air traffic control, he said, “carries the ultimate responsibility because he allowed both aircraft to be operating at the same altitude while in such close proximity.” A Blaze News source with air traffic control experience said he questions the decision of an experienced Army flight crew conducting a continuity-of-government exercise at a time of night with so much air traffic congestion. “If they felt it necessary for such an exercise, they should have come back after 11 p.m., when flights in and out of Reagan have ceased,” he said. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

Lt. Col. Tulsi Gabbard continues to face an uphill battle to secure her confirmation as America's top intelligence chief. Although there are apparently a handful of antagonists in the GOP looking to spike her candidacy, Democrats are doing all the heavy lifting, especially when it comes to characterizing Gabbard as a toady for subversive and adversarial forces. Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly (Ariz.) tried to do his part Thursday, accusing Gabbard of repeating "Russian talking points" about the Obama administration's material support for Islamic terrorists in Syria. Gabbard made Kelly regret his line of attack with a short history lesson, revealing why her previous statements were as factual as they were damning. "When Russia was denying [former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's] use of chemical weapons, they accused the U.S. of supporting terrorists," said Kelly. "This is a line Putin used frequently during the Syrian civil war as he supported Assad." Following in the footsteps of failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who previously painted Gabbard as a Kremlin sympathizer, Kelly noted further, "In 2016, you said, 'The U.S. is providing direct and indirect support to terrorist groups in order to overthrow the Syrian government.'" At the time, Gabbard also noted, "The U.S. government has been violating this law for years by quietly supporting allies, partners, individuals, and groups who are working directly with Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham [an offshoot of the Al-Qaeda group Al-Nusrah Front], and other terrorist groups by providing them with money, weapons, and intelligence support in their fight to overthrow the Syrian government." — (@) "I am interested to hear, what was your goal in saying these things?" continued Kelly. "Did you consider, before saying them, that Iran and Russia, what their motives may have been making these claims?" Gabbard noted that she joined the military "specifically because of Al-Qaeda's terrorist attack on 9/11" and committed her life to defeating the terrorist organization, only to later learn as a member of Congress that former President Barack Obama, in an effort to overthrow Assad, "was working with, arming, and equipping Al-Qaeda in an effort to overthrow that regime, starting yet another regime change war in the Middle East." President Donald Trump's pick for director of national intelligence referenced the CIA's Timber Sycamore program as well as the Pentagon's covert Syrian Train and Equip Program, which were both launched by the Obama administration in hopes of facilitating the fall of the Assad regime. Under the code name Timber Sycamore, the Obama CIA began directly arming Islamic terrorists in early 2013. CIA paramilitary operatives reportedly also trained the so-called rebels to use automatic rifles, mortars, antitank guided missiles, and other weapons. The program had a price tag of over $1 billion and resembled in some ways the agency's training of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s. According to the New York Times, some of the weapons shipped to Jordan intended for so-called rebels made their way to the black market and were ultimately used to kill Americans. Weapons supplied under the Timber Sycamore program also made their way into the hands of Al-Nusrah Front terrorists, who fought alongside the CIA-backed militants. 'Every American deserves to know that people in our own government were providing support to our sworn enemy Al-Qaeda.' The National Counterterrorism Center noted that the Al-Nusrah Front announced its intention to overthrow Assad in 2012, then "mounted hundreds of insurgent-style and suicide attacks against regime and security service targets across the country. The group is committed not only to ousting the regime, but also seeks to expand its reach regionally and globally." The group that Obama indirectly armed was accused of various atrocities, including the massacre of Druze villagers. Trump ended Timber Sycamore in 2017, calling the payments to so-called rebels "massive, dangerous, and wasteful," and noting that many of the CIA-supplied weapons ended up in the hands of Al-Qaeda. Gabbard noted that "the Department of Defense's Train and Equip program, also under President Obama, has been widely known, looked at, and studied, and resulted in over half a billion dollars being used to train what they called 'moderate rebels.' But in reality, they were fighters working with and aligned with Al-Qaeda's affiliate on the ground in Syria all to move forward with their regime change." Gabbard, doubling down on remarks Kelly apparently found troubling, suggested that the Obama administration ignored "the obvious and now proven reality: much like in Iraq, the toppling of Gaddafi in Libya, and Mubarak in Egypt, a regime change war in Syria would likely result in the rise of Islamist extremists like Al-Qaeda taking power." Stressing that she "shed no tears for the fall of the Assad regime," Trump's nominee stressed that "today we have an Islamist extremist in charge of Syria — someone who danced in the streets to celebrate the 9/11 attack; who ruled over Idlib with an Islamist extremist governance; and who has already begun to persecute, kill, and arrest religious minorities, including Christians in Syria." The current interim president of Syria, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, is a terrorist who up until recently had a $10 million State Department bounty on his head and used to lead the Al-Nusrah Front, which benefited from Timber Sycamore. "Why that should be acceptable to anyone is beyond me," added Gabbard. After his question blew up in his face, Kelly tried once more to suggest that Gabbard has a "tendency to repeat Russian and Syrian — and, in some cases, even Iranian — information," prompting Trump's nominee to answer back with a showstopper: "Every American deserves to know that people in our own government were providing support to our sworn enemy Al-Qaeda." Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

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