Monday night’s D.C. protests saw something nearly unprecedented.
Starting after around 10 p.m. ET on Monday evening, protestors were treated to thumping helicopter engines, deafening noise and violent downwash from rotors spinning on military choppers hovering low over the crowds.
It’s also very dangerous. The rotor-wash of a helicopter can blow things around at high speed and cause serious injury. Anyone that works around them knows what FOD is. As much as it is a threat to the bird it is also a threat the ground personal. Low flight is the most dangerous flight as well. The rotors thrust air down but much of it comes back up making level controlled flight difficult as you have a source of thrust the trust stick does not control. Helicopters do a “boogy woogy” at low altitude and rock and tip. They’re lucky they didn’t take someone’s head off.
If America is to be what it was created to be EVERYONE involved in deploying the military against citizens should be harshly punished. The pilots of those helos should be discharged and demoted. Those that ordered the flights as well. NO ONE should remain in the military if they deployed against the people.
Did not work Trumpers.
Protesters are back.
I don’t think they exploited the psychological effect they were trying for.
“Our priority is the safety of our Guardsmen who support civil authorities,” the statement reads. “We are dedicated to ensuring the safety of citizens and their right to protest, but it is not - I repeat, NOT our priority…”
I have refrained from saying it, but these actions are not only undemocratic, we are close to a tipping point where americans need to quit there government job because of the bad policies of this federal government. First they let in a virus, and instituted a patchwork of policies to mitigate the virus against good public health policies, then they let non-public health directives/short term economic policies all at the expense of long term health and prospertity, then they say nothing when an american dies for possibly passing off a fake 20 dollar bill (there is no evidence that Mr FLoyd knew the bill was fake). Mr Floyd liberties were crushed and permanently ended by Officer Chauvin.
We are at a tipping point. People need to resign en masse. Yes it will be bad for a country in the short term, but we need to think long term, something this administration and its GOP and political/economic allies never do.
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
If safety is a concern why hover aircraft over an unpredictable crowd at a height small arms fire can bring them down? You can drop a helicopter with a 38 at that height.
I am absolutely positive that those who were doing this mission were completely aware of that.
And did. Not. Care.
I suspect nothing will happen with this - as someone said on another thread, Trump is the head of the DC Nat Guard, since they have no governor (yet one more thing that finally needs to be FIXED). If he ordered them to do this, they obeyed, whether it was safe or not.
We haven’t heard the end of this yet - either everyone gets fired or everyone get exonerated. No in-between.
They were obviously just checking out the vandalized bathroom.
The deployment of military force against the American people is prohibited. Any order to do so is an illegal order and must not be followed. That’s what the UCMJ says.
At least they didn’t start shooting. Trump is a thug. Any military commander who follows his unlawful orders to attack nonviolent protesting civilians has no excuse. Any such order is unlawful and following it even if it came from Trump himself should expose the military personnel involved to the full force of the code of military justice.
We aren’t quite facing The Bakersfield Massacre… yet. (.0005 TPMcoin to identify the reference)
I was present at a protest at the Pentagon sometime in the 80’s when they were winding sections of a “peace quilt” around the building (and down the street, across the bridge into DC, etc.). There was supposed to be a balloon launch to signify that the looping of the Pentagon was complete. A helicopter flew down low and dispersed a lot of the balloons that were being collected. I’m pretty sure the launch ultimately succeeded, but the use of helicopters in the US to intimidate and harass US citizens peacefully protesting goes way back.
ETA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ribbon_International
It’s possible the helicopter disruption of the balloons was unintentional, but you’d think someone used to piloting balloons would be aware of their downdraft.
Jonestown?
“To my understanding, it wasn’t [a medevac mission],” Esper added.
It was a seek and destroy mission.
Helicopters in this class (twin engine with advanced systems) usually have a 3-axis or 4-axis autopilot with an auto-hover feature to reduce pilot workload. You go into that mode and can make small adjustments with a “beep trim” button on the cyclic (joystick). A radar altimeter feeds into the system to maintain height.
This isn’t to excuse the use of helicopters for crowd control of civilians in a US city, especially using a Medevac one! It’s shameful. But there aren’t additional risks just from that mode of operation. It’s done all the time with the medium and larger size civilian and military helicopters used for Search and Rescue, Medevac, and combat operations.
Our priority is the safety of our Guardsmen who support civil authorities. We are dedicated to ensuring the safety of citizens and their right to protest.
And which side do you take when your Guardsmen threaten and endanger the citizens who are exercising their Constitutional right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances?
Port-a-potty-evac mission…