Black Hawk helicopter in Washington crash was practising secretive evacuation plans

WASHINGTON – Top US officials said a military helicopter was on a regular training mission when it collided with a civilian airliner over the Potomac River on the night of Jan 29. The scenario its pilots were preparing for was anything but routine.

The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter’s unit, the 12th Aviation Battalion, has a unique mission set – quickly evacuating top US officials to secure locations, such as one in Pennsylvania, in the event of a catastrophe or attack on the US government. 

Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Fox News interview on Jan 31 that the helicopter was performing a “continuity of government” drill, which helped the pilots “rehearse in ways that would reflect a real-world scenario”. He declined to offer much more detail, saying he did not want to get “into anything that’s classified”.

The US government does not disclose details of its evacuation plans for top officials but they likely involve Raven Rock Mountain, a facility in Pennsylvania that has been used since the 1950s as an alternate command centre in the event of a nuclear war. 

“Plans for continuity of government are among the Pentagon’s most tightly held secrets,” said defence analyst Mark Cancian, who follows Pentagon operations with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. “They cover who would be evacuated, how, and where they would go.”

Even the mission’s chief beneficiary, President Donald Trump, appeared caught unawares by its purpose. At a press conference on Jan 29, he was asked to clarify comments by Mr Hegseth on the continuity of government plans.

“I don’t know what that – what that refers to,” he said.

The importance of the 12th’s mission helps explain why the Pentagon has continued the practice flights in the crowded airspace around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, even as flights into and out of the airport have grown in number in recent years. 

The Government Accountability Office said in 2021 that there were some 88,000 helicopter flights in the area between 2017 and 2019, 37 per cent of which were military flights. The report was commissioned by local lawmakers because of noise complaints stemming from all the flights.

The crash,

which killed 64 people on the American Airlines jet and the three crew members of the helicopter,

will draw scrutiny to all that traffic, and on Jan 31 the Federal Aviation Administration suspended flights. That may temporarily put an end to one of the unit’s missions – VIP flights for senior government leaders.

Mr Hegseth told a White House briefing on Jan 30 that the crew was “on a routine annual re-training of night flights on a standard corridor for a continuity of government mission”. The helicopter was based at Davison Army Airfield in Fort Belvoir, Virginia.

“Some of their mission is to support the Department of Defence if something really bad happens in this area, and we need to move our senior leaders,” Mr Jonathan Koziol, chief of staff for the Army’s aviation directorate, told reporters on Jan 30. “They do need to be able to understand the environment, the air traffic, the routes, to ensure the safe travel of our senior leaders throughout our government.”

In 2019, Bloomberg News disclosed, based on army budget documents, that the service was asking Congress for approval to shift US$1.55 million (S$2 million) for aircraft maintenance, air crews and travel in support of an “emerging classified flight mission” to include modifying a specialised location to review classified material, known as a SCIF.

The money initially supported flying of 10 UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, largely at night. Later that year, the army acknowledged that “the facilities are currently undergoing renovation”, for what is now “an enduring mission”.

Several lawmakers from Virginia and Maryland, as well as the District of Columbia’s representative, asked Mr Hegseth in a letter to “continue the current operational pause or to divert this unit away from” the airport area until the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) preliminary report is released.

Following the release of NTSB’s preliminary report, the representatives requested that the army review strategies in accordance with any findings “to permanently relocate such helicopter training out of the National Capital Region’s airspace, or, at a minimum”, redirect training flights, with exemptions, they wrote. BLOOMBERG