Very early on Thursday and Friday morning, the government conducted exercises focused on preventing aircraft attacks against the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
Led by the Secret Service, the government’s security preparations have taken on added importance in light of the chaos that enveloped the Capitol on Jan. 6. Complicating matters, the traditional inauguration threat actors of foreign terrorist organizations and lone wolf plotters are now joined by fanatics who believe Biden is a tyrant-in-waiting rather than the elected president. I understand that there are no credible plots to attack the inauguration but that there is aspirational “chatter” on the part of far-right extremists. A pivotal, symbolic, and formative national event, inaugural security is not something the Secret Service can leave to chance.
Airborne suicide attacks are a key concern for three reasons. First, because Salafi-Jihadist terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS have a fetish for this attack method. Second, because of the speed with which a plane could feasibly change course and rapidly reach the Capitol building (something that attackers would struggle to accomplish on the ground). Third, because the inauguration concentrates the most senior officials from each branch of government in one location. Complicating matters, the Capitol location where the inauguration ceremony is performed is not as well predisposed to the speedy and effective evacuation of senior officials as is the White House.
The Secret Service mitigates the airborne threat by extending the normal air defense identification zone further out from the Capitol. It also assigns radar and other sensor platforms alongside physical spotters at various ranges in concentric formations away from the Capitol and White House. The objective is to make it near impossible for a low flying aircraft or unmanned drone to reach its prospective target successfully. Contrary to common perceptions (and the Gerard Butler movie, Angel has Fallen), the government has means of defeating one or many drones that might be launched near the Capitol (this threat has also been exercised out). But while there will be multiple air defense systems deployed on Wednesday, including advanced iterations of the Sentinel X-band radar system, human professionals will be the key. It is these men and women, after all, who must differentiate between birds, weather, drones, small planes and large planes, and then decide which are a threat or might become a threat. It is their commanders who must then decide to intercept and, if necessary, eliminate any threat at the preferential time and location. Without going into details, there is a specific targeting-preference area regarding inner-ring D.C. air defense engagements. But the margin for error is extremely small, and the consequences of failure would be historic.
It is for all these reasons that the exercises were extensive. They involved two Civil Air Patrol operated Cessna 182 Skylane aircraft. As my screenshots show, the planes performed multiple runs toward the Capitol from approximately 50 miles out and from numerous directions and altitudes. On occasion, the aircraft flew alongside each other, sometimes very closely together (perhaps to emulate radar merging). Other times they approached the Capitol from different angles. Sometimes the planes were intercepted by military aircraft. Other times they were, presumably, targeted and simulation-destroyed by ground-based missile systems. The intent here was for the various elements involved in defending the Capitol’s airspace to prepare for a range of possible threat scenarios.
Let us hope none of those scenarios come to pass. But let’s also be thankful that the government takes Inauguration Day security so seriously. Neither the Civil Air Patrol nor the Secret Service responded to a request for comment.
