'What Doesn't The Army Want Congress... To Know': Cruz Blasts Army For Not Releasing DCA Crash Memo

4/2/2025

During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) spoke about the US Army's refusal to provide the committee with an unredacted memo about helicopter operations near DCA in Washington D.C. in the wake of the deadly mid-air crash between a military Blackhawk helicopter, and passenger jet earlier this year.

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Transcript

00:00I want to touch on a separate aviation matter. Last week, this committee held a

00:05hearing on the January 29th DCA midair collision. Brigadier General Matthew

00:12Brayman, the director of the Office of Army Aviation, appeared on behalf of the

00:18Army. At the hearing, both Ranking Member Cantwell and I requested an Army memo

00:25outlining its standard operating procedures for when Army helicopters

00:30could forego broadcasting their locations and altitudes while flying

00:36near DCA Airport. The Army had earlier refused to provide the memo to my staff,

00:42despite being allowed to do so by the independent crash investigator, the NTSB.

00:49Given the opportunity to be transparent, the Army again refused to commit to

00:55providing the memo, which is entitled, Automatic Dependent Broadcast

01:00Surveillance, or ADSB, out off operations in the national airspace. So Ranking

01:09Member Cantwell and I followed the hearing with a joint letter explicitly

01:14requesting the unredacted memo. Now for the third time, we made clear to the

01:21general that he had 24 hours to provide that memo or there would be real

01:25consequences. It's now been five days since the hearing and the Army has still

01:31not provided the memo. It begs the question, what doesn't the Army want

01:38Congress or the American people to know about why it was flying partially blind

01:45to the other aircraft and to the air traffic controllers near DCA? This is not

01:52acceptable. I fully expect that should the Army continue to refuse to provide

01:59the internal memo, this committee will exercise its full authorities to compel

02:06its production. Events that have transpired since the January crash

02:13underscore the precarious situation in the nation's airspace. Just last Friday,

02:19after the hearing, three flights were cleared for takeoff at DCA while a

02:26military flyover was approaching Arlington National Cemetery. The U.S.

02:32Air Force T-38 came within just half of a nautical mile of lateral separation

02:39and as close as 200 feet of vertical separation from a Delta aircraft

02:45departing DCA for Minneapolis. The Delta flights TCAS sounded a resolution

02:53advisory, alerting the pilots to a traffic collision and directing them to

03:00continue upwards to avoid a collision. This is far too close, seconds away from

03:08yet another disaster. The Air Traffic Center that controls airspace around DC

03:14notified DCA about the flyover. That should have led to halted traffic. This

03:22serious communication breakdown is just the latest in a string of missteps that

03:27signal that the air traffic organization is under extreme stress. It is my

03:33expectation that all federal actors, when involved in any incident in the national

03:41airspace, will be forthcoming when this committee conducts its oversight to

03:46ensure flying remains the safest mode of transportation. And I want to be explicit

03:54to the Army. Every one of us here supports a strong national defense, but

04:00the Army does not have at its option ignoring the United States Senate. And if

04:08there is another accident, if another Black Hawk helicopter strikes another

04:13passenger jet and murders 67 people because the Army refused to change its

04:21policy of turning off ADS-B out, and rather than act proactively to protect

04:28people's lives, the Army chose to protect its bureaucratic ass, those deaths will

04:37be on the Army's hands. None of us want that to happen. The responsible decision

04:45for the Army to make is to provide that memo to this committee today. And again,

04:54if the Army continues to stonewall, they will face a subpoena from this committee.

'What Doesn't The Army Want Congress... To Know': Cruz Blasts Army For Not Releasing DCA Crash Memo

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