(José Niño, Headline USA) Four people died over the New Mexico desert this spring, seemingly because of a military electronic warfare drill, and specialists in the field expect more accidents to follow, according to a report by Jeff Wise of Wired.
A Beechcraft King Air lifted off from Roswell Air Center shortly before midnight on May 13 carrying two pilots and two nurses, headed for Ruidoso and a waiting patient. Mild air, a clear sky, and sixty miles of ground pointed to an unremarkable 30 minute trip. The plane instead struck the Capitan Mountains near 9,950 feet, and everyone aboard died.
About 100 miles west sat NAVFEST, the annual Air Force event at White Sands Missile Range where electronic warfare units practice shutting down satellite navigation. Operators had already received an FAA warning that GPS might disappear over hundreds of miles from May 12 through May 18. The crew radioed Albuquerque Center eight minutes after departure to say the signal was gone. Three more aircraft called in the same trouble, prompting controllers to ask the military for a pause.
Per Wired, neither pilot had much experience. Captain Keelan Clark, 30, had held his commercial license for eighteen months and had worn the fourth stripe for only weeks. First officer Ali Kawsara, 23, was eight weeks into the job. Stripped of GPS, they lost the satellite guided approach they had trained on, and the King Air wandered ten miles beyond its landing pattern while controllers worked the other emergencies.
The crew then spotted Ruidoso’s airport lights from 31 miles out and asked for a visual approach, which controllers approved. A wall of rock stood between the aircraft and those lights, invisible in the dark.
“When those lights go out, man, you know you are in big trouble,” airline pilot Juan Browne told Wired.
A preliminary National Transportation Safety Board report found that jamming blanketed the crash site during the flight. Wired tracked notices for at least ten comparable exercises over the preceding year.
“As drone warfare and electronic warfare expand, airlines are increasingly encountering navigation disruptions hundreds of miles beyond the actual conflict zone,” Cyviation CEO Eliran Almog told the outlet.
Industry figures argued to Wired for precision over brute force.
“Counter-drone technology has to be surgical, not a sledgehammer, because the airspace we’re trying to protect is the same airspace the economy runs on,” said Kris Brost of Robin Radar Systems.
José Niño is the deputy editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/JoseAlNino
