Amber Smith
Appearances
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
Thanks for having me.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
Sure. So I was an Army helicopter pilot for almost eight years, well over 1,500 flight hours. And based off everything that I have seen in terms of the audio and the video, including the one you just mentioned that just came out, is that the Army helicopter air crew
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
most likely confirmed visual confirmation of the incorrect aircraft so when tower gave them uh the warning of traffic ahead uh they were looking at the wrong plane basically and then likely never even saw the aircraft that they ended up flying into And it's, you know, an incredibly tragic and horrific situation.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
But in Army aviation, especially when it comes to helicopters, things are moving a million miles an hour. You have a lot going on in the helicopter. We are learning a lot about some mismanagement of the National Capital Region airspace around Reagan, some of the helicopter corridors.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
And the altitudes involved there and very minimal altitude separation requirements between these incoming landing planes to Reagan and the helicopter traffic around them. A big red flag that I have seen in all of this is how common it has become.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
happened, that the tower at Reagan is allowing these helicopters to fly underneath or behind incoming commercial planes as they're coming into short final to land at the runways. That is extremely risky. It sets up unsafe conditions, as we've seen, because altitude deviations in a helicopter is can happen in the blink of an eye, a wind gust.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
And what they have in terms of that separation right now is completely unsafe.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
Yeah, so my assessment off of this is that it is the AO, the area of operation for this helicopter unit. So this helicopter unit's mission is to conduct operations down that corridor that I told you about that flies basically down the Potomac River. And... to my knowledge, it was a check ride. So this was not technically training, although I'm sure the training goes on there as well.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
This was a check ride. So an annual check ride where they're doing all sorts of procedures and maneuvers. And I'm assuming this is me assuming I do not know if it is like a requirement. I'm assuming that they have to be checked out in this location because it is their mission. Uh,
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
But that's something that I want to see, because if that is a requirement of theirs, doing these types of operations, maybe being familiar with the route should be a requirement, but actually going out and doing something like APART, which is an annual flight evaluation, should not be in this proximity to one of the biggest metropolitan airspaces when it comes to the combination of helicopter and
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
aviation.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
Absolutely. So the opposite of DEI, which we have heard the president talk about since inauguration, even before, is merit. So what we've seen in the Biden administration, they pushed all of this diversity, equity, inclusion into all of the federal government. not just the military. My book's focused on the military. So the opposite of DEI is merit.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
Merit means you are the best person for the job. You have the best test scores. You did the best interview. You have the best experience, the best physical fitness. Whatever the standard may be, You're there. And that's how they you get promoted. That's how you get the job. That's how you get selected for flight training.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
So when you bring in this DEI, obviously, in order to get people who are not qualified into those positions, you have to lower the standard. You have to ensure that the people who are not qualified are able to somehow, you know,
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
past the bar and therefore they do that by quotas or targets and lowering the standards when you lower the standards someone else along the line is having to pick up the slack it weakens the chain it weakens the unit and the mission as a whole and it it sets it up for dangerous operations
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
Yeah, so this is a big challenge, the Department of Defense. And this is not just a DOD issue. This is government-wide where I'm sure they're going to be looking into the FAA and what's going on with ATC, the air traffic controllers. and see why they're undermanned and still allowing full aviation operations to proceed. So there's a couple of things that need to happen.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
One, you've already seen the executive orders going out that sort of squash what can be squashed with an executive order, removing some of the policies that were put in place for the Biden administration. The implementation of that is ongoing. You need to change things immediately, culturally, to merit-based.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
And that needs to be from the top down, from president, we're seeing it, SecDef, and then through the commands all the way down, that DEI will no longer be tolerated. This is going to be a significant task. The work is just getting started. So you can issue the executive order, but now you need to ensure that it's going to be implemented all the way through the ranks.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
all the way down to the rank and file through all the commanders that chose to implement and enforce the vaccine mandates. The ones who chose to kick out the 8,000 troops that were combat proven and wanted to stay in the military and just didn't want to take an unproven vaccine. So you're going to have to get through all of those people to ensure there's not sabotage going in along the ranks.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
That's going to be that cultural aspect that I talked about. That is what is going to be incredibly challenging. The other part that needs to be done is accountability. When there is no accountability in a culture that is running rampant with DEI and lawlessness, no one is going to change.
The Charlie Kirk Show
The Potomac Crash, The Northern Border, and The Confirmation Battles
So when still there's some accountability for the leaders who have created the damage, have fostered this environment that has hurt the military and weakened the military and damaged our national security because of it, that accountability is essential to making the military whole again.