Also this issue:

This Is Not A Game
Is a war against Iraq in the interest of the world? Here's why France and Germany say no.
-Edward A. Aguilar

Mailbag

February 13-19, 2003

loose canon

Hostile Skies Over D.C.

by Bruce Schimmel

As the rest of America waits for war, it could be said that the skies over Washington, D.C., are already under martial law.

Over the weekend of Feb. 9, the airspace surrounding the Washington metro area -- which includes Baltimore -- became an Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ.

Flying through an ADIZ means little to the millions of airline passengers who enter or pass through a 60-mile circle surrounding Washington every year.

But to the government and especially the military, an ADIZ means something quite specific.

The ADIZ is a creation of the Cold War era. It is a wide swath of airspace that starts about a dozen miles offshore; it is a military buffer zone that surrounds the U.S.

According to several spokespeople in the FAA and in the AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association), this is the first time an ADIZ has been designated inside our borders.

Put another way, the entire Washington metro area -- some 2,800-plus square miles of the continental United States -- has, by bureaucratic fiat, been shifted offshore, and is now, officially, under military control.

That's an important distinction, because military authorities act differently from civilian ones.

Says AOPA's Warren Morningstar, "The military assumption is that an unknown aircraft is hostile until proven otherwise.

"It does happen that radios have failed and the military has scrambled to meet commercial aircraft."

And, Morningstar warns, "Since 9/11, the military has been given specific authority to shoot down planes in the U.S."

Now, to be sure, trans-Atlantic airliners have passed through the ADIZ zone that surrounds the U.S. every day for decades without incident.

But the skies over Dulles, Ronald Reagan and BWI -- and Washington's military air bases -- are arguably the most congested in the world.

An FAA spokesperson -- who spoke on condition of anonymity -- estimated there are at least 5,000 takeoffs and landings daily at just the three commercial airports, with untold thousands of aircraft passing through this East Coast corridor.

Most people on an airline are not going to notice that the skies over Washington have been militarized. And hopefully none ever will.

But if something does go wrong, according to several aviation lawyers, it is not clear who -- if anyone -- would take responsibility for a mishap. Will insurance companies cover losses now that the air around Washington is officially an offshore military zone?

Alas, more decrees from Foggy Bottom, as the ordinary rules of a civil society are lost in the fog of war.