This guy is lucky to be alive...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Police arrested a man who steered his tiny, one-person helicopter onto the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, astonishing spring tourists and prompting a temporary lockdown of the Capitol Visitor Center.
Capitol Police didn't immediately identify the pilot or comment on his motive, but a Florida postal carrier named Doug Hughes took responsibility for the stunt on a website where he said he was delivering letters to all 535 members of Congress in order to draw attention to campaign finance corruption.
"As I have informed the authorities, I have no violent inclinations or intent," Hughes wrote on his website, thedemocracyclub.org. "An ultralight aircraft poses no major physical threat — it may present a political threat to graft. I hope so. There's no need to worry — I'm just delivering the mail."
Capitol Police identified the aircraft as a "gyro copter with a single occupant."
House Homeland Security panel Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said the pilot landed on his own, but that had he made it much closer to the Capitol authorities were prepared to shoot him down. "Had it gotten any closer to the speaker's balcony they have long guns to take it down, but it didn't. It landed right in front," McCaul said.
Witnesses said the craft approached the Capitol from the west, flying low over the National Mall and the Capitol reflecting pool across the street from the building. It barely cleared a row of trees and a statue of Gen. Ulysses Grant.
John Jewell, 72, a tourist from Statesville, North Carolina, said the craft landed hard and bounced. An officer was already there with a gun drawn. "He didn't get out until police officers told him to get out. He had his hands up'" and was quickly led away by the police, Jewell said. "They snatched him pretty fast."
Downtown Washington is blanketed by restrictions on air traffic that generally prohibit aircraft from flying over the White House, the Capitol, the national Mall and key buildings without special permission.
The situation was under investigation and streets in the area were shut down. Emergency vehicles were dispatched to the area and a robot bomb detector was sent over to the craft.
Amid the commotion, the small craft presented a strange sight sitting on the green lawn of the Capitol, its rotors slowly spinning.

Small aircraft lands on Capitol lawn; pilot in custody

 

I was talking to a friend from India last week, about our politics vs. theirs. He made a good point.

He said, "In India, we call it Corruption. In the United States, you call it Lobbying".

Ever wonder why there are over 45,000 registered lobbyist in DC?

Because we have the Best Government Money can Buy!

 

Lucky to be alive, yes. After 9/11 I think they put surface to air missile batteries in place for this kind of thing. You can bet he was only a button press from a truly bad day there.

 

That is what people say, but is there any proof? Planes landing at DCA are seconds away from the Pentagon and White House. That is not a lot of time to detect a threat and launch a missile. And if there were, I would be terrified. There were a lot of close calls during the Cold War caused by miscommunication and safety protocol breakdowns. Luckily it takes a while to launch an ICBM, so mistakes were caught. If there really are secret SAM sites that have to destroy an airplane the instant they appear to go towards the prohibited area, I would imagine a few mistakes would be made.

 

I didn't make that idea up, it was a HUMVEE-mounted rig I think.

 

I didn't say you made it up. It is just after years of flying in and out of DCA and hearing pilots make comments about SAM sites, it begins to sound like pilot lore. I would think there would be news articles or at the very least, someone getting a picture of a SAM with their phone.

And a missile on the top of a Humvee is the easy part. Being able to identify hostile aircraft from regular traffic with seconds to spare is the hard part. Even the Navy shot down an Iranian airliner and they had a lot more time to identify it than a launch crew near DC would.

 

Is there even enough heat signature or mass to make a rocket a practical application? Sounds more like a job for a shot gun.... or a snow goose.

 

Meanwhile, Mattias Rust sits giggling, mocking his amateurish endeavor.....

 

Uh, right. The infamous missile batteries would have been the backup system to take this gyro down right after the Secret Service had fired their palm launched electromagnetic pulse fountain pen guns that were fed data from the Forward Alert Radar Tracking System (FARTS). Worked like a charm didn't it?

Somebody been watching way too many James Bond movies.

 

It wasn't the white house, so no secret service.

Capitol police.