Bipartisan leaders of two House committees have advanced legislation that would force the Pentagon to install collision-avoidance technology on military aircraft flying in civilian airspace, a direct response to the 2025 midair collision over the Potomac River that killed all 64 people aboard PSA Airlines Flight 5342 and three soldiers in a U.S. Army UH-60L helicopter. The bill, called the Airspace Location and Enhanced Risk Transparency (ALERT) Act of 2026, aims to address all 50 safety recommendations issued by the National Transportation Safety Board following its investigation into the crash. If enacted, the measure would close a regulatory gap that allowed military helicopters to operate near a busy commercial airport without broadcasting their position to nearby pilots.
What the ALERT Act Would Require
Released on February 19, 2026, the ALERT Act targets a specific technological blind spot exposed by the Potomac crash. The bill would require military aircraft operating in the National Airspace System to carry ADS-B In equipment with a cockpit traffic display, giving pilots real-time awareness of nearby aircraft. That requirement tracks directly with NTSB findings calling for exactly that capability on military platforms sharing airspace with commercial traffic.
The legislation also repeals Section 373(a) of the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act, a provision that effectively gave military operators latitude to disable their ADS-B Out transponders during certain missions. That exemption has drawn intense scrutiny since the crash because the Army helicopter involved was not transmitting its position to air traffic control systems in the moments before impact. By rolling back that provision, the bill would eliminate one of the legal foundations the Defense Department has cited for keeping military aircraft electronically invisible in busy corridors. In a summary released by the House Armed Services Committee, sponsors said the measure is structured to respond to all 50 recommendations in the NTSB’s final report, designated AIR-26-02.
Beyond mandating ADS-B In, the ALERT Act would require the Pentagon to develop standardized procedures for when ADS-B Out can be disabled and to document each instance in which a transponder is turned off in controlled airspace. It directs the Defense Department to coordinate with the Federal Aviation Administration on joint training and to ensure that military pilots operating near major commercial airports receive the same traffic information that civilian crews now take for granted. The bill also orders periodic reporting to Congress on compliance, creating an oversight mechanism that safety advocates say has been missing from previous voluntary guidance.
The Regulatory Gap That Enabled the Crash
Federal aviation rules under 14 CFR 91.225 require aircraft equipped with ADS-B Out to transmit their position at all times in most controlled airspace. But a 2019 rulemaking action by the Department of Transportation carved out relief for certain operators, including national security missions, allowing them to terminate ADS-B Out transmission during sensitive flights. That exception, paired with internal Pentagon policies, created a situation in which military helicopters could fly near Reagan National Airport without appearing on the traffic displays of commercial aircraft or on some surveillance systems that rely on ADS-B data.
The distinction between ADS-B Out, which broadcasts an aircraft’s own position, and ADS-B In, which receives and displays the positions of other aircraft, is central to the bill’s logic. Even if military operators had reasons to suppress their outbound signal, the Army helicopter lacked the inbound receiver that would have shown its crew the approaching regional jet. The NTSB’s investigation, cataloged under safety recommendation A-26-008, specifically flagged this absence as a contributing factor and urged the Army to equip its helicopters with traffic-awareness technology when operating in shared airspace.
Investigators concluded that the airline crew had no warning either, because the helicopter did not appear on their cockpit displays and was not reliably visible on radar-based conflict-alert systems used by controllers. The result was a collision in clear weather just minutes after the regional jet departed Reagan National, a scenario that safety experts say should have been preventable in an era when low-cost traffic receivers can fit in a small avionics bay or even in portable devices. During hearings that followed the crash, lawmakers pressed Pentagon officials on why such equipment had not been prioritized for aircraft routinely flying in the Washington, D.C., region.
Bipartisan Support and Family Pushback
The bill carries backing from senior members of both parties across two committees. Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., who chairs the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., the ranking member, joined Armed Services Committee leaders Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., and Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., in releasing the legislation. The NTSB itself has signaled support for the revised House bill, according to Associated Press coverage of the measure’s progress.
Democrats on the Armed Services panel have echoed that backing while emphasizing broader civil-military safety issues. A statement from the committee’s minority members framed the ALERT Act as a step toward ensuring that military training and operational needs do not undercut protections for passengers on commercial flights. They argued that the Pentagon’s current patchwork of policies has left frontline pilots to manage conflicting directives about stealth and transparency.
Families of the crash victims, however, have pushed for tougher timelines, arguing that the bill’s implementation schedule does not move fast enough given that the technology already exists and is widely used in civilian aviation. Their frustration reflects a broader tension in aviation safety legislation: Congress often sets compliance deadlines years into the future to accommodate procurement cycles and budget planning, while affected families see each delay as an unacceptable risk window. Attorneys representing several families have warned that, without aggressive interim milestones, the Pentagon could wait until the end of the compliance period to install equipment on the highest-risk aircraft.
Advocates are also pressing for clearer language on enforcement, including potential penalties if military units fail to meet equipage deadlines or continue to fly unequipped aircraft in dense civilian corridors. Some lawmakers have floated amendments that would tie certain Defense Department aviation funds to documented progress on ADS-B installation, though those proposals have not yet been incorporated into the House text.
Pentagon Resistance and Senate Oversight
Congressional frustration with the Defense Department extends well beyond the House bill. Senate Commerce Committee leaders sought an August 2024 internal DoD memo detailing ADS-B policies and procedures for military flights in Washington, D.C., airspace. The Army refused to hand it over, prompting bipartisan committee leaders to call the refusal “completely unacceptable.”
That stonewalling matters because it suggests the Pentagon’s internal guidance on ADS-B use may conflict with the transparency goals Congress is now trying to legislate. If military brass were already restricting transponder use in one of the most congested airspace corridors in the country before the crash, the ALERT Act’s mandate to equip and transmit becomes not just a safety measure but an accountability mechanism. A companion bill in the Senate, identified as S.1071, has been introduced, though detailed alignment between the two chambers’ versions remains unclear based on the available text and committee summaries.
Senators have signaled they may seek additional reporting requirements on how often military aircraft disable ADS-B Out and under what justification. Staff on the Commerce and Armed Services committees are also exploring whether the Pentagon’s classified operations can be accommodated through encrypted or anonymized transponder modes rather than complete electronic invisibility. Those negotiations will determine how far Congress is willing to go in limiting the Defense Department’s discretion over its own surveillance footprint.
FAA Interim Steps and Remaining Gaps
While Congress works through the legislative process, the FAA has already taken executive action. The agency imposed mandatory radar separation rules for helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft near Reagan National and other high-density airports, tightening controller requirements for vertical and lateral spacing when traffic mixes rotorcraft and airliners. The FAA also issued updated guidance to air traffic facilities in the Washington region, instructing controllers to treat non-cooperative targets (aircraft not broadcasting ADS-B) as higher-risk and to provide additional safety buffers when possible.
Those steps, however, do not fully substitute for cockpit-level awareness. Radar separation depends on controller workload and sensor coverage, and it cannot guarantee that pilots will see and avoid one another in rapidly evolving situations. Safety experts note that ADS-B In provides a last line of defense directly in the cockpit, independent of radio calls or controller instructions, allowing pilots to react even if communications are garbled or delayed. Without that capability on military aircraft, the burden remains on civilian crews and ground personnel to detect and resolve conflicts.
The ALERT Act is designed to close that remaining gap by hardwiring traffic information into military cockpits whenever those aircraft share airspace with passenger jets. If the House and Senate can reconcile their versions and win Pentagon buy-in, the result would be one of the most significant expansions of electronic visibility requirements for U.S. military aviation in decades. For the families of those lost over the Potomac, the measure represents a test of whether lessons drawn from a preventable tragedy will be translated into concrete protections before another mixed-traffic collision occurs.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
