A hotline between military and civilian air traffic controllers in Washington, D.C., that hasn't worked for more than three years may have contributed to another near miss shortly after the U.S. Army resumed flying helicopters in the area for the first time since January's deadly midair collision between a passenger jet and a Black Hawk helicopter, Sen. Ted Cruz said at a hearing Wednesday.
The Federal Aviation Administration official in charge of air traffic controllers, Frank McIntosh, confirmed the agency didn't even know the hotline hadn't been working since March 2022 until after the latest near miss. He said civilian controllers still have other means of communicating with their military counterparts through landlines. Still, the FAA insists the hotline be fixed before helicopter flights resume around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
The Army said in a statement Wednesday that is it “working with the FAA to resolve the direct communications line between the Pentagon pad tower and the DCA tower and determine what repairs are required to restore services.” DCA is the code for Reagan airport.
It said the Army “continues to restrict flights to the Pentagon pad to only mission essential operations until the line is repaired or improved communication procedures are implemented and accepted by the FAA.”
The FAA said in a statement that the dedicated direct access line between air traffic controllers at Reagan and the Pentagon's Army heliport hasn't worked since 2022 because of the construction of a new tower at the Pentagon. But the FAA said “the two facilities continue to communicate via telephone for coordination.”
“The developments at DCA in its airspace are extremely concerning,” Cruz said. “This committee remains laser-focused on monitoring a safe return to operations at DCA and making sure all users in the airspace are operating responsibly.”
The Army suspended all helicopter flights around Reagan airport after the latest near miss, but McIntosh said the FAA was close to ordering the Army to stop flying because of the safety concerns before it did so voluntarily.
“We did have discussions if that was an option that we wanted to pursue,” McIntosh told the Senate Commerce Committee at the hearing.
Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB and FAA accident investigator, said “the fact that they were unaware that this connection was not working for three years is troublesome.” But he is not entirely clear on the purpose of the hotline when controllers had other ways to communicate.
But Guzzetti thinks the Army needs to be more forthcoming about what it is doing to ensure the airspace around Washington remains safe. Since the crash, the Army has at times refused to provide information that Congress has asked for, and officials didn't answer all the questions at a previous hearing.
“The DCA airspace is under the white hot spotlight. So the Army’s going to have to be more transparent and more assertive in their dealings with this problem,” Guzzetti said.
According to a U.S. official, one course of action under consideration now is to have the Army give 24 hours notice of any flights around National Airport. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because no decisions have been made and discussions are ongoing.
January's crash between an American Airlines jet and an Army helicopter killed 67 people — making it the deadliest plane crash on U.S. soil since 2001. The National Transportation Safety Board has said there were an alarming 85 near misses around Reagan in the three years before the crash that should have prompted action.
Since the crash, the FAA has tried to ensure that military helicopters never share the same airspace as planes, but controllers had to order two planes to abort their landings on May 1 because of an Army helicopter circling near the Pentagon.
“After the deadly crash near Reagan National Airport, FAA closed the helicopter route involved, but a lack of coordination between FAA and the Department of Defense has continued to put the flying public at risk,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth said.
McIntosh said the helicopter should never have entered the airspace around Reagan airport without permission from an air traffic controller.
“That did not occur,” he said. “My question — and I think the larger question is — is why did that not occur? Without compliance to our procedures and our policies, this is where safety drift starts to happen.”
The NTSB is investigating what happened.
In addition to that incident, a commercial flight taking off from Reagan airport had to take evasive action after coming within a few hundred feet of four military jets heading to a flyover at Arlington National Cemetery. McIntosh blamed that incident on a miscommunication between FAA air traffic controllers at a regional facility and the tower at Reagan, which he said had been addressed.
Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.
FILE - Rescue and salvage crews pull up a part of a Army Black Hawk helicopter that collided midair with an American Airlines jet, at a wreckage site in the Potomac River from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Feb. 6, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
FILE - Salvage crews work on recovering wreckage near the site in the Potomac River of a mid-air collision between an American Airlines jet and a Black Hawk helicopter at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
Russian authorities said Friday that the death toll from a Ukrainian drone strike they said struck a café in a Russian-occupied village in Ukraine’s Kherson region rose to 27 people. Kyiv denied attacking civilian targets.
Svetlana Petrenko, spokeswoman of Russia's main criminal investigation agency, the Investigative Committee, said in a statement that a Ukrainian drone strike on a café and hotel in the village of Khorly, where at least 100 civilians were celebrating New Year's Eve overnight into Thursday, killed 27 people, including two minors. A total of 31, including five minors, were hospitalized with injuries.
A criminal probe on the charges of carrying out an act of terrorism has been opened, Petrenko said.
A spokesman for Ukraine’s General Staff, Dmytro Lykhovii, denied attacking civilians. He told Ukraine's public broadcaster Suspilne on Thursday that Ukrainian forces “adhere to the norms of international humanitarian law” and "carry out strikes exclusively against Russian military targets, facilities of the Russian fuel and energy sector, and other lawful targets.”
Lykhovii said that General Staff published an explicit list of targets that the Ukrainian army struck on the night of New Year’s Eve that did not include occupied parts of the Kherson region.
Lykhovii noted that Russia has repeatedly used disinformation and false statements to disrupt the ongoing peace negotiations.
The Associated Press could not independently verify claims made about the attack.
In Kyiv, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appointed the head of military intelligence Kyrylo Budanov as his new chief of staff Friday, following the resignation of Andrii Yermak after a corruption scandal over a month ago.
In a post on Telegram, Zelenskyy said Ukraine now needs to focus on security issues, the development of its defense and security forces, and the diplomatic track of negotiations — areas that will fall under the remit of the Office of the President headed by Budanov.
Zelenskyy dismissed Yermak, the previous head of the Office of the President, on Nov. 28 after anti-corruption officials conducted searches at his residence as part of an investigation into alleged graft in the energy sector.
Budanov 39, is one of the country’s most recognizable and popular wartime figures and has led Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, known as the GUR, since 2020.
A career military intelligence officer, he rose through the ranks of Ukraine’s defense establishment after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, taking part in special operations and intelligence missions linked to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. He was reportedly wounded during one such operation.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Budanov has become a prominent public face of Ukraine’s intelligence effort, regularly appearing in interviews and briefings that mix strategic signaling with psychological pressure on Moscow. He has frequently warned of Russia’s long-term intentions toward Ukraine and the region, while portraying the war as an existential struggle for Ukrainian statehood.
Under Budanov’s leadership, the GUR expanded its operational footprint, coordinating intelligence, sabotage and special operations aimed at degrading Russian military capabilities far beyond the front lines. Ukrainian officials have credited military intelligence with operations targeting Russian command structures, logistics hubs, energy infrastructure and naval assets, including strikes deep inside Russian territory and occupied areas.
His appointment to head the Office of the President marks an unusual shift, placing a serving intelligence chief at the center of Ukraine’s political and diplomatic coordination. Zelenskyy has framed the move as part of a broader effort to sharpen the state’s focus on security, defense development and diplomacy as the war with Russia continues into its fourth year.
“Kyrylo has specialized experience in these areas and sufficient strength to achieve results,” Zelenskyy said.
Russia's accusations against Ukraine come as the U.S. leads a diplomatic push to end the nearly four-year war in Ukraine. Earlier this week, Moscow alleged that Kyiv launched a long-range drone attack against a residence of Russian President Vladimir Putin in northwestern Russia overnight from Sunday to Monday.
Kyiv has called the allegations of an attack on Putin’s residence a ruse to derail ongoing peace negotiations, which have ramped up in recent weeks on both sides of the Atlantic.
In his New Year’s address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that a peace deal was “90% ready” but warned that the remaining 10%, believed to include key sticking points such as territory, would “determine the fate of peace, the fate of Ukraine and Europe, how people will live.”
Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff said Wednesday that he, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner had a “productive call” with the national security advisers of Britain, France, Germany and Ukraine “to discuss advancing the next steps in the European peace process.”
Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia conducted what local authorities called “one of the most massive” drone attacks at Zaporizhzhia overnight.
At least nine Russian drones struck the city, damaging dozens of residential buildings and other civilian infrastructure, head of the regional administration, Ivan Fedorov, wrote on Telegram on Friday. There were no casualties, the official said.
Overall, Russia fired 116 long-range drones at Ukraine last night, according to Ukraine’s Air Force, which said that 86 drones were intercepted, while 27 more have reached their targets.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported Friday that its air defenses intercepted 64 Ukrainian drones overnight over multiple Russian regions.
Vyacheslav Gladkov, governor of Russia's Belgorod region on the border with Ukraine, on Friday also accused Ukrainian forces of carrying out a missile strike on the city of Belgorod. Two women were hospitalized with injuries, Gladkov said. The strike shattered windows in multiple residential buildings and damaged an unspecified “commercial” facility and a number of cars, according to the official.
FILE - Ukraine's military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov speaks during press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)
In this photo provided by Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade press service, recruits perform drills at a training ground in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (Andriy Andriyenko/Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade via AP)
In this photo provided by Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade press service, recruits perform drills at a training ground in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2026. (Andriy Andriyenko/Ukraine's 65th Mechanized Brigade via AP)
