Section 352 of the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) allows the military to turn off ADS-B for certain reasons but it’s still unclear how often the military uses its authority to turn off ADS-B or how those decisions are coordinated in busy airspace like DCA. If ATC didn’t know the Black Hawk was coming, that’s a serious gap.
National security matters, but so does public safety. Maybe the rule doesn’t need to be scrapped, but it’s probably time for Congress to take a closer look at how these exemptions are managed, especially where military and civilian traffic overlap.