How The Pentagon Continues To Outmaneuver The Faa

A recent string of low-altitude military flyovers is the latest flare-up in a yearslong battle that often ends with federal air safety officials getting steamrolled by the Pentagon.

The flyovers, including one in which the Blue Angels kicked up tents and chairs on a beach in Florida earlier this month, have stirred angst inside the Federal Aviation Administration and raised alarm among some lawmakers.

“Unfortunately, the Pentagon has been extremely resistant to following the same rules everybody else does when flying in commercial airspace,” Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said of the flyovers. While the FAA doesn’t have jurisdiction over military operations, military aircraft are still required to comply with FAA rules while flying over U.S. civilian airspace.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth brushed off the furor over the flyovers, saying on social media they “will continue until morale improves.”

The bravado came just a few months after the aviation agency temporarily shut down airspace over El Paso, Texas, in response to DOD laser equipment used in an exercise by Customs and Border Protection designed to shoot down drones. And the two agencies have also sparred over everything from military helicopter operations near busy airports and flight restrictions to aviation safety following last year's fatal midair collision near Washington.

Cruz has repeatedly jousted with Pentagon officials over military aviation safety and transparency. His aviation safety bill, the ROTOR Act, failed on the House floor earlier this year after the Pentagon made an about-face and opposed the legislation. The bill would narrow the circumstances in which military aircraft can disable an advanced location detection technology aimed at avoiding collisions like the one near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport last year, which killed 67 people.

The collection of high-profile clashes are part of a long history in which the Pentagon has won broad deference in Washington even when FAA officials have raised safety concerns or sought greater coordination. The biggest difference now, according to some who spoke with POLITICO, is that officials who publicly defend or dismiss individual episodes do little to resolve underlying questions about oversight and accountability in shared airspace.

“The military plays its cards that are generally stronger” despite the FAA governing the U.S. airspace, said one former FAA official granted anonymity to discuss the tensions between the agencies.

Some top lawmakers have downplayed the controversy.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, dismissed concern over the flyovers, saying it’s not “worth wasting much time over.”

Catastrophe and leverage

Those with insight into the FAA, however, said they know how the agency is perceived.

“It’s more or less known that FAA gets rolled on things like this all the time,” said a second former FAA official, granted anonymity to discuss the politics between the two agencies in recent years.

This second former official said that the Pentagon just carries more weight.

The person argued that the FAA can almost always identify a safety rationale for restricting operations, whether that involves commercial space launches or drone deliveries over populated areas. But it often takes something catastrophic — like the Washington crash — to get the two agencies working together.

“Unfortunately … that's the only way FAA is ever going to get its leverage,” they said.

For their part, both the FAA and the Pentagon defended their longstanding “collaborative relationship” and open lines of communication to coordinate on military and civil operations in shared airspace.

“This ongoing partnership includes established protocols for deconfliction, real-time information sharing, and joint planning that have proven effective in managing complex operations,” added acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez. “We firmly reject any characterization that current coordination is insufficient.”

In May, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford suggested that the relationship had been strained. He told reporters following a Senate hearing that “the relationship with the [Defense Department] is actually much better since El Paso.”

But to pile on, FAA also started getting grief from NASA.

Ahead of July’s 250th anniversary celebrations, the FAA rejected NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman’s request to fly privately owned F-5 jets over Washington, warning that a “single system failure will render the aircraft uncontrollable.” To get around this, the aircraft were transferred to NASA, allowing the flyover to proceed outside the FAA’s regulatory authority — highlighting the agency’s limited ability to enforce safety decisions across the federal government.

That July Fourth flyover is an example of the “rules for thee, but not for me” culture in the current administration, said one person in industry familiar with safety regulations and procedures and granted anonymity to discuss the event. The person added that the FAA is making the right calls based on best safety practices, laws and regulations — until they get overruled by high-ups in the administration.

Once the aircraft “was transferred to NASA, it became a ‘public use’ (or government) aircraft,” the FAA said in a statement. “The responsibility for the operation falls to that specific government agency, not the FAA.”

Liz Huston, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement: “The successful air show, record-breaking fireworks display, and President Trump’s incredible speech combined to make our Nation’s 250th birthday celebration one for the ages.”

NASA did not respond to a request for comment.

‘The Army dumped on the FAA’

The NASA flyover echoes a familiar dynamic in the FAA's dealings with the military.

Bad blood between the Pentagon and FAA has been a recurring issue spanning across Republican and Democratic administrations. Communication breakdowns have strained collaboration and deepened tensions between the two agencies. According to the former FAA official who said the Pentagon has stronger cards to play, coordination has often broken down at critical moments, complicating efforts to manage shared airspace and align on priorities.

For example, while the FAA ultimately took the blame for a U.S. Army demonstration team flyover for a baseball game in 2022 that set off a wave of panic at the U.S. Capitol, this former FAA official said the episode reflected the often-complicated relationship between the agency and the military particularly when it comes to coordination. The Army at the time stressed that the demonstration team received FAA approval and stayed in contact with the agency throughout the flight — signaling that responsibility for authorizing the operation rested with the FAA.

“The Army dumped on the FAA,” the person said.

In a previously unreported incident, the same official said that during the 2023 holiday travel rush, the FAA attempted to work with the military to temporarily release airspace normally reserved for training over the Atlantic so additional commercial flights could be routed through the area in the event of bad weather.

“It never went anywhere. [The talks] just died” when the military “stopped engaging,” the former official said, underscoring the limits of the FAA's influence when the Pentagon decides not to participate.

The Defense Department did not address questions about the former official’s characterization of the stalled efforts.

In the last two years alone, the list of flashpoints has only grown.

FAA officials realized that a direct hotline between Pentagon air traffic control and controllers in the tower at Reagan National has not been operational since March 2022, and that the FAA hadn't been informed that it had been inoperable. The hotline issue came to light in May 2025 after a Black Hawk helicopter in the area forced controllers at the airport to divert two passenger jets to avoid it. (Following the incident, the FAA at one point even considered banning the Army from flying within the airspace.)

Then, earlier this year, the counter-drone exercise over El Paso prompted the FAA to temporarily halt civilian flights after concerns over the system's effects on aircraft — though the original order would have halted flights for 10 days to and from El Paso International Airport, an extraordinary restriction for one of the region's primary commercial airports.

Since the Washington crash, lawmakers and regulators have also pressed the Pentagon over its use of tracking technology — Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast — as well as military helicopter operations near commercial airports and broader efforts to tighten coordination between military and civilian aviation.

The FAA too has privately warned lawmakers that a key military provision in the ALERT Act — a rival House bill to Cruz’s ROTOR Act — would create a separate safety framework for the Pentagon. The FAA said the bill, which passed the House in April, would give the Defense Department broad discretion in deciding when military aircraft can disable ADS-B location-broadcasting technology and what collision-prevention equipment to install — which runs counter to recommendations issued after the deadly crash and could further compromise safety.

‘He started it’

Following last year’s crash over Washington, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy berated the Pentagon for being closed-mouthed about its helicopter operations in the months after the midair disaster.

The Pentagon did not appreciate that broadside.

“Not to sound like a little kid, but he started it,” said a former senior Army official at the Pentagon, granted anonymity to discuss the service’s relationship with the FAA at the time of the crash fallout.

“The Army, the FAA, nobody wanted this crash to be their fault, right? So, it’s sort of human nature, everyone's sort of pointing the finger at the other guy,” the former Army official said. The official noted the episode may have been as much a product of clashing personalities as the crisis itself.

The former FAA official who said the agency consistently gets “rolled,” said Duffy nonetheless is regarded as a “big team player” when it comes to keeping relationships with other agencies on track. And, this official said, the FAA “stood its ground” when the Pentagon “came knocking” to get some helicopter flights reinstated following the Washington crash. “We were able to more or less win that argument,” the former official said.

Setting aside the disputes over individual incidents, the underlying issue is a chronic breakdown in communication, said Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), ranking member of the Senate's aviation subcommittee and former Blackhawk helicopter pilot.

“What we found consistently was that the DOD and FAA have not been talking to one another,” Duckworth said. She recently urged the FAA “to step in and investigate” the attention-grabbing flyover as “potential airspace safety violations.”

“I think there's natural resistance from the DOD that they don't want to participate with FAA, [and] I think there's a desire and frustration within FAA to try to bring DOD in on a lot of the regulations and procedures.”

Instead, perhaps, the relationship is “one that Congress is going to have to force,” she said.