Faith-Based Daily Awareness Post 30 January 2025

These updates are shared to help raise the situational awareness of Faith-Based organizations to best defend against and mitigate the impacts from all-hazards threats including physical security, cybersecurity, and natural disasters.

D.C. plane crash: What we know about the collision as authorities say no survivors found

Axios reports:

An American Airlines passenger jet with 64 people on board collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying three soldiers near Reagan National Airport outside D.C., sending both aircraft plunging into the Potomac River.

The latest: John Donnelly, chief of D.C. Fire and EMS, told reporters: “We are now at a point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation. At this point, we don’t believe there are any survivors from this accident, and we have recovered 27 people from the plane and one from the helicopter.”

• • The helicopter was told to maintain visual separation with the plane — essentially, “see and avoid,” Axios aviation expert Alex Fitzpatrick notes. That’s not an unusual procedure, despite a Truth Social postfrom President Trump questioning why the control tower hadn’t given more direct instructions.
  • It’s also not unusual to see Black Hawks flying low along the Potomac. This is some of America’s busiest airspace due to the presence of both military and commercial aircraft.
  • “This was not unusual with a military aircraft flying the river and an aircraft landing at DCA,” (Secretary of Transportation Sean) Duffy said.
  • What remains unclear is why the military aircraft did not divert from its path and collided with the jet as it made its final descent.

Additional Articles:

• DCA: Aircraft Incident At DCA
• American Airlines: Information regarding American Eagle Flight 5342
• Chilling Audio Captures Moment Helicopter Strikes D.C. Passenger Plane
• No indications of criminality or terrorism, FBI says
• FBI Washington Field Office Statement on Aviation Incident at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport

The Nashville Attack Displayed Several Hallmarks of Modern Terrorism

The Soufan Center’s (TSC) brief details the following:

• Last week’s deadly shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, fits a trend in extremism variously described as ideological convergence or salad bar ideology, with other elements at play, including anti-Semitism, references to the “Great Replacement” theory, and self-identification as an “incel,” or involuntary celibate.
• The attacker’s manifesto spoke of his isolation and loneliness, lending credence to a view among some in counterterrorism that ideology is sometimes just a veneer atop a killer’s pre-existing propensity for violence.
• The Nashville terrorist followed the model of other incels like Elliot Rodger, who often politicize their isolation and loneliness into a specific grievance against women and proceed to attack a school or university.
• The attacker’s manifesto reveals the breadcrumbs that point to a trajectory of online radicalization, and within this network, he engaged with strategic and organizational centers of gravity in the violent far right, including the recently designated Terrorgram Collective.

The briefing concludes with “Nobody knows where the next attack will occur, the only certainty is that there will be a next time.”

Analyst Comments:

As was stated in yesterday’s Daily Awareness Post (DAP), reviewing threat studies can assist Faith-Based Organizations (FBO) with knowing possible threats to their organization, assessing their organization’s risk, and developing cost and time-efficient security plans and procedures.

The above brief and Homeland Security Today’s 2025 Homeland Security Threat Forecast: Part I, Terrorism can assist in improving a FBO’s security posture.

Additionally, being aware of what threat-actor activities look like, including online postings, can possibly lead to a If You See Something, Say Something® opportunity.