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Two-hundred years ago this week, Washington, D.C., was burned down in the climactic months of the War of 1812. This question supposes that another such burning might be at hand. On this bicentennial of the first burning of our nation’s capital, allow me to offer a vision of what a second burning might look like.Please note: This answer is crazy long, representing several months of research and writing, and might require a solid 30 to 45 minutes of reading. If you're short on time, then I hope you will add it to your reading list and come back to it, but won't blame you if you want to just scroll to the conclusion at the end.Original question: If every state in the US declared war on the WHITE HOUSE, could obama be removed?50 States versus one guy in one building? Yeah, I am thinking it is not outside the realm of possibility that he could be removed.But that’s not a very fun answer.Let’s go ahead and modify the question to: If every State in the U.S. declared war on the Federal government (because declaring war on a building is a horrible military objective), *would* the president be removed?Let us establish a few, initial parameters to this hypothetical en masse insurrection:No attempt has been nor will be made on the part of the States going into this war to realize that this is Unconstitutional as Balls;The Armed Forces of the United States are loyal to the Federal Government (for reasons explained in a bit, and because we don’t want this hypothetical to be farcical);The insurrection has been planned in secret, meaning the U.S. forces are on standard alert levels. Those deployed overseas have not had a chance to be recalled at the start of the war, nor the Reserves activated, nor Congress yet authorize the President to take any extraordinary measures to quell the insurrection (cit. “Unconstitutional as Balls”);By the States declaring war, their forces are limited to their respective National Guard units (the Federal side of the Guard made moot) and State Defense Forces, where applicable, and militia groups, as calculated;U.S. territories do not participate in the insurrection (keeping fingers crossed for Statehood in the aftermath!);The Washington, D.C., National Guard, being under the direct command of the Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of the Air Force, are Federal forces; and,While the States have had time to mobilize their forces, somehow not arousing suspicion, they have not had a chance to pre-position them for an attack (because that would be too obvious and ruin the surprise).Also, for this simulation:The President remains in the White House throughout the war, in keeping with the spirit of the original question, and because any Continuity of Operations/Government (COOP/COG) sites have now been severely compromised.Let’s get to it!MilitiasWe’re starting with militias because, realistically, if the States go all-in on an overthrow of the Federal government, there is no way these groups would sit on the sidelines. Their whole reason for existing in the 21st century is to provide a citizen deterrent to tyrannical government; and in the case of an insurrection, they would want to prove their capabilities. Otherwise, why exist?The other reason to start with militias is because whereas the dispositions of the National Guard and regular Armed Forces are well understood and can be plugged into this scenario without much fuss, militias require a little more modeling that’s good to get out of the way early on.Nobody has an accurate number on how many Americans are in unorganized militia groups (probably due in part to their unorganized nature). Previous estimations have put the number as high as 60,000 people, but many such estimates were made prior to the reported surge in militia support and activity under the Obama Administration.Lacking an accurate count, we will estimate a State’s available “militia” as being a percentage of “very conservative” voters (don’t pretend like there are enough liberals in militias to be worth modeling) which we will develop by combining polling data from the 2008 and 2012 Republican primaries and measuring that against the 2012 exit polling data.Exit polling was not conducted in every State’s primary in 2008 and 2012, and so not every State has a known number of self-identified “very conservative” Republicans. What we can do is provide a reasonable estimate for these States by charting the relationship between the percentage of self-identified “very conservative” voters in the primary to the margin by which the Republican candidate won (positive value)/lost (negative value) the State in the general election.For both elections, I have removed Iowa and Nevada as outliers. They reported some of the highest percentages of very conservative voters of all States (IA: 45 (2008) & 47 (2012); NV: 40 & 49), but they went on to support the Democratic candidate (IA: -9.5 & -5.8; NV: -12.5 & -6.7). I attribute this to the fact that they are early caucus states, which attracts higher-than representative numbers of very conservative voters.Similarly, exit polling was not available in all states for the 2012 general election to get a level of overall conservative voters (of which a subset are "very conservative"). However, it was conducted in a majority of states; and so we can compare the percentage of self-identified conservatives against the outcome of the election in the state, which looks as follows:The last step required is coming up with a reasonable percentage of these voters who could be militia participants. The 60,000 estimate cited above comes from the year 2000, and which would represent two one-hundredths of a percent of the total US population at the time. If we apply that percentage to the current population, we get an estimate of 68,000 militiamen in the US. To achieve a similar number from our conservative data would represent 0.496 percent of the “very conservative” population. So the equation for each State looks like this:(Males 18 to 45) X (percent “very conservative” Republican primary voters) X (percent “conservative” general election voters) X 0.00496.Applying the above extrapolations to all the states, we get the following table:Rules for this scenario:Militias will take two days to get their members together and assemble in their State’s capital, having not been invited to the initial party (cit. “unorganized”)They will be used first as a kind of citizen military police force to provide long-term security for the Federal installations initially overrun by the National Guard.If there are Federal forces present in the State, the Militia will abandon its security role (voluntarily or under orders) to augment the National Guard units in the State.The Military VoteWe have to realize the fact that even if soldiers were unable to set aside the illegality of the insurrection (cit. UCMJ and “Unconstitutional as Balls”), there are some who might believe that the president and his government are such a threat to the Republic that the insurrection is warranted. It is likely that it is only a very few soldiers who would do this, but in order to establish a baseline, we have to estimate the partisan leanings of the Guard and State Defense Forces to determine how many of them actually show up to fight. We will do this by assuming that they parallel the partisan leanings of the Armed Forces.Note: From here on out, for the polling data I cite, I’m equating Republican with conservative, independent with moderate, and Democrat with liberal. I understand fully that these are not otherwise transferrable terms (eg, there are conservative Democrats, moderate Republicans, the liberal but unaffiliated, etc.); however, not all polling data offers breakouts of ideology and/or party identification. I try to account for this as much as possible.While it is generally assumed that the Armed Forces are more conservative than general population, there are no reliable polls of the military to provide a sense of just how skewed the partisan advantage is, what with there being a general reluctance to encourage politicization of the Armed Forces. Some initial research, however, suggests that the skew is generally overestimated – at least in the enlisted ranks. We have some data to work with that can help us make a reasonable estimation of the difference.One study on military political leanings from 2004 (which is convenient because it coincides with a presidential election with significant exit polling (flawed, but useable)). The study claims that, among enlisted personnel, the ideological split was 32 percent conservative, 45 percent moderate, and 23 percent liberal. 2004 exit polling tells us that the Bush/Kerry divide was 84/15 for conservatives, 45/54 for moderates, and 13/85 for liberals. If you stitch together all those values, you come up with a result of 50/49 in favor of Bush.For the officers, we’re only told that “two-thirds” identified as conservatives. Until I can find the raw data from study, we might then assume that the remaining one-third of officers break out in a similar ratio of moderates to liberals as the enlisted ranks (22 percent moderate and 11 percent liberal). Following the same voting patterns as earlier, we get 68/31 in favor of Bush.What we need to know before making a comparison to the general public is to figure out what the vote of the whole military would have been; and so we need to weight the enlisted and officer votes according to their representation in the ranks. The number of enlisted personnel and the number of officers in the military, as of November 2004, was reported by the Defense Manpower Data Center as 1,179,570 and 226,565, respectively.So accounting for those values, when we plug in the expected voting patterns calculated earlier, we get a final “military vote” of 53.6/46.4 in favor of Bush. How did the general population vote in 2004? 50.7/48.3.This would mean that, for our modeling purposes, we’re assuming that the oft-fabled super-conservative military is, in fact, only +2.9 points more conservative than the general population (or, in the case of the National Guard, the population of their States). We’ll skew this partisanship at a cost of -1.9 points to moderates and -1.0 liberals, in keeping with the general 2:1 advantage of those who self-identify as moderates versus liberals.I recognize that a significant flaw in this model is that it fails to correct for age. While between 65 and 70 percent of the Armed Forces are between 18 and 29, versus approximately 20 to 25 percent of the general population, we know that not 100 percent of personnel in that age bracket are in the enlisted ranks (eg, officers recently graduated from the Service Academies). I haven’t found good data to be able to make the correction.National GuardNot all Guardsmen are going to be down with the insurrection. They might have gone along with being mobilized, because orders are orders; however, once the purpose of the mobilization is revealed to be to overthrow the government, I am sure there would be more than a few Guardsmen who would call that the pinnacle of an unlawfulorder (cit. UCMJ and “Unconstitutional as Balls”) and hastily demobilize the crap out of themselves. We will call this the Guard Resistance Quotient (GRQ).The GRQ is particularly important because we will use it to calculate a critical factor: States that actually participate in the insurrection. The hypothetical scenario only requires all states to declare war on the government, but not that they all pony up and fight.Rules for the GRQ:States’ National Guards’ effectiveness and strength will be fixed according to the GRQ at the start of the insurrection;States with a GRQ below 40 will participate in the insurrection by;o Securing Federal installations within their Stateo Assist other States in rebellion with securing Federal installationso Securing the contiguous borders of all States in rebellion, ando When possible, conducting offensive operations against Federal troopsStates with a GRQ between 40 and 50 will be too divided to field an effective fighting force at the outset of the insurrection, and so their initial actions will be limited to:o Securing their States’ borders against all forces, ando Blockading Federal installations, but not attempting to secure themStates with a GRQ above 50 will flip their allegiance in favor of the Federal government. They will:o Secure their borders against States in rebellion and permit the movement of Federal forces, ando Combat militia and other insurrectionist forces within their stateModeling the GRQ is slightly more complicated than calculating a State’s militia.Soldiers being soldiers, there are going to be more factors at play than their level of conservatism. They are obliged by their oath of service to defend the government and uphold the country’s laws; and to be perfectly blunt, I don’t know any soldier who signed up with the desire to one day point their gun at a fellow American. If you think this is in doubt, a quick scan of Quora questions about this matter reveal many conservative veterans who, while otherwise very critical of the president and his performance to date, go out of their way to argue why rebellion and revolution are both unnecessary and illegal.However, this being a hypothetical scenario, we’ll take a crack at modeling what portion of the Guard will resist its orders by calculating how much of the Guard will be likely to support a mass insurrection.We will draw on three recent polls of Americans: Belief in the necessity of armed revolution (May 2013); satisfaction with the system of government (January 2014), and; satisfaction with the way they’re being governed (September 2013). First, I apply the percentage of those who believe that armed revolution is necessary. Anybody in that category won’t need further convincing once the orders come down. Of the remainder, I’ll apply percentages of those who are dissatisfied with the system of government. They might not have thought armed revolution was necessary, but they’re able to convince themselves that a change is necessary. Of the remainder, we’ll apply the percentage of those who are dissatisfied with how they’re being governed. They might have waited for the next election to express this, but will take the opportunity to strike now.To the natural reluctance soldiers would have to violating their oath, how the intensity of beliefs might not translate to commitment to revolution, and overlap from respondents, I am going to also apply weights to each of the polling measures, as follows:I admit that this is a subjective exercise predicated on the idea that liberals would be vastly less enthusiastic about revolting against a Democratic president, even if they are dissatisfied, than conservatives might be.This gives us a final matrix of:Before I return us to the state of Jefferson for an example of how all this works, please allow me to say how absolutely terrified I am of the numbers of Americans who believe that armed revolution might be necessary in a few years’ time. The militia thing was just an estimate, but the poll results are legitimately unnerving.I also want to take this moment to reiterate my earlier statements that, in truth, I would expect zero percent of soldiers to be cool with these orders, but, again, this is a hypothetical scenario.Moving on.Jefferson’s National Guard has 3,000 soldiers. From earlier, we know that 45 percent of Jefferson’s voters are conservative; but as we calculated earlier, we are assuming that the Guard is a further 2.9 points more conservative, for a value of 47.9. We also figure that that 34.5 percent are moderate, and the remaining 17.6 percent liberal.Using the first poll, we find that there are 860 Guardsmen ready to take up arms, oath be damned, by virtue of their belief of the necessity of armed revolution. Applying the second poll to the remaining Guardsmen, we get another 802 willing to join the insurrection due to their belief that the government is no longer functional. Finally, with the last poll, another 304 join the revolution due to their dissatisfaction in the decisions coming from Washington.This gives us a grand total of 1,966 Guardsmen who will answer the call for revolution, or 65.5 percent; or, a GRQ of 34.5. Jefferson will participate in the insurrection at its outset.The Armed ForcesWhereas the National Guards, representative of their States, might be torn apart over the question of insurrection, members of the U.S. Armed Forces, having been sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic (eg, States declaring war on the government), should not have reservations about being called to quell an “Unconstitutional as Balls” insurrection and would not likely grapple with en masse defections. As such, once alerted to the insurrection, the priorities of the Armed Forces will be:Secure key Federal installationsProtect States still loyal to the government from incursion by forces in rebellionConduct offensive operations against rebel forcesOccupy rebellious States’ capitals to dissolve the governments and compel their forces to disbandHowever, despite loyalty to their country and their sworn duties, this is not to say that the Armed Forces would not face a reduction in combat effectiveness due both to individual soldiers’ partisan beliefs and their unease over having to take up arms against fellow Americans. For this, we’ll calculate a Services Effectiveness Factor (SEF).For the SEF, we will use recruitment data to estimate the proportionate representation of States in the US military, and then weight their respective GRQs reduced to one-third of their value.Not surprisingly, the representation of soldiers in the Armed Forces closely mirrors States’ populations rather than their ideologies; as such, the mix of traditionally liberal and conservative states in amongst the States most represented in the Armed Forces balances the GRQ values. The final SEF is calculated at 18.98 – in other words, the Armed Forces are operating at about 20 percent reduced effectiveness, the morale penalty for having to fight against their fellow Americans and to protect a government they might not personally support.Order of BattleHaving come up with estimates of how likely (or unlikely) it is that Americans in uniform will oppose or support the Federal government, let’s look at the number of soldiers about to be engulfed in this conflict:US Armed Forces: 1,387,493Army National Guard: 358,200 (Authorized)Air Force National Guard: 105,700 (Authorized)Absent of any other consideration, on paper the National Guard and State Defense Forces are screwed, outnumbered 3 to 1 by the most well equipped and well trained fighting force in the world – and that’s before we take any defections into account. But we can’t just take that at face value.Let’s examine how much of the full force of the U.S. Armed Forces will be available to fight against the rebelling States.According to the DMDC, approximately 18 percent of the Armed Forces are deployed overseas. By branch, it’s 18 percent of the Army, 16 percent of the Navy, 15 percent of the Marine Corps, and 21 percent of the Air Force. And while that leaves a formidable 1.1 million servicemen and women back to defend the United States, they are not all in combat roles.The actual breakout of military roles and assignments is a guarded secret – for many good reasons. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, using Department of Defense data, states that there were 213,000 combat specialty personnel and officers across the Services as of 2013, or about 15 percent of the total Armed Forces. Of those, 68 percent are in the Army and 23 percent in the Marine Corps, representing 28 and 25 percent of the total manpower of each respective Service (or 145,500 Soldiers and 48,400 Marines). We can partially validate this with an Army study from 2008 on the injury rates of selected occupation specialties that listed the 45 most common occupational specialties and their percentage of the total force; and about 25 percent of servicemembers were in combat roles.Contrast this with the Army National Guard, of whom 54 percent are in designated combat roles, with another 16 percent serving in direct combat support. Now our match-up looks like this:US Armed Forces (All Combat): 213,000US Army and Marine Corps Only (All Combat Roles): 194,900Army National Guard (All Combat): 250,700Yes, you’re reading that correctly. More than half (54 percent) of the United States’ combat capabilities are vested in citizen soldiers, not the regular forces.On the distribution of ground forces, units designated for combat are not evenly spread across the US to counter an insurrection. Their main bases and estimated manpower strengths are indicated as follows:On the one-hand, the combat units of the U.S. Army are able to assemble and deploy quickly; however, they will have to prioritize which Federal sites to defend or liberate, to say nothing of securing their own supplies, as they will quickly find routes of access blocked by secessionist National Guard units.The Army National Guard, on the other hand, musters out of 3,200 armories in 2,700 communities.While this gives the Guard unrivaled geographic coverage and, in those states whose commitment to secession is unwavering, rapid ability to converge on and close Federal sites in the first hours of the insurrection, it means it will take longer for its units to organize into larger units capable of resisting concentrated incursions by the Federal forces.Regarding air power, the Air National Guard comprises 31 percent of the Air Force’s total fighter capability, 38 percent of its airlift capability, and 40 percent of its tanker fleet. It maintains air wings in every State, whereas the Air Force’s capabilities are disparate and, at least domestically, heavily reliant on cooperation with the Air National Guard. Finally, as the Air National Guard is responsible for all air defense in the United States, the entirety of its combat inventory is available within the US, whereas the Air Force’s capabilities, though strong in the US, are scattered across the globe.The disparity in air power can be demonstrated with this map showing the combat radii (ie, the maximum distance for an aircraft to travel with a full payload and linger without refueling) of the Air National Guard and Air Force’s primary combat aircraft:Again, these are just combat ranges. If the maps were to include intercept ranges, the Air National Guard would have the vast majority of the continental US covered – because again, its primary mission is to assure the total air defense of the US. The Air Force, by contrast, could reach most of the US, but with significant gaps in the North and Northeast.The only branch of the US Armed Forces which is unrivaled in any way by the States is the Navy. While a very few states have naval militias, these are not comparable to the vast flotilla that is US maritime power; and so they are not being considered in this hypothetical. The key resource in the U.S. Navy’s arsenal is its 11 aircraft carriers, whose air wings can be used to counterbalance the superiority of the Air National Guard.Modeling CombatWe have talked a lot about defections, morale, and mission roles, but we need to bring that all together to model the inevitable battles that are to follow.It is not enough to say, “The professional Armed Forces are better trained – and more regularly – therefore, they’ll win in every case.” The National Guard trains and deploys alongside the regular forces, many if not most of its leaders have experience in the regular forces, and they have built up a great deal of experience on rotations through Iraq and Afghanistan. But nor is this enough to make them equals to the regular forces in all cases.The other issue is that while the post-WWII history of the world has had its fair share of conflicts, there have not been many examples of nearly equal, modern-equipped forces going head-to-head in combat that we can draw on. Certainly the United States has not gone toe-to-toe with a large, conventional enemy since the Korean War – and its arsenal has changed quite a bit since then. However, there are a few example we can draw on for our model.The first thing we have to do is establish some kind of a baseline upon which to level these other factors. Exploring wars and battles that present similar conditions to the war being modeled here (ie, similarly equipped and trained military forces fighting over what’s likely to be a short campaign). Additional criteria, beyond the match-up of the forces, were for there to be well documented battles with definitive start and end dates, reliable estimates of troop levels and reported casualties. Given all that, I drew from the following conflicts for my model:Sino-Indian War (1962)Yom Kippur War (1973)Kargil War (1999)Battle of Grozny (1999/2000)Russian-Georgian War (2008)Nafusa Mountain Campaign (2011)Based on the dispositions of the forces at the start of these campaigns, I attempted to identify which force was superior and inferior absent of the eventual outcome of the campaign. From there, I looked at how many casualties per hour per 1,000 forces were suffered over the duration of combat operations.What I found was a nearly four-to-one disparity between the casualty rate suffered by the inferior force compared to the superior. This was not entirely surprising, given that the average ratio of superior to inferior forces across the selected campaigns was 4.6 to 1. In fact – and this shouldn’t be much of a surprise, really – the greatest predictor of the rate of casualties suffered by an inferior force was the ratio of superior forces marshaled against it.With a little bit of tweaking and closer examinations of how these battles unfolded, I built a model to estimate casualty rates per hour based on the force sizes involved in the engagement.And with all due respect to the professionalism of the men and women in the National Guard, I’ve considered them the inferior force when up against the regular forces. Likewise, the State Defense Forces are inferior to the National Guard, and then militias inferior to SDFs.Running the ScenarioHaving figured out which States commit to the insurrection, the disposition of forces, and distribution of critical installations, I did my best to make the movements of forces realistic and within the parameters I described. In keeping with the question, however, the ultimate goal of all the forces taking arms against the government is the conquest of Washington, D.C., to force the surrender of the president and his administration.I have not run a simulation of the war to a full conclusion, just long enough to determine whether the insurrection could plausibly be successful in toppling the government.What follows is a novelized representation of how most scenarios played out.Day 1: #ACW2It’s three o’clock on a Sunday morning in Washington, D.C.. The President and his chief advisors have been asleep for a few hours. The president was not on travel this weekend, and his Sunday schedule is light.Most Cabinet officers are at their homes in Northern Virginia and Maryland, but a few have taken long weekends at vacation homes or traveled on official business to various corners of the country, due to return to the capital later in the day. Critical Federal offices in the capital are manned by a handful of watch officers. Members of Congress are scattered across the country, back in their home states, and aren’t scheduled to return to Washington for business until Monday afternoon.At the Pentagon, the Office of the Secretary of Defense is empty. Sitting on his desk is a memorandum from the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, sent Friday afternoon, alerting the Secretary to unusual activity of the Army and Air National Guard units across the United States.“Over the last several months,” he states, “governors in all states have staggered mobilization announcements of their National Guard units for ‘readiness exercises,’ which we have learned will coincide this week. The governors and commanders have been vague or completely non-responsive in detailing either the nature or extent of these exercises. This lack of coordination and communication is startling, unprecedented, and compromises our ability to ensure NG availability for federal mobilization, if needed.”The memorandum ends with a request for a meeting to discuss the issue later in the week, although the Bureau chief has been pinging the Secretary and his staff for the last several days to elevate his concerns sooner.At the same time, at thousands of armories, town halls, and other community sites in every State of the Republic, tens of thousands of citizen soldiers have assembled per their mobilization orders. Until now, they’ve been given very little information about the nature of their mobilization. The men and women of the Guard assume that they’ve been activated for training exercises. Nobody is expecting to be deployed to Afghanistan with the war winding down, and there aren’t any major national disasters straining the States’ civilian agencies.At the top of the hour, unit commanders are given their orders, accompanied by a short message that has been carefully crafted in secret by all fifty governors and their National Guard commandants. It reads:Our Nation was founded on the principle that ‘Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,’ and ‘that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.’ We no longer give consent to be governed by a government that both threatens liberty and can no longer act in the best interests of its citizens – and we believe that the political remedies have been exhausted.Over the previous two decades, we have witnessed a disturbing expansion of Federal powers that has undermined the authority of the States and the preservation of our citizens’ liberties. The present administration has taken to governing by order rather than by law. We are resolved to check this power. At the same time, we have witnessed such a collapse in the functionality of Congress that it threatens the stability of our great Nation and its ability to meet the challenges of this century. We are resolved to restore order.We are united in our belief that the Federal Government of the United States of America has become its greatest domestic enemy; and, per our oaths, we are sworn to defend the Constitution and our citizens against its encroachments.We have sent a demand for the existing powers of the Federal government to resign, but we are committed to showing our resolve. You are hereby charged with arresting the power of the Federal government to exercise its unlawful control over the States and destruction of our liberties.As the Founding Fathers did before us, we appeal to God to guide our noblest intentions, and in the name of the American people declare that the States are absolved from all allegiance to the Federal Government, and that all political connection between them and the States is and ought to be dissolved, that a new and free government might take its place with the consent of the people.May God bless you in this mission, and may God bless the United States of America.”Minutes pass after the declaration is read before the full weight of what’s been asked of this citizens’ army sinks in to its soldiers, but the reactions are strong. In some places, cheers go up: The long awaited rebellion has begun, and they are quick to execute their orders. In others, soldiers throw down their weapons in disgust and abandon their units without a passing thought. Accusations of treason abound – some against the Federal government, some against the governors who signed the orders, and many between soldiers. Some commanders refuse to issue their given orders, calling them unlawful, while others order the detention of soldiers who attempt to desert or resist.In Massachusetts and Hawaii, enough soldiers who are repulsed by the orders realize that they significantly outnumber the willing that they are able to take control of the Guard. They affirm their loyalty to the lawfully elected Federal government and move to detain the commanders and political leaders who issued the initial, unlawful orders.Across the country, Guardsmen break the secrecy of their orders and announce them via social media – some to compel citizens to support them, some to resist. Whereas most of the leading media personalities on the East Coast are asleep – prepared to wake up for what they believe will be an unsurprising run of Sunday morning talk show appearances – and the 24-hour networks are locked to summaries of yesterday’s news, the journalists and producers on the West Coast who an hour earlier had prepared to call it a day are now trying to get on top of the story. Their efforts to reach contacts in Washington, D.C., or anybody of rank in the vast national security apparatus, are slow to bear fruit.In Hawaii, where the night is still young and most of the military and civilian leadership is awake, commanders of the National Guard whose loyalties have stayed with the Federal government are able to contact the commanders of the 25th Infantry Division, at Schofield Barracks, and US Pacific Command in Honolulu. They detail their orders to seize or blockade Federal installations and disarm military units – peacefully if possible, by force if required.The 25th Infantry Division, with units in Hawaii and Alaska, goes on maximum alert, and US Pacific Command follows suit. Commanders of both units raise the alarm to other combatant commands about the unfolding insurrection.During this time, State-level emergency services activate the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System. The first warning many Americans have that the foundations of their Republic have been shattered are alerts from their phones, preempting the alarms set for much later that Sunday morning, with a simple text message:Emergency AlertRemain indoors. Do not interfere with military operations. Call 9-1-1 for emergencies only. Emergency Alert in this area until 1159 PM.It isn’t until after 4 a.m. in Washington, D.C., an hour after disloyal National Guard units began leaving their bases to seize Federal installations, when enough of the senior leadership of government has been awoken and come to terms with the scope of the crisis. The President is roused and given a hurried, fragmented briefing while he is rushed to the Situation Room underneath the West Wing. Reports are pouring into the bunker from across the country of barricades and roadblocks near military installations.Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, home to America’s B-52 fleet, has been surrounded. The Fourth Brigade of the 10th Mountain Division, normally stationed at Fort Polk to the south, and which might have otherwise been deployed to break the siege, is still in Afghanistan.Tooele Army Depot in Utah, a key storage site for ammunition and the coordination of logistics for the Army, has been overrun.A combined force of the Kentucky and Tennessee Army National Guards have demanded the surrender of the famed 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell (“They’ve told ‘em, ‘Nuts.’”). The Third Brigade of the First Infantry Division, normally stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky, has only just begun coming home from Afghanistan. Slated to be inactivated by the end of the year, it is not at strength to provide reinforcements.The Secretary of the Army and Secretary of the Air Force report that the D.C. National Guard has been ordered to mobilize to defend the capital; and already the 121st Fighter Squadron, always on alert at Joint Base Andrews, has scrambled its F-16s. The President orders the Armed Forces to be brought to its highest state of readiness; to prepare for the security of America’s airspace and the efficient transportation of troops, civilian air traffic is grounded and its airspace is closed to incoming flights.Two overarching questions guide the conversation of America’s national security leaders: How deep does the insurrection go, and is the Federal government still able to exercise any control across the country? Evacuating the capital is quickly ruled out, not because it would symbolize panic and defeat, but because the security of continuity of operations sites, not to mention the airspace itself, has been too compromised to consider. However, the Continuity of Government Condition is raised to its highest level; and before roadblocks become too restrictive, the senior leaders of government who are able evacuate their homes in the capital area make their way to alternate operational sites.Although the presidential line of succession has been tenuously secured, Congress is no longer a functioning body.While many senior leaders and Cabinet officials in the D.C. area were able to be expeditiously evacuated due to rigorous training for national disasters, word about the insurrection was not quick to reach Congressional leader. In his home state, the Speaker of the House, third in line to the presidency, is detained by disloyal National Guard units. Hundreds of Members of Congress are similarly lured to their front doors from state police officials and citizen soldiers and then taken into custody.While the picture across the country appears to be deteriorating rapidly, there are two States prominent on the minds of America’s leadership: Maryland and Virginia. Are their National Guard units about to storm the capital before the D.C. National Guard can organize its defense? The States present two very different pictures.In Maryland, roadblocks have been established along critical corridors leading to and from the capital, but Fort Meade, home to the National Security Agency, has not been approached; and Joint Base Andrews, home to both Air Force One and the 121st Fighter Squadron now patrolling the capital’s airspace, has not been overrun.In Virginia, however, the National Guard has taken Fort Belvoir, minutes to the south of the capital, and has set up roadblocks around the Capital Beltway. Additionally, a column of the Blue and Grey Division has been observed leaving from Stanton, Virginia, and heading north quickly. Security elements at Joint Base Langley-Eustis, near the vital port of Norfolk, were caught unaware and unable to resist the surprise incursion onto the airfield. However, the F-22s of the 1st Fighter Wing, now under the control of the Virginia Air National Guard in augmenting its 149th Fighter Squadron, have not yet gone airborne. They are on an apparent standby status.Despite having not yet compromised the defenses around the naval base at Norfolk, the threat posed by the actions of the Virginia National Guard to the fleet based there, to include aircraft carriers Harry S. Truman and Theodore Roosevelt, is too much to risk. The order goes out for all ships in ports around the continental U.S. to make for open waters immediately – full crews if possible, but at the discretion of fleet commanders if they are under imminent threat.Another question makes its way onto the agenda: What are the rules of engagement for the besieged troops? Certainly they have a right to self-defense, but the Constitution invests Congress with the powerTo provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel InvasionsBut it becomes clear that Congress has effectively been incapacitated, and it’s the Militia that’s waging war against Federal authority. At the same time, so far, the insurrection has been bloodless. There are scattered reports of casualties during the initial seizing and blockading of military installations, but no concerted attacks have yet been launched. Right now, the rebelling forces seem intent on neutering Federal authority, not eradicating it. In some States, too, there appears to have only been the declaration of war, but little or no activity to enforce that declaration.The president makes a decision: For the besieged forces, lethal force is authorized only in self-defense. His hope is that by not adding to the potential for violence, what authority remains of the Federal government can be used to compel the States to stand down. For now, there will be no aggression on the part of the Federal government.When 6 a.m. rolls around on the East Coast, major news and cable networks that have not done so already interrupt their regular broadcasts to start round-the-clock coverage dedicated to the unfolding crisis. Anchors repeat what little information they have and freely speculate on information flowing into their newsrooms from affiliates and social media. Military bases have been surrounded; there’s been a coup in Massachusetts; Hawaii is under martial law. Local stations scroll a common instruction from State authorities:Stay in your homes. Do not approach military units. Call 9-1-1 only in an emergency. Check local media for further information.The American people swap what information they can, but their incomplete and inaccurate grasp of the situation fuels panic. Images and reports of troop movements and blockades abound. Messages supporting the revolution and condemning the traitors fly amongst the reports of the unfolding insurrection. Before it breaks under the volume of traffic as more Americans wake up and respond to their horrifying new reality, Twitter records #ACW2 as the highest trending tag.Across the world, the gravity of events in the United States begins to register in foreign capitals. It’s obvious to world leaders that, in a prolonged insurrection, the United States will be compelled to recall most of its soldiers stationed abroad to defend the homeland. Global peace and security may not depended solely on American military might – much to the contrary of popular myth in the US – but it is certainly a lynchpin. Militaries everywhere raise their alert status.Confidence in the world’s greatest economy also plummets. The trillions of dollars of U.S. Treasury securities held by foreign governments seem to be at risk of turning into junk bonds. There is open, urgent talk among global financial centers for the need to secure America’s financial assets that underpin foreign the global economy before once-unthinkable scenarios and consequences can unfold.Back in the United States, State legislators are rushing to their capitals for emergency sessions. Most are incensed by their governors’ actions, and in every State, there are calls for impeachment and arrests for treason.Most are, but not all.In amongst the anger that war has been thrust upon them, many believe that the opportunity to “reset” the Federal government and the Republic should not be hastily abandoned. For every bill demanding impeachment, to reaffirm loyalty to the Republic and its lawfully elected Federal government, there are bills introduced to support the cause of insurrection.Shortly after 9 a.m., with most Americans now awake, scared, and glued to every media outlet for any scrap of information – with state capitals fervently debating whether to preserve or sacrifice the Republic, and under whose banner – the Federal government activates the Emergency Alert System to speak directly to a terrified, divided nation and a nervous world. History will record it as the largest audience for an address by an American president.My fellow Americans,Today, we wake up in a nation forever changed. Not in one-hundred fifty years have we had to face the prospect of warfare on our own soil, but that is where we find ourselves today.Last night, the governors of the States made a fateful decision to tear at the very fabric of our long-standing Republic and declare their hostility towards the Federal government. They have ordered the immediate resignation of your duly elected and appointed representatives, many of whom they have already detained, and turned our National Guard, our citizen soldiers, into an arm of an unlawful insurrection.Make no mistake: This action is not only unconstitutional, but also unconscionable. It betrays every value we hold dear as Americans. It has unnecessarily created fear and driven a deep wedge among us.As I have said many times before, and as has been said many times before me, the things that unite us as a nation have always been greater than the things which divide us. One of the principles that has united us for over two centuries has been the belief in the rule of law – and that if the law is unjust, that we use the political processes handed down by our forbearers to change it.This process can be messy. It can be heated. But it is democracy. It is part of being a nation that is of, by, and for the people. For all people. Sending soldiers into our streets to change laws we disagree with, to unseat a government elected by the people, goes against the very core of democracy, the very heart of our nation.From what we know, many of the citizen soldiers given these illegal orders recognized them as such and, at great risk to themselves, chose to uphold the ideals we entrusted them to protect and refused to participate in this action.To the others still participating in these operations, let me say this: I know many more of you harbor deep reservations about your orders, but are worried about being viewed as inadequate soldiers. You are worried about the consequences of backing out now. But let me be clear: History does not look kindly on those who follow unlawful orders because they are ordered to, and neither does our code of justice. If you stand down in the next twenty-four hours – if you return to your armories and your homes – all will be forgiven. No arrests, no court-martials, no penalties. Go home, and let us immediately set about the task of repairing the frayed bonds of our union.I make the same offer to the governors of the States which have declared war on the Republic. Recall your Guards, renounce your declarations, and let us do what needs to be done to ensure peace and security for Americans everywhere. You will face no retribution from my administration if you act now, and swiftly, to end the crisis you have brought upon your country.This morning, I ordered the Armed Forces to act only in self-defense. This order will stand for the next twenty-four hours. It is my sincere hope that they will not be compelled to do so, and that you will take this period of time to recall your forces and come to the negotiating table so we can address your grievances. But let there be no question that I am prepared to defend the Constitution of the United States, the laws of which bind all Americans, regardless of ideology, against all enemies, be they foreign or domestic.There is no need for violence. There is no reason why we cannot settle our differences in the manner which the American people elected us to do: peacefully, by their will, and in their better interests.In his first inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln, facing the rise of the Confederacy and imminent civil war, said in a plea to the Southern States,“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”His plea failed, and more than six-hundred thousand Americans died to restore those bonds of affection. We do not have to repeat that bloody history. We cannot. Let us work together, with the better angels of our nature, to swell the chorus of the Union, and to ensure the domestic tranquility that our Constitution and laws are meant to guarantee for all Americans.Thank you, and may God bless the United States of America.Political commentators trip over themselves to pick apart every nuance of the president’s statement. Why didn’t he mention anything about the continuity of government and Federal services? What happens after twenty-four hours? Was this statement meant to be directed at the American people, or State leaders? Does his offer of amnesty for the conspirators reveal the weakness of the government’s position?As broadcasters report on the swelling number of roadblocks and calls for order, people begin to panic. If the interstates are closed, and ports blockaded, when will the stores and gas stations be resupplied? What’s going to happen to the value of the dollar when the markets open – if the markets open – on Monday?People defy the warnings and orders to stay indoors and begin to descend on banks, shopping centers, and gas stations en masse. With the National Guards caught up in the brewing war, local law enforcement agencies – many of whose officers have been called away – are stretched to breaking limit in the attempt to maintain order.Meanwhile, another mobilization is taking place under the radar of the country’s now-overwhelmed law enforcement agencies. In between temporary outages of the strained telecommunications network, Americans who believe it is their duty to support the insurrection depart for discrete mustering grounds to consider their next steps.In state capitals, legislators’ divisions over their desired course of action widen. Now with a deadline and panic descending, many feel it is imperative to make their allegiance known quickly. On the side of the argument, it is held that if all fifty States – or forty-eight, minus Massachusetts and Hawaii – remain united against the government, the Federal government will have no choice but to fold. On the side of returning to the status quo, it is argued that no amount of violence, or even the threat of violence, is worth what might be gained politically.Some States’ legislatures grapple with deep divisions; but within an hour after the president’s address, less divided States make their allegiances known. Rhode Island and Vermont declare themselves firmly on the side of the Republic – their governors to be impeached, removed, and tried, regardless of the president’s offer of amnesty – while South Carolina and Indiana affirm solidarity with the insurrection. Later in the hour, to the relief of many in the capital, Maryland also declares its allegiance to the Republic, and orders its National Guard to remove the blockades around D.C. and Federal installations.The capital, however, is not beyond threat. Virginia still seems sided with the rebellion; and in Western Maryland, just east of Hagerstown, a tense standoff between the Maryland National Guard and West Virginia National Guard comes close to igniting.The plan developed by the governors and their military adjutants called for West Virginia’s National Guard, having few major Federal installations to secure, to move rapidly to link up with a detachment of Maryland’s forces and approach D.C. from the northwest. The bulk of Maryland’s troops would advance on the capital from the north and east, leaving Virginia to come up from the South. Reinforcements would come from West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.However, having grossly underestimated the willingness of the Guard to participate in the insurrection, they did not expect to encounter the Maryland National Guard instead blockading the roads to D.C. rather than occupying it. The West Virginia Guard demands passage. The Maryland Guard demands their withdrawal.The States align themselves over the course of the next twenty-four hours, but fears of more showdowns increase – not just between States’ guards, but between units within the States who at first wanted to defect, but are now ordered to switch allegiances back to the Federal government. Twelve hours from the president’s address, Ohio reaffirms its declaration of war, and the bulk of its National Guard moves towards the National Capital Region and heightening the government’s urgency to act swiftly to stop the insurrection.As the sun sets on a dividing nation, the Australian Securities Exchange opens for trading in Sydney and immediately plunges. Ten minutes later, the same happens when markets open in Tokyo and Seoul. The panic gripping Americans is spreading across the world. It isn’t just America’s future that depends on a swift resolution to the crisis.Day 2: DeadlineAfter a series of midnight and early morning votes, it appears that the States in rebellion will outnumber the States remaining loyal to the government. The divide between so-called “Red States” and “Blue States” seems now like describing different worlds. “Battleground States” takes on ominous meaning.Overnight, Guard units reinforced their positions outside major Federal installations. Florida’s 164th Air Defense Artillery Brigade took positions near Pensacola and Panama City, effectively denying flight operations out of Eglin and Tyndall Air Force Bases. Combined with the loss of Langley-Eustis at the outset of the insurrection, the US has virtually no combat air power east of the Mississippi River.West Virginia’s Guard withdrew from western Maryland only to take up new positions near Harpers Ferry, where it was joined overnight by elements of the Ohio National Guard. Other units took positions at crossings near Hagerstown and Cumberland. The F-16s of Ohio Air National Guard’s 180th Fighter Wing also redeployed to nearby Sheppard Field. Though Virginia’s legislature is grappling with making a final decision on rebellion, its Guard proactively positioned itself for crossings into Maryland over the Potomac across the American Legion Bridge and to the north of Leesburg, bypassing the defenses erected by the D.C. National Guard.Maryland’s 1,700 Guards are faced with invasion by 9,000 soldiers of its neighbors whose objective is the conquest of Washington, D.C.Realizing its tenuous situation, the Maryland National Guard withdrew most of its force to Frederick, where the Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia Guards are poised to link-up before moving on the nation’s capital. If they attempted to bypass Frederick on the many country roads along the Potomac, Maryland’s units could move more quickly by the highways to intercept them.Meanwhile, the Capital’s Guard of 1,400 locked down the city in preparation of facing off against the advance elements from Virginia. Delaware promised to provide reinforcements to the capital as soon as it has secured its own State against insurrection – but at best it could only offer a few hundred.The New England States have also coalesced around the Federal government, although the New England States have over 30,000 Guardsmen, it’s doubtful that more than 5,000 will be available to go south for the defense of the nation’s capital. In addition to defections, once New Jersey and New York came out in opposition to the declaration of war, the citizen militias that formed at the outbreak of the insurrection began to blockade DC-bound routes. Guard units that might have otherwise participated in the airlift have been redeployed to break the barricades.Along with the obstruction and risk to logistics that the militias present to land routes, Pennsylvania remains on the fence with its borders closed. As such, the New England units, to be joined by the 10th Mountain Division, are preparing for an airlift operation using the region’s five transport wings. However, the operation’s success will depend on secure airspace near the National Capital Region.As such, the 131st Fighter Squadron redeploys from Massachusetts to Maryland to join the 121st in defense of the capital’s airspace.The aircraft carriers Harry S. Truman and Theodore Roosevelt were able to get out of Norfolk with mostly full crews. Virginia National Guard was unable to overrun Oceana Naval Air Station, allowing the carriers’ fighter wings to escape and establish flight operations off the East Coast. However, the president’s orders for Federal forces to maintain a defensive posture means that the fighters are unable to sweep the skies clean in advance of the airlift operation.Elsewhere across the country, as the president’s 24-hour grace period ticks to an end, States that had rushed into the insurrection in the hopes that a quick show of force would force the Federal government to capitulate now find themselves facing the prospect of combating the much superior US Army and Marine Corps.At Fort Campbell, the few thousand Kentucky and Tennessee Guardsmen are outnumbered three-to-one, even with units from Indiana and Michigan arriving to reinforce their positions.In Texas, the Guard quickly abandoned the idea of seizing Forts Bliss and Hood and formed a defensive perimeter around the capital. North Carolina’s reduced-strength Guard faced a similar problem in attempting to surround and secure Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune and retreated to the anticipated defense of Raleigh.The only major Army base that appears to be at risk of a prolonged siege is Fort Carson, Colorado, if only because the indecisiveness of the State’s legislature allowed units from neighboring States to shore up the Colorado Guard’s thin perimeter. Even so, the 4th Infantry Division is hardly ready to give up its post without a fight.The president’s deadline for the insurrection to disband passes. Minutes later, the Virginia State Legislature votes narrowly in favor of the insurrection and calls on the president to resign. Soon after, the order goes out for the combined Virginia-West Virginia-Ohio contingent to move against Maryland and into DC.Second Battle of WashingtonAs the units of Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, and Ohio jockeyed for position to the west of the capital, it was not lost on observers that they were retracing the opening steps of America’s first Civil War. And as it was in the first war, Harpers Ferry became a critical city.Shortly after 10 a.m., the West Virginia and Ohio Guard cross the Potomac unopposed and head towards Frederick. Virginia’s forces cross at two points: One north of Leesburg to link up with the force crossing at Harper’s Ferry before pushing on Frederick, the second at the American Legion Memorial Bridge to both cut off forces retreating from Frederick and begin the surrounding of Washington, D.C.Whereas the force out of Harpers Ferry does not encounter resistance, a detachment of D.C.’s Guard links up with Maryland’s rear guard to stall Virginia’s advance across the American Legion Memorial Bridge.Despite the initial success in repelling the attack, Maryland’s position in the capital’s suburbs is tenuous. There are simply too many side roads that the attacking forces can use to bypass a static defense. As such, Maryland steadily retreats towards Washington, D.C., where the possible avenues of attack narrow.But where the battle on the ground unfolds slowly, it rages at high speeds in the skies above Washington.At the opening of hostilities, Virginia’s 149th and Ohio’s 112th Fighter Squadrons engaged D.C.’s 121st and Massachusetts’ 131st Fighter Squadrons in the skies over the nation’s capital. The pilots defending the capital had the initial advantage of being able to anticipate the attack, but the 131st’s F-15s are outclassed by the F-16s and F-22s arrayed against them, leaving the 121st on its own against the two opposing squadrons.The 131st is forced to withdraw with significant losses, and the 121st is overwhelmed in its airspace. As a consequence, not only is the 10th Mountain Division and New England National Guard unable to airlift to the National Capital Region, Maryland’s 104th Fighter Squadron of A-10s is unable to provide close air support to the steadily retreating Maryland Guard.The second advantage the 121st has is that it is operating near its home base. While the 112th goes safely back to West Virginia for refit, on its way back to refuel and rearm in Langley, the 149th is attacked by the carrier wings from the Truman and Roosevelt. Lacking weapons and low on fuel, they are brought down.Later in the day, the remnants of the 121st and 112th Fighter Squadrons meet again in combat. Both squadrons fly the F-16, and so the battle’s deciding factor is pilot experience. The 121st, having the mission of year-round, 24-hour alertness to defend the capital against airborne threats, has the experience advantage, and bests the 112th in the confrontation.Late in the morning, the Second Marine Expeditionary Force left Camp Lejeune in North Carolina – leaving the task of quelling the State’s National Guard to the 82nd Airborne Division – in order to secure the airbases around Norfolk. Before the survivors of the 149th Fighter Squadron are able to rearm with the remaining F-22s of the 1st Fighter Wing, the Marines secure Langley-Eustis. They also secure Oceana, bringing the combat wings from the Truman and Roosevelt back on land to provide additional defense of the capital’s airspace.By the end of the first day of combat, the Federal and supporting States’ forces are able to secure the airspace over Washington, D.C., opening up the airlift corridor from the Northeast. And although troops on the ground call for close air support, commanders determine that they are operating in too densely populated civilian areas to risk such operations.Complicating the defense of Washington, however, is that late in the afternoon, Pennsylvania, seeing a rising threat in the number of citizen militias organizing in its western counties, declared its allegiance for the insurrection, putting additional pressure on the Maryland Guard. As Pennsylvania’s forces press south, Maryland’s forces abandon Frederick for Rockville, closer to the capital; but when the defense of the American Legion Memorial Bridge begins to break, Maryland troops are forced to pull back into Washington, D.C., itself.Overnight, North Carolina surrenders after brief but heavy fighting overwhelms the defenses at Raleigh. Elements of the 82nd Airborne Division follow the Second Marine Expeditionary Force into Virginia. They link up and press north, bypassing Richmond for the greater strategic goal of securing the capital. But in the same way that the 10th Mountain Division and it allied Guards are hampered from moving through New York and New Jersey, the 82nd and II MEF are frustrated by small, hit-and-run engagements by militias operating along Virginia’s major highways who are quick to share the force’s position with other militias via Internet and social media.Although these battles are small and categorically result in the militias retreating (when not annihilated), the delaying attacks allow the insurrectionist forces to hammer away at Maryland and D.C.’s outnumbered Guards – that is at least until they encounter the city’s prepared defenses.The D.C. Guard, anticipating an attack from all sides, quickly abandoned the outermost areas of the city in order to focus on defending the capital’s core, where there are fewer avenues of attack and where most of the Federal government’s headquarters are located. It was due in part to these defenses that Virginia did not attempt to force a crossing over the main bridges leading into the city – although it maintained the garrison in Fort Belvoir should the operation allow such a strike.As the insurrectionists are drawn farther into the city, their advance slows to a halt. Disabled equipment and roadblocks have shut down the major avenues, forcing infantry through side streets and into building-by-building clearing operations. By the time the heart of D.C. comes under threat of falling under the weight of the advance, the New England airlift has delivered several hundred fresh troops to the city via Joint Base Andrews (an insurrectionist attempt to block their linking up with the city’s defenders was a costly failure).Eventually, the 82nd Airborne and II MEF enter the National Capital Region, relieve the beleaguered Guardsmen, and force the insurrectionists to pull back from the capital.The scene is repeated across the country. Depleted National Guard units found themselves unable to maintain control over every Federal installation without support, nor were they able to withstand sustained, concentrated attacks by the Armed Forces once they were able to coordinate a response to the insurrection. Rebellious States with large garrisons of Armed Forces fell rapidly, emboldening the Federal government to press its advantage and move against those states which remained defiant.The speed with which the insurrection and the Armed Forces’ counterattack unfolded prevented the tens of thousands of militiamen from integrating into their States’ regular units, and they were relegated to hit-and-run tactics. Even after most of the States which initially declared war against the Federal government capitulate, these fighters refuse to give up so easily and become a dedicated, long-term insurgency.ConclusionIn order for the revolution to have guaranteed success, it needs to have unwavering support from all the States and launch a massive, coordinated strike against key Federal installations to minimize the time the Armed Forces might have to organize a counterattack. So in that sense, the answer to the original question is as I said at the outset:50 States versus one guy? Yeah, I am thinking it is not outside the realm of possibility that he could be removed.I’d go further and say that in the case of 50 States united against the president, then the answer to the question as I rephrased it to whether he would be removed is also, “Not outside the realm of possibility.”However, given the likelihood that the States would fragment over whether to support such a rebellion, and given that the Armed Forces, if not quickly suppressed with overwhelming force, absolutely have the capacity to fight back against such an insurrection, it is not a guarantee that the president would be removed – or at least that he would be compelled to capitulate so quickly.What seems to be the most likely outcome of such an insurrection is that the first elements are defeated in a matter of weeks, at which point survivors and militiamen form an insurgency against the Federal government, setting the stage for a very long and destructive conflict. It appears, then, that what would remove the president would not be a military campaign, but a revolt by voters at the ballot box against a government that failed to provide for their security.

There was no GPS in the preceding 100 years of night flying.America originated aids to night-flying by laying out airway light beacons, and the radio beacons, on the ground in the early days of low-altitude flying by Air-Mail pilots.Charles Lindbergh was one of them. A young airmail pilot flying the route in his old Liberty-powered surplus D.H.4 World War 1 biplane, Lindbergh jumped out with his parachute several times on his mail run.Illuminating the Night Mail RoutePlans for lighting the portion of the transcontinental aerial route between Chicago and Cheyenne had begun in 1923.0verseeing the lighting research from the Post Office Department side was General Superintendent of the US Airmail Service Carl F. Egge and an engineer by the name of J. V. Magee.This particular section of the route was to serve as a demonstration of airway lighting, since both westbound and eastbound morning departures would travel the segment at night.Westbound morning flights from New York City would arrive in Chicago before nightfall, while similar eastbound morning mail plane departures from San Francisco would arrive in Cheyenne before dark.Therefore, flights on the Cheyenne—Chicago segment of the transcontinental aerial route would happen every night in both directions.The major lighting equipment for the project came from three different manufacturers.The General Electric Company of Schenectady, New York, furnished thirty arc and incandescent-type rotating searchlights.These 175,000,000 candlepower lights were to be located at twenty-five-mile intervals along the airway at emergency fields.Sperry Gyroscope Company of Brooklyn, New York provided five rotating aviation beacons of 325,000,000 candlepower, each mounted on a sixty-foot-high tower; these huge lights were located at Chicago, Iowa City, Omaha, North Platte, and Cheyenne.The smaller of the beacons were visible from thirty miles away, and the larger were visible from fifty miles away.Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also was involved in the undertaking.The plan called for the installation of several supplementary forms of illumination for the main and emergency landing fields.Engineers and planers already had completed several small experiments and published theoretical treatises on illumination.However, to complete a project on the scale of the Chicago-Cheyenne undertaking was incomprehensible.As early as 1920 in Germany, the Illustrierte Flug-Welt published the results of a study on the use of beacon lights and similar aids for night flying.The researchers' goal was to make night flying as safe as possible.The document, translated by the Wright Aeronautical Corporation, called for airway lights to become an integral part of any future night aeronautical undertaking.Thus, the US plan called for the installation of two hundred fifty acetylene intermittent lights at three-mile intervals along the Chicago-Cheyenne section.The American Gas Accumulator Company made these small beacons, which flashed at a rate of one hundred fifty times per minute.The lights consisted of a tank of acetylene that was sufficient for four months of operations.A sun valve was included, which would turn the device on at dusk or under low light conditions, and then off when not needed.Searchlights at each emergency field along the airways were to rotate at a frequency of six times per minute.At the larger terminals, all buildings in and around the fields were floodlighted to provide pilots with as close to a daytime perspective as possible (see figure below).▲The airmail landing field in Iowa City with a standard airway bea-con on the tallest tower, a rotating airport beacon on the hangar, and a power-ful floodlight for illuminating the operational area. Courtesy of: Smithsonian National Air and Space Collection.Ten standard mail planes were quickly equipped with navigating lights, taillights, instrument board lights, and powerful headlights by the Post Office Dept.Initially, many of the regular airmail pilots were reluctant to attempt the test of night flying.Nonetheless, as the department solidified the demonstration project and the test date approached, almost all of the pilots in the service were reassured and willing to participate.With the installation of all these various aeronautical lights and the airplanes flown prepared, the US Airmail Service finally was ready to assess the system.At dusk on August 21,1923, a five-day series of demonstrations began for the 885-mile stretch between Chicago and Cheyenne.This aeronautical event also was quite a landmark occasion, since these inaugural flights took place on the very first night airway system in the world.At each of the five terminal locations—Chicago, Iowa City, Omaha, North Platte, and Cheyenne—the large thirty-six-inch electric arc beacons rotated, the smaller eighteen-inch incandescent beacons turned, and other lights of equal candlepower flooded the runways.There was an illuminated fabric cone showing the direction and velocity of the wind mounted on the hangar at each landing field.Smaller devices lit the outbuildings, antennas, and boundaries.The ten very experienced pilots did an exceptional job of completing the landmark flights. The Post Office Department's estimate for the average transit time over the entire route was 28 hours.When the test actually began, the department omitted the east and west daylight departures on the first day.The six additional full-route trips flown over the next three days averaged 28.25 hours.With this new around-the-clock service successfully underway, stakeholders wondered if the end of the railroads as the sole transport mode for time-sensitive mail coast-to-coast was at hand.The results were as expected on the Chicago-Cheyenne route, despite challenging weather conditions that are common to that particular stretch of the country.According to the postmaster general, only six of the first twenty nights during the first month of regularly scheduled night operations had clear weather.Pilots often encountered cloud-bursts, tornadoes, and severe electrical storms along the flight route.Conditions were such that the US Airmail Service flew one mile of every three (or about 60,000 of the total 180,000) miles at night and through storms.Aviation Magazine reported, "in spite of bad weather during most of the night flying the schedule was maintained without accidents worthy of the name."The success of using a series of lighted beacons to show the way across the country was not a surprise.Aerial Age Weekly had opined two years before that when a pilot began to head westward from the New York area at night, no longer would he begin the journey in a depressed mood, because 'Instead the plane will start with a confident aviator so equipped that it will be a difficult task for him to lose his way unless he loses both sight and hearing.... All the way across the continent this pilot and the pilots relieving him will be guided by beacons shining upward into the air."Other interesting technical developments also were also in the offing.In 1923, Postmaster General Harry S. New ordered that all airmail planes were to be equipped with radios capable of sending and receiving. The vision was that pilots using these sets could be in continual communication with land stations while in the air and receive information on current weather, routing changes, and even emergency directions.Tests by the General Electric Company began with airmail pilot Jack Knight flying a standard DH mail plane equipped with a two-hundred-foot trailing wire antenna, a five-tube transmitter, a seven-tube receiver, a twelve-volt battery, and a fifty-two-pound, seven-hundred-watt dynamotor.DH mail planeAll initial trials were successful; listeners even heard the in-air broadcasts as far as one hundred miles away. In later follow-on tests between Omaha and North Platte, Knight's broadcasts every ten minutes along the entire route made from two thousand feet in the air were heard easily at the Omaha station, which used only a makeshift receiver."The Post Office Department had carefully laid the groundwork to get out of the flying portion of the airmail business. By as early as 1925, airmail had likely developed to the point where the department could "Retire from the field and turn over operations to private capital. Not only had volume on the mail line grown to a point warranting the assumption that private enterprise could support the venture but demands for extension of service were being made by cities not situated so as to derive any substantial benefit from the Government operation."The Boeing Company won the bid for the Chicago—San Francisco section on January 15, 1927, and National Air Transport was awarded a contract for the New York—Chicago section on March 8,1927 (the whole coast-to-coast journey was considered too arduous for one operator to handle the entire route).When operations began in mid-1927, nearly every major city had airmail system service.As expected, with the awarding of the New York—San Francisco airmail route, the Post Office Department discontinued the operation of aircraft entirely.It is important to recognize that the accomplishments of the department during the less than a decade period of carrying the mail were numerous; in some cases, these pioneering aeronautical feats could even be considered exemplary.Perhaps the most fundamental of these accomplishments was that the American public now had a closer relationship with commercial aircraft utilization.In addition, little if any doubt existed about the use of airplanes to maintain a regular schedule of operations in all seasons, during night or day, and in any weather.An added benefit was that a considerable portion of the public had become convinced of the safety of air transportation.Second Assistant Postmaster General W. Irving Glover stated, "now that the Air Mail Service will be operated entirely by private contract, private enterprise no doubt will stimulate the use of the service and carry on the development of commercial aviation to a point little dreamed of at this time."Many people saw the further advance of civil aeronautics as being safer than ever before, since the majority of these new companies had strong management and a solid financial foundation.There was every reason to believe that within another five years, it would be possible to travel by airplane at an average speed of well over one hundred miles per hour between any of the major cities of the United States. Flying by day and by night, with the positive assurance that no greater risk would be involved than travel by rail, seemed to be a reality.Although the Post Office Department, along with its award-winning US Airmail Service, had already made a remarkable contribution to aviation, there were still several operational challenges that required the strong influence and support of the government to overcome.27 One of the most important of these undertakings was to further aerial research and development in the use of electronic means to achieve all-weather navigation. Initially, the Post Office Department had already begun installing a system of airway beacon lights, and that work needed to be completed.When created October 1, 1926, the Airways Division assumed the tasks of examining airways and emergency landing fields and erecting and maintaining the air navigation system.Initial plans for the division included the erection of fifty-foot towers with twenty-four-inch revolving beacons at ten-mile intervals along each airway. At every third beacon, there was an intermediate landing field of approximately forty to fifty acres—established if the topography of the locale would permit.Each field was to have runways of not less than fifteen hundred feed, white boundary lights every three hundred feet, and red lights mounted on any obstruction.Green lights showed the best landing approach, and the beacon tower had a lighted wind cone (see figure below).A fifty-six-foot-long cement arrow pointed along the airway at the base of the tower.A small ten-by-fourteen-foot powerhouse with the number of the beacon and the airway identification conspicuously painted on opposite sides of the gabled roof completed the installation.Adding to the division's growing span of control and facility inventory, the Post Office Department transferred to the Department of Commerce jurisdiction over 2,041 miles of lighted airways.▲A composite drawing of an airway beacon displaying all the typical features and accoutrements found at most sites. This particular beacon would be found on the San Francisco to Salt Lake City segment of the transcontinental aerial route. Courtesy of: Howard H. and Judith E. Campbell Collection.Let us visit the times of our forefathers, and how they flew the beam.Airway Flying“With Guadalupe Pass just ahead, I passed towering El Capitan Mountain at about sunset. Climbing to 7,500 feet, I went through the Pass just as it got dark. By that time, the airways beacons had been turned on. The weather was so clear I could see six beacons ahead, which is about 60 miles. With conditions like that, I had little to do outside of fly from beacon to beacon along the airway. The route I flew was that used by American Airlines.Passing over Little Rock, I set a course for Memphis, 130 miles ahead. It still was pitch black out, although visibility was excellent and I could still follow the string of airway beacons. I was flying at 4,000 feet between Little Rock and Memphis when I spotted a large forest fire a little to one side of my course. At about the same time the visibility started to haze up. I thought at first it was because of the fire, but the haze continued far from the fire. I drank some of the water and milk and nibbled a candy bar just before checking in over Memphis. All the while it kept getting hazier until my visibility was cut down to just two airway beacons. Just outside of Memphis I discovered one of the beacons had gone out and I had to set a compass course for the next one. Nashville, my next check point, was 200 miles ahead….”▲Johnny Jones flew coast-to-coast across the US on 29 November, 1928, using beacons in an Aeronca in 30 hours 47 minutes.1928: Commerce demanded night flying, and so the US went to work.Lights for the western half of the transcontinental and other western airways have been purchased by the Department of Commerce the Aeronautics Branch announced. Three airways will receive 250 rotating beacon searchlights, the San Francisco-Salt Lake section of the transcontinental, the Los Angeles-Salt Lake and the Louisville - Cleveland Airways. These lighting facilities will provide for a change of schedule so that mail collected at the end of any business day on the Atlantic seaboard or Pacific coast will reach its destination with a loss of but one business day, the schedule providing for flying two nights and one day.Night flying will take place from San Francisco to Cheyenne and from Chicago to New York under the program of the Department. Intermediate landing fields will be provided 30 miles apart and beacon lights will be spaced approximately 10 miles apart.The beacons are identified by route designations based on the names of principal terminal cities and mileage numbers, painted on the roof of the power sheds. The new beacons were designated by the Airways Division of the Department of Commerce after operating experience wit h equipment supplied by manufacturers a n d incorporating the superior features of all types of equipment.The searchlight beacons are fitted with a 24-inch parabolic mirror and 1,000-watt airway lamps developing 2,000,000 candle-power.The revolving mechanism is motor driven, providing a flash of light every ten seconds. For controlling course light projectors pointing along the route and flashing the code numbers of the beacons for identification from a distance, auxiliary contactors are provided in the mechanism. A lamp exchanger is furnished so as to provide uninterrupted service in case of lamp failure. The beacons are mounted on 51 foot skeleton towers, at the bases of which are concrete arrows 56 feet long, pointing out the direction of the course and painted chrome yellow.———————————-By 1939, 22,000 miles of the world of US airways were lighted by 1,000,000-candlepower beacons that shone like lighthouse beams. Most of this network was tied indissolubly by radio beams that crackled 24 hours a day. Over 13,200 miles of this distance Department of Commerce and Department of Agriculture teletypes sent weather news, dispatching information.By 1941, 2,261 revolving beacon lights (Six times a minute - 2,500,000 candlepower beam) were operated by the CAA for the guidance of America's increasing commercial, military and private flying.Lighthouses of the air, they threw beams which crossed and criss-crossed 30,488 miles of Federally-operated airways in the US and its possessions.Along those airways were 914 emergency landing fields spaced at approximately 50-mile intervals.The radio range had been developed and put into wide use, but the number of airways' beacons was steadily increasing.As more of them were added to the nation's airways, the work of the men who kept them in operation—the obscure and often-forgotten airways mechanicians—became more important.The following 1929 publication from the US Department of Commerce is illustrative:Lighting As An Aid to safetyby F.C. Hingsburg, Chief Engineer, Airways Division, U.S.Department of CommerceNIGHT flying is essential for successful air transportation operations in the United States as the basic source of revenue is the transportation of air mail and express.The Civil Airways are established under present policies to serve the requirements of the air mail routes and schedules. The economics of present air transportation re-quires the gathering of mail at the close of the business day and transporting it to remote destinations for early delivery on the next or successive business day.Airway lights have been installed on more than 7,500 miles of airways and 4,000 additional miles are being lighted during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1929.The present program includes the completion of the Transcontinental lighting system from Salt Lake City to San Francisco.Upon the completion of the lighting a double mail schedule will be established.Mail collected at the close of the business day on the Pacific Coast will be delivered on the Atlantic Seaboard in the first mail delivery on the second day after posting, the mail having traveled two nights and one day on its journey from coast to coast.Close connections with feeder routes will make this service available to 69,000,000 people through 109 air mail stops at commercial centers.This fast transportation system will be an important factor in the exchange of ideas, enlargement of the scope of business activity, and creation of a better understanding of our national problems.Night flying, although it has been carried on successfully by air transport companies, is more hazardous than day flying.This is due to poor visibility, imperfect observation of weather conditions by the pilot and difficulty with which the extent and severity of storms may be determined, and the prevalence and rapid formation of fog and change of weather conditions at night.To reduce these hazards, the Air Commerce Act authorized the establishment of airways equipped with air navigation facilities.The airways are selected to follow the route offering the best flying conditions between the designated airports and are provided with intermediate landing fields approximately 30 miles apart to provide safe landing places under conditions of stress of weather or mechanical troubles.One company flying 1,500,000 miles had 420 forced landings due to adverse weather and 55 due to mechanical and other difficulties.A forced landing due to impossible flying weather was, made for every 1,350 miles of flight and a forced landing due to mechanical or other reasons for every 27,000 miles of flight.The air navigation facilities consist of route markers and landing field markers for day flying, an airway lighting system for night flying, a weather reporting and forecast system under the Weather Bureau, a communications system for the exchange of weather and other information over the airway, radio direction for the guidance of airplanes over the lighted airway and radio telephone communications to aircraft in flight.A high percentage of night flying efficiency coupled with safety will require the combined use of all these facilities, properly coordinated.The establishment of a lighting system for clear weather visibility is comparatively simple.Under such conditions the patterns of city lights and stray lights are beacons of the first magnitude, but under adverse weather conditions the stray lights lose their characteristics and become confusing, competitive lights.The airway lighting system should be designed for poor visibility flying.The beacon light should have an optical design that utilizes the greatest percentage of light flux from the light source, concentrating the light into a high intensity beam of candlepower in excess of competitive or stray lights, and project the beam into the sectors most useful to the pilot.The light should have a distinctive characteristic so as to be recognized instantly among the stray lights as a light of aeronautical character and should have individuality so as to be recognized as a landmark of known geographic location.The durations of flashes should be sufficiently great to develop the maximum luminous value on the retina of the eye and the luminous period and frequency of flashes should be proper to fix the location on the horizon.The lights should be spaced as close as availability of funds permits.The determination of the proper light intensity, power import, and spacing of lights is a complicated economic and scientific problem.One of the factors involved is the penetration of lights through the atmosphere under varying degrees of poor visibility.The inadequacy of the three mile spacing of low candle-powered acetylene lights installed by the Post Office Department was demonstrated. The 200 m/m unit with one foot burner developed about 120 candlepower.Aeronautical lights should have candlepowers in excess of 1,000 but the close spacing was correct in principle.Based on the results of economic studies it was determined that the best average results were obtained by using a 24 inch revolving beacon of two million candlepower with identifying courselights spaced ten miles apart along the airway.The lights are mounted on a skeleton tower, as shown in the figure below. Commercial power is used where available, but other-wise duplicate gasoline driven generating plants of 2 KW capacity furnish the current.▲Typical arrangement of 24-inch beaconTen lights of this character are established to each block of one hundred miles and code numbers are flashed on the courselight projectors, giving the mileage location along the airway.Red courselights are used as beacons where no landing fields are located; yellow course-lights are used at beacons on intermed-iate landing fields. The lights are elevated to show the greatest candlepower to the pilot when he is flying above the adjacent beacon at a height of 500 to 1,500 feet.The latest design of 24 inch revolving beacon is shown in the figure below.▲24-inch revolving searchlight beacon and emergency landing field beaconThe light from a 1,000 watt, 110 volt, T-20, Airway lamp is concentrated by a parabolic mirror into a beam of two million candle-power having a 4° beam spread. The front cover glass has prisms on the inside surface which deflect some of the light upward from 0° to 25° that the pilot will not miss the beam by flying too far above it as he approaches over the airway.A half drum lens is mounted as a saddle on the drum, gathering the light, otherwise lost, into a fan-shaped beam of light showing from horizon to horizon perpendicular to the axis of the main beam.As the beacon rotates, secondary flashes of 12,000 candlepower are shown 21/2 seconds before and after the principal flash and are decidedly advantageous at close range, especially in thick weather.A courselight of entirely new design using doublet lenses and horizontal spread light mirror is also recommended.The lamp used in this unit is a 500 watt, G 40, 110 volt monoplane filament lamp of 800 hours life, and develops 165,000 candlepower with 15° beam spread.Another new addition to the list of optical apparatus of the Airways Division is a flashing code beacon.The lantern is a 300 m/m double unit with two light sources using 200 watt, P 8 30, ring filament lamps of 1,000 hours life, both lamps.burning simultaneously.The flashing code beacon is used for marking major obstructions along airways, and also for intermediate airway lights, where power is available, and for marking intermediate landing fields located off the airway, in a valley or obstructed from view of adjacent beacons, in which case an airway beacon is located on high ground and has yellow courselights to show the availability of the landing field.Intermediate landing fields are marked by an airway beacon with yellow course-lights and the landing area is outlined by boundary cones and lights spaced approximately 300 feet apart.Red obstruction lights are mounted on all obstructions. Green range lights in the boundary system mark the best approaches and runways.An internally lighted wind cone is mounted on the beacon tower.Ceiling lights are installed at intermediate landing fields at which weather reporting stations are located.The ceiling light is a 14 inch projector.The light is projected at an angle of 63°-26' above the horizon and the height of the ceiling is measured by a ceiling height indicator.The maintenance of airway lights through isolated and sparsely inhabited sections presents a serious problem. To meet this situation an improved acetylene route beacon was developed by the Airways Division.It combines the highest development of railroad signal practice with marine range lighting system and is applied to airway lighting in a new and unique manner. Two lanterns are used, one being mounted above the other. The top lantern is an azimuth and off course-light, having a separate flasher, piping and gas supply, showing 40 flashes per minute of 180 candlepower.The lower light is a courselight of 15° beam spread and 5,000 candlepower flashing 20 times per minute. The lower light is a double ended range light lantern having 18" bull's-eye lenses with 10" doublet lenses. This acetylene apparatus offers the greatest degree of reliability with its dual lanterns, each with separate mechanism and gas supply, and its automatic features enable its installation in isolated localities for operation without attendance for periods of six months or more.These lights will be spaced three miles apart. They bring within the realm of possibility, close spacing of lights of adequate candlepower, luminous period, and distinctive aeronautical character at a cost of installation and maintenance comparable to electric lights at ten mile spacing.Where a revolving beacon of two million candlepower is picked up by a pilot at thirty miles, the acetylene range light of 5,000 candlepower will be visible thirteen miles.Under conditions of fair visibility when a revolving beacon is seen ten miles, the acetylene range light is visible five miles. On a thick night when the pilot advances five miles beyond a revolving beacon, before he picks up another revolving beacon five miles ahead of him, the acetylene range beacons will be visible from light to light at three miles spacing.Airways are laid out over the safest low level routes providing weather landing fields 30 miles apart, preferably fol-lowing habitation, roads, communications and power, and reconciled to the installation of lighting and radio aids. A high percentage of completed trips on schedule time is essential for the success of air transportation and the combined use of lights and radio direction is essential to meet this requirement.For safety the radio marked airway must coincide with the lighted airway, the pilots making use of all facilities and traveling the same routes in bad weather as on clear nights.When lights are not visible one to another, radio direction takes the pilot over the airway, enabling him to catch a glimpse of lights and fields at close range and this combination of blind-contact flying will increase the flying efficiency with the greatest degree of safety.On the Transcontinental Airway 15 radio-range beacons are required to mark the lighted airway from coast to coast.The radio-range beacons will be erected at the center of straight courses and radio mark 50 to 150 miles of airways in opposite directions.Once established and checked the radio marked course will be permanently fixed so that the edge of the radio-range will cut on definite landmarks and never be shifted.This requirement will develop the greatest confidence in blind flying by the pilots.At the change of course and at intersections of airways, great confusion would result due to interference of the overlapping signals if all beacon signals are transmitted on one wave length, and to meet the situation about 6 channels separated by a frequency of 5 KC are required.Each beacon should also be identified by its individual characteristic.This winter will see nine radio-beacons in operation on the Transcontinental, marking lighted airway courses.Five individual characteristics suitable for the interlock equisignal range beacon will be used for identifying the beacons.Visual indication appears to have great possibilities when developed to meet operating conditions involving a number of radio-beacon installations with overlapping ranges.Radio direction is the subject of a paper by another author and is introduced here to show its interrelationship to lighted airways from an operating point of view.Careful consideration has been given in the design and construction of structures and equipment to reliability of service for the safety of air navigation.Lamp exchangers are used to guard against lamp failure and duplicate engine-generators are installed where power is not available.Electrical work is placed in waterproof conduits according to the National Underwriters Rules and under-ground cable is lead encased and armoured with underground connections made in waterproof boxes filled with insulating compound.Apparatus is rugged in construction and efficient in operation.Airway mechanicians are assigned to about 200 miles of airways and thoroughly inspect and overhaul all apparatus at least once a month.A fleet of 40 trucks is used for transportation and to carry spare parts for all apparatus so that immediate replacement of any defective apparatus may be made.The general supervision of airways is under the direction of District Lighthouse Superintendents, and Airway Engineers assigned to these offices supervise the maintenance work. (The lighted airways receive the same attention, following the same policies and practices used in administering the great work of the Lighthouse Service.)Close cooperation exists between the Air Transport Companies and airways personnel.Arrangements have been made on all lighted airways for daily pilot reports covering the operation of lights.Airways mechanicians communicate each morning with Air Transport representatives for pilots' reports and defects reported by pilots are given immediate attention.Local notices to Air Transport Companies and to the aeronautical public are issued covering all changes in aids to navigation and these changes are published in the Domestic Air News.Steps have recently been taken to equip an airplane for the quarterly inspection of all airways and landing fields, for the purpose of certifying to the aeronautical public the adequacy and safety of air navigation facilities.The airways lights established by the Department and the majority of airport lights are revolving beacons and this type of light has been developed and characterized as aeronautical lights.Lights established on an airway are given characteristics similar to airway lights, revolving 6 R.P.M. and elevated about 1 degree above the horizon.Rotating beacons that are not located on an airway revolve 2 R.P.M. and are elevated 15 degrees or more.The towers of transmission lines are required to be painted alternate bands of chrome yellow and white separated by narrow black bands and the towers marked with red obstruction lights.The electric code lantern with 200 watt lamps and red globes is suitable for tower obstruction lights.Marking the span across navigable waters is required, but presents several difficulties in connection with proper maintenance.The indirect marking of the span by high intensity projected light beams from the tops of the towers along the span is suggested, using 14 inch ceiling light units with 250 watt low voltage lamps for spotlight service.Many beacons are identified as to location by course lights, mounted on the beacon platform, which blink a Morse code characteristic. Red or green signals, either flashed by the main beacon light, course lights or auxiliary blinker lights, or a combination of both, give other information to the pilot. It might tell him whether a lighted area suitable for night landing is nearby, whether no landing area is in the vicinity, or whether an unlighted field is in the neighborhood. All this, plus the beacon's value as a directional aid, added up to greater safety along the airways.Beacons nearest to "civilization" are powered by 110-volt AC commercial electricity. Those in the wilder, more isolated spots are self-powered. That is, the beacon "plant" includes its own power-generating equipment.▲Hauling petrol to a remotely-located beacon▲Generating unit for remotely-located beaconsA beacon light generally is mounted on a steel-skeleton tower. The standard beacon tower is 51 feet high. Towers of other heights also are used, depending upon circumstances. In Pennsylvania, for instance, a number of beacons are mounted on 90-foot forest fire observation towers; a 150-foot tower, highest in the country upon which is mounted a rotating beacon, is located near Linden, N. J. At Casey, m., on the St. Louis-Indianapolis airway, a beacon is mounted on a 240-foot water tank. In New York city, on the New York-Boston airway, one is mounted on a tower of the George Washington bridge, 640 feet high.1929: The Early days of Aeronautical RadioAlready the US is being covered by a network of commercial airways.Soon these will be charted like the ocean lanes.They need to be as completely marked by beacons as the river channels and the coastwise steamship courses.The work of charting the airways is well begun.An aviator can secure, from the Department of Commerce, strip maps showing the principal routes and as much of the country on each side as a pilot is likely to see while following the courses.Powerful beacons throw beams of light to guide the planes at night on the more important routes.Radio beacons are being developed by the Department of Commerce which will make it even easier and safer for a plane to keep on her course at night than it is, sometimes, by day.But the radio aids to navigation in the air are of no use to a pilot whose plane has no radio equipment.There is a great need for radio equipment that the owners of airplanes will install and that pilots will use.Planes operated by air transport companies are flying 10,000,000 miles a year. Nineteen contractors operate 27 air mail lines. Their planes fly more than 25,000 miles a day over 35 states. The 102 cities at which they stop are the trade centers for 62,000,000 people. As much as 13 tons of air mail have been carried in a single day.The weight of an average letter is under half an ounce, and that amount of mail touches the lives and for-tunes of an enormous number of citizens.Already there are 7,700 miles of airways lighted for night flying and there will be 4,000 miles more within a year.There are 1,338 airports and flying fields in use and 665 others are in various stages of development.And yet a radio-equipped airplane is seldom seen.Airplanes are noisy.There seems to be no way to suppress their uproar.The engine must run. The exhaust cannot be muffled without losing much-needed power. The propellers raise a rumpus in beating the air. The fuselage and wing covering is stretched like a drumhead and seems to magnify the noise. The wind shrieks past exposed wires.Inside a cabin it is as easy to converse as in an enclosed car, but radio signals are not always as strong as a human voice.The airplane radio receiver must amplify the signals enough to make them heard above all this commotion.It is not necessary to produce loud speaker volume. A man who wants to use radio in an airplane is satisfied to have a pair of phones in his helmet. More troublesome than the mechanical noise, however, is the electrical interference from the ignition system.In the Whirlwind motor there are nine cylinders, each equipped with two spark plugs—eighteen tiny transmitters sparking constantly.This ordinarily causes a steady rattle which sounds like very severe static.Most of this noise is eliminated by copper braiding over all the ignition wires, grounded to the engine and the metal frame of the ship, but the total elimination of engine noise is a serious problem.When an airplane carries a radio man, or has a radio set for the use of passengers, any ordinary type of receiver can be used.The operator can tune in stations in the usual way and the only difference between using a set in a plane or elsewhere is the amount of the extraneous noise.It is like trying to bring in a con-cert in a room with a large and restless family.When a set is to be used by the pilot, it is better to have it tuned permanently to approximately the frequency of the station that the pilot needs to hear.The Bureau of Standards has developed a visual indicator for aircraft radio beacon signals. It can be used with any receiver that can be tuned to the frequency of the beacon and that will deliver the moderate amount of energy required to operate the indicator. It is mounted on the instrument board of a plane and is as easy to read as the clock.The pilot sees two horizontal white lines, end to end, with a black space between.When he is exactly on his course, the lines are of equal length.If he swerves to the right, the line at the right lengthens. If he goes to the left of the course, the left line lengthens.The same beacon may guide the ship away from it and toward it. The pilot merely turns the indicator upside down when he starts back toward the beacon.The indicator is mounted so that this can be done without difficulty.An important question now is high power at 850 to 950 meters to transmit tip to 250 miles, to cover the skip distance from a light-weight short-wave transmitter.For long flights both may be needed.Direction finders on planes, to pick up short-wave transmitters up to 25 miles, may prove to be better than beacons because, if a pilot gets very far from the line of the beacon, he may not hear it. It would be practicable for a ground station to use an automatic phone transmitter that would speak the name of the station.A pilot who could hear two such stations could quickly plot his location. Or he could steer for one station after another along the route. Airplanes in the near future may use also an automatic code transmitter, operated by pressing a button, by which a pilot can signal at intervals to ground dispatching stations or ask for weather reports.The Airman’s ChallengeIn the daytime pilots depend on their eyes and their knowledge of the landmarks.At night they watch the compass, the altimeter and other instruments.When fog obscures the beacons they are beset by more dangers than threatened the sea captain before the day of the radio compass.Any competent airplane pilot can fly his ship successfully when he can see the ground and when his plane and instruments are in working order, but radio is needed when fog, clouds, or the darkness of night reduce the visibility to zero and when flying instruments go wrong.It relieves the tension on the pilot if radio can bring him accurate reports of the weather ahead. If he knows that he is heading toward a storm he can steer around it or go down to a landing field and wait for it to pass over.Eventually, radio will be used in dispatching planes and in signalling to them when fields are clear for landing, just as telegraphy is used in the handling of railroad trains.Already the US is being covered by a network of commercial airways.Soon these will be charted like the ocean lanes.They need to be as completely marked by beacons as the river channels and the coastwise steamship courses.The work of charting the airways is well begun.An aviator can secure, from the Department of Commerce, strip maps showing the principal routes and as much of the country on each side as a pilot is likely to see while following the courses.Powerful beacons throw beams of light to guide the planes at night on the more important routes.Radio beacons are being developed by the Department of Commerce which will make it even easier and safer for a plane to keep on her course at night than it is, sometimes, by day.But the radio aids to navigation in the air are of no use to a pilot whose plane has no radio equipment.There is a great need for radio equipment that the own-ers of airplanes will install and that pilots will use.Air pilots are as anxious as their passengers and employers to make flying safe.If an accident happens, the pilot is more likely to be smashed or burned alive than anyone else.Nevertheless, pilots do not like to bother with radio apparatus as it is at present, in spite of the fact that it can add an element of safety.Student flyers disliked radio so much that sometimes they deliberately broke connections on the code practice transmitter to get out of attending the code classes. These men were under the stress of war.Anxious to fly, they had been forced to learn to send and receive code messages in addition to all the rest of their hard work.They were under orders to listen in for signals, and to signal back to the ground station while making observations.It was just one more thing to vex a man whose eyes, ears, hands and brain were already overburdened with details.Pilots of today are not opposed to radio, but they refuse to interest themselves in understanding the dots and dashes.It takes real skill to handle radio in the air, and the combination of capable pilot and competent rode operator seldom happens.The job of the experts is to simplify airplane radio so that pilots can use radio beacons and weather reports with no more effort than it takes to glance at the altimeter or the tachometer.Flying over the Atlantic off Long Island in The Flying Laboratory and watching the ocean liners far below, it is easy to understand that the air pilot has all the difficulties of the ocean navigator, in addition to many that are peculiar to the airplane.The sea captain, out of sight of land, has plenty of time to take observations on the sun or stars and check his course, but the air pilot cannot leave his controls for a second.Sailors, asked where the nearest land is, often say, jokingly, that it is straight down.The same always is true on aircraft, and it is no joke.That land straight down is a constant menace except for a few open spaces, far apart, that are smooth enough to land on.The sea captain does not have to worry about altitude, for his chart shows him the permanent positions of the rocks and shoals, but altitude means life or death to the air pilot.The navigator has a quiet room in which to make his calculations and think out his problems.The air pilot is deafened by the noise from his engine and propeller, and he has to make his calculations in his head and in a hurry. He cannot walk about to relieve muscular strain and nervous tension, but must sit in the same position hour after hour.The navigator can puff contentedly at his pipe, cigar or cigarette.The aviator always must think of the gallons of gas in the tank within arm's reach, and the possibility of a leak and an explosion.The navigator can guide his ship through the night in mid-ocean with the assurance that he will not strike a rock or shoal and that the positions of most of the other ships and obstructions in his vicinity are known.The quarter-master at the wheel keeps the ship on her course and the bow watchmen look out for trouble ahead.The airman is never more than a mile or two from death and he has to be his own steersman and lookout.The fuel can give out on a steamship, or the machinery break down, and she still can keep afloat and have a chance of being saved. But when an airplane runs out of gas, or the engine stalls, the only chance that her pilot has of avoiding disaster is to find a landing place within the next few seconds.When The Flying Laboratory has completed her work of developing airplane radio sets that will make it easy for pilots to locate radio beacons and to hear frequent weather reports—sent by radio telephone, not telegraph—air travel will become safer than automobile travel on congested highways where anyone may drive who can pass a very easy examination.▲Research Engineer M.B.Sleeper is carrying out radio experiments in his Flying Laboratory in his personal capacity.Among the special problems that radio encounters in aviation are antenna design, noise and simplicity. The Flying Laboratory is attacking all of these.Like other airplanes, she has used trailing wire antennas. These are unreeled after the ship is in the air and reeled in—if the operator remembers it!—when she comes down for a landing.These antennas have a lead fish on the end to hold the wire steady in the air.Sometimes the fish gets off the wire and dives, and there always is a chance that it may "bean" someone down below.The Bureau of Standards has experimented with a vertical rod antenna, in connection with its development of aircraft radio beacons.The results have been encouraging.This antenna responds very little to the horizontal electrical field of the radio wave and that is a great advantage in radio beacon service.Pilots, however, prefer not to use anything that offers resistance to the air as such an antenna does, and the amount of energy gathered from the radio waves by such a rod is limited by its small height.The Loveless antenna, which has produced greater volume of sound at the receiver than a 100-foot single-wire antenna erected twice as high above the ground, seems well adapted to airplane work except for receiving signals from radio beacons.It can be mounted in the wings or tail and will not interfere in any way with the operation of the plane.The Flying Laboratory has carried loop antennas and the results are very satisfactory, especially in reducing engine noise in the receiver.Where Have the Beacons Gone?By 1951, the picture had changed. The CAA (forerunner of the FAA) said:"It is true that the CAA is a Government organization to make flying safer. The CAA also is the organization charged with aiding the development of civil aviation and with the operation and maintenance of a common system of air navigation and traffic control .. ."Specifically, here is the story."Beacons. The Congressional Aviation Policy Board said in 1948 that 'in the interest of economy, the civil aeronautics authorities should give consideration to gradual removal of airway beacon lights, except for beacons marking airports and emergency fields.' Following this directive, the CAA made a careful study of the need for beacons and set up certain safety criteria which indicated that CAA should continue to operate 844 beacons, but could discontinue 945."It was further decided to make these 945 available to cities and states for use either at present or other locations. Negotiations now under way indicate that at least 95 of the 945 beacons . . . will be transferred to city or state use. . . .In selecting the 844 beacons for continued Federal operation, these safety standards were followed (a) continue marking hazards and airports, (b) continue marking points on an airway in mountainous terrain, (c) continue airway beacon lights where clearly required for air carrier operations, (d) continue any other beacon lights where unusual or exceptional safety considerations require them."We are now engaged in a detailed study of the need for beacons in sparsely populated areas . . . Each area of the country is being studied thoroughly in order to determine not only where beacons may be eliminated but where it is necessary to maintain beacons or to relocate beacons to better use.". . Justification of funds for maintenance and operation of lighted air-ways beacons has become increasingly difficult in the light of the following: (A) The last beacons were established in 1941, when the domestic mileage of Federal airways was 30,913. Today, the air-ways mileage has almost doubled, with-out the addition of beacons. In fact, the number of beacons was down from 2,276 in 1941 to 1,789 on April 1, 1950, before the present policy on discontinuation was put into effect. The fact that roughly half of present airways are not implemented with beacon lights raises a grave question about the necessity for them on many of the airways which are so equipped. (B) While night flying with beacons as a primary aid was done some years ago by all users, improved safety standards can be met only by using a combination of two-way radio and electronic aids during periods of low visibility. As congestion along airways in-creases, the danger of night flying with-out electronics aids increases. There are some convincing arguments to show that night flying, except at low altitudes and in very clear weather, or of airways in sparsely settled areas, should be restricted to aircraft fitted to maintain communications and to fly on instruments."Radio ranges.Over a long period, CAA has performed development work aimed at developing a better navigation aid than the low-frequency range which, although refined in many ways, is essentially a 1928 model. After extensive testing, it was agreed by all users that the very high frequency, omnidirectional range was the answer to the problems of static and interference and limited coverage associated with the low-frequency four-course range. Several years ago CAA began installing the new type ranges, making clear that when the installation program was completed the old-type ranges would gradually be decommissioned, since it would be prohibitively expensive to operate the two systems side-by-side for any great length of time. To date, 276 omniranges have been commissioned with 84 more under way. Starting some time after next July, it will be necessary to begin decommissioning the low-frequency ranges. It has been known for a long time that this will be done, but even so it will be done gradually over a three-year period to allow aircraft owners who have not installed omnireceivers thus far the latest opportunity to do so.”However, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots’ Association sometimes interceded on behalf of some pilots to retain some beacons late into the 1950s.Leroy E. McChesney, president of the San Luis Obispo Pilots Association, and four other AOPA'ers who also belonged to the local group, wrote AOPA in 1957 requesting assistance in getting Beacon 16, located north of San Luis Obispo, reactivated."We appreciate CAA's efforts to economize, however, we feel that there are a few strategically located beacons that should remain in use," the pilots wrote. "The removal of these beacons creates such a hazard to private flying that their value cannot be measured in dollars and cents . . . The height of light No. 16 (approximately 2,800 feet) has been a tremendous aid to pilots in the past as it is the only light which can be seen by both north-south and east-west traffic. It can be seen easily and identified at a great distance."The CAA replied: “…we find that the light was inadvertently included in a sizeable list of beacons being proposed for discontinuance in this region, and that no one, including ourselves, had recognized the significance of its discontinuance in considering the total shutdown program. We agree that Beacon 16 should be retained and are taking steps to reactivate it at once.' "These were techniques to help pilots identify where they were, but of course they wouldn’t work in bad weather and fog.As altitudes increased, navigation techniques also improved; compass (aided by gyro-stabilization), and radio-direction-finding (ADF), followed by VHF Omni Range and Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) aided the pilots in accurately determining their position.For long range flights there were LORAN, Doppler, and from 1970, INS.Even today many countries do not allow their aircraft to use GPS as sole means of long-range navigation.