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I want to bring in now Matthew Wiz Buckley. He's a decorated Navy Top Gun graduate and experienced

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naval aviator. Thank you so much for taking the time this morning. We know that the FAA,

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the NTSB, the Department of Transportation, all investigating this morning in tandem.

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Could be weeks before we know anything, but just from your experience, I'm curious,

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is there any explanation for this crash that's making sense to you this morning?

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I think Peter just nailed it. It's most likely the pilot in command of the Army helicopter,

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that crew lost visual sight with the aircraft they were supposed to have in sight. And, you know,

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the tower, it sounds like, was understaffed a little bit with a single controller working multiple

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positions and multiple frequencies. But as soon as that controller heard the pilot in command of the

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Army helo say, hey, traffic in sight, mentally that controller said, check, done. Don't have to worry

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about that anymore. Let me focus on some other things. And clearly they didn't have the right

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helicopter in sight. However, I've never been to air traffic control school, but I guarantee you

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on day one of air traffic control school, they say, if you see two targets on your screen going

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towards each other at co-altitude, you better poke that pilot again, like, hey, Pat 25, confirm you

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have traffic, left 11, co-altitude. A little bit more of a forceful traffic call probably would have

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helped. Yeah. Give him the heads up. He's right. I mean, the point is, what was the military

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helicopter squawking on his transponder? Was it on the screen showing their exact altitude?

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They saw their location above the ground, but they didn't know maybe how high they were

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because at a hundred feet difference, it may not show up on the screen that much.

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Yeah. And Matthew, do you like Matthew or do you like whiz better?

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If I'm in trouble, it's Matthew. If you're my buddy, it's whiz.

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Got it. Okay. I'll call you whiz. I was talking to a buddy of mine yesterday who's a helicopter

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pilot, and he was just saying, you know, I can see how this would happen. You get at that altitude.

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Everything starts to blur together. There's so many lights, not even just at the airport,

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but in D.C. in general. Do you agree with that? You can see how something like this could have

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happened. I absolutely agree. And it was a little interesting yesterday when the secretary of

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defense said, hey, this crew was on a night vision goggles mission. And I think he believed,

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I don't want to misquote him, they were wearing NVGs. I think that might be a knee-jerk statement.

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I have hundreds of hours flying the F-18 Hornet on goggles. You don't wear goggles around a city like

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this. It's too much light. It will actually wash out the NVGs and you won't be able to see.

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NVGs are, you know, worn in low visibility or low light areas. So the NVG thing kind of made me,

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the hair on the back of my neck, stand up a little bit.

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And we know that those were on board, to your point. We don't know that they were wearing them.

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Is that something we could actually find out in this investigation, if they were actually wearing

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those at the time of impact? Well, you see, that's why when yesterday said, hey, we recovered the

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body of, I believe it was the crew member, not the pilots. And he said that. Maybe the guy in the back

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had his goggles on, but don't want to be macabre, but they'll be able to recover the bodies. If the

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bodies are intact, the helmets are on and the goggles are down, that would confirm it. But they

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might have had the goggles up on their helmets. You just kind of flip them down to your eyes,

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then flip them back up. So I'd be stunned if they were wearing goggles in that environment.

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Matthew, Wiz Buckley, I got to end it there. Thank you so much. I wish we were talking under

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different circumstances, but appreciate your time and expertise on a Friday morning.