But even before the National Transportation Safety Board completes its investigation—a neurotically thorough process that will probably take about a year, and thus meshes poorly with the news cycle and the conspiracy-theorist cycle—it is easy to see some of the lines of inquiry that crash detectives will pursue.

National security and military analyst Dr. Rebecca Grant breaks down flight operations in the ‘highly-traveled’ D.C. area after a regional jet collides with a Black Hawk helicopter.