Good point....though he should at the least face time for ignoring the warnings. Even if there's a reasonable explanation, like his radio stopped working, he was fiddling with the dial and looking for a good rap station or he went temporarily deaf, he ought to get 30 days.
I can think of a 100 pound payload that would be explosive enough to do more than mar a pillar. We've been far too lenient with all these jokers in small planes knowingly commit airspace violations.
Oh, please.
If a bad guy wanted to really do damage, stealing a fuel truck would be far worse. Light it on fire on the Golden Gate ....
There are 10000 ways to do serious damage, even in the DC area. Small airplanes are about the worst option.
Remember the guy that died at the White House in a Cessna during Clinton's term? The story was that he hit the ground. I don't think it happened that way. The picture had the airplane within feet of the White House wall. I think he actually HIT the White House and bounced off, but that part wasn't told.
Anyone who's taken a White House tour (and I guarantee the bad guys have) was told that during WWII, FDR had the whole White House rebuilt from the inside out. They deliberately did not put scaffolding on the outside because of security, but the inside was rebuilt basically to bomb shelter standards. Lots of reinforced concrete and rebar.
Any GA airplane, except some of the jets, would bounce off it. Even using the few hundred pounds of explosives that it would carry, it would have to be fused to detonate in a very exact way to do real damage.
And then there's the "bunker" down below....
Like I said, he should have caught a missile for his stupidity.