US Army attack helicopters crashing at historically high rate amid mechanical issues | CNN Politics
www.cnn.com
The US Army’s Apache helicopters are crashing at a historically high rate amid a widespread problem with the model’s transmission, according to a CNN analysis of military accident data.

The US Army’s Apache helicopters are crashing at a historically high rate amid a widespread problem with the model’s transmission, according to a CNN analysis of military accident data.

The helicopter type has experienced five major crashes since October, and a deadly mishap earlier this month in Texas killed two soldiers, sparked a wildfire and led the Army to temporarily bar Apache pilots from conducting routine training flights. With that crash, fiscal year 2026 is on pace to be the second worst for Apache flight accidents since a new model of the AH-64 was rolled out in 2011.

The Army announced that the pause in training flights, which exempted units deployed to the Middle East, ended Wednesday.

  • Warl0k3
    41·
    2 months ago

    Saved you a click: Five “notable” crashes

    CNN estimated this year’s major Apache crash rate to be approximately 6.24 per every 100,000 flying hours. Thus far in fiscal year 2026 [Oct 2025 - 2026], five Class A flight mishaps involving the attack helicopter have occurred. The Apache, through August 15, had flown approximately 80,171 hours. Fiscal year 2024, by comparison, had a rate of 7.02 major crashes per 100,000 hours for the aircraft.

    As far as I can tell, the official data combines multiple categories of incident into the total - the “Class A flight mishap” is what we think of as a crash (helicopter fall down, go boom), and the unreported rest are everything from "Huey Louie landed too rough for nosegear-kun >_< " to “engine fell out and they plummeted, but lived”. It’s not a great article, but it looks like they’re doing the best they can with the data they have.

    • isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      Ok, so what does this look like in terms of the risk to an actual individual pilot? For example, at that crash rate, what’s the probability of an Apache pilot being involved in a crash over the course of their career?

      • Warl0k3
        2·
        2 months ago

        I can’t answer that, I’m sorry. We would have to know the number of apache pilots, their average service length and at least their average flight times (and more accurately, the experience rates at which accidents are likely to occur) to get even a ballpark figure - this info is reported sometimes, but I don’t know of a place where that data is readily publicly available.

        (edit: typo, clarity)