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.

  • GalacticGrapefruit@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    Sure, we’ll stop supporting affirmative action and pretend that firing anyone who wasn’t us was a good idea. It’s not like being a mechanic requires a certain degree of oddball tendencies, and going out of our way to punish oddballs definitely won’t come back to bite us.

    Sabotage? What’s that?

  • waterSticksToMyBalls@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    That’s what happens when you put some dipshit who thinks militaries should be only “warriors” when all of history tells you successful militaries are logistics engines first and foremost

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      And worse, when professionalism is replaced with naked sycophancy and corruption.

  • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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    22 hours 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.

  • Buffalox@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Once upon a time I would find this sad because USA was an ally defending democracy and freedom, or at least so I thought.
    But honestly today, I don’t give a shit.

    Fuck USA.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    The reason the Taliban didn’t bother trying to use US helicopters and other advanced equipment left in Afghanistan, was that the required maintenance wasn’t just expensive, it required a robust supply infrastructure.

    The entire US military has massive supply issues, and the idiots running it will keep destroying very expensive equipment and risking the lives of service members because they’re not acknowledging the supply issues.

    No one wants to put ten toes down and say “that can’t fly”.

    Because all the high up officers who won’t just tell trump what he wants, resigned to protect their pensions.

    They’re all cowards and this is on their hands as much as the yes men who stayed in.

  • JamesTBagg@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    A lot of comments on here didn’t read the article and/or simply don’t know how aviation or military aviation works.
    Some blaming the current administration even though the article notes a slightly higher accident rate in 2024. The current model Helicopter was fielded in 2011, and the article doesn’t mention when the transmission issues began.
    This could be a maintenance problem, a Boeing problem. Is Boeing or an army subcontractor rebuilding the transmissions?
    I just did inspections on some gearboxes because the incorrect self-locking nuts were used. I’ve seen a series of accidents caused by o-rings made out of spec internal to hydraulic servos. I remember NASA killing a crew due to o-ring issues. I remember a few decades ago Airbus had a series of helicopter accidents where the main rotors detached due to a gear in the main transmissions being hardened incorrectly. Before all that De Haviland Comets were coming apart in air due to metal fatigue.

    We should be concerned with the reaction to and correction of the issues. The Army has grounded training flights, which they should. Not long ago the V-22 fleet was grounded for like a year while clutch failures were investigated.

    Just because YOU’VE only just heard of an issue doesn’t mean it hasn’t been a long standing issue nor that it’s the fault of whoever is in charge right now. We need more information before we start finger pointing.

    Though Boeing has been on a downhill trend since the McDonald Douglas takeover.

  • 0x4f1@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Let me guess, AI decided to extend certain maintenance schedules and the wrenches who know better were ordered to go along with it.