9 troopers are lifeless after a crash involving two Black Hawk helicopters out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, on Wednesday night time, a coaching accident that is without doubt one of the deadliest in Army historical past.
“This can be a actually tragic loss for our households, our division and Fort Campbell,” Brig Gen. John Lubas, deputy commander of the one hundred and first Airborne Division, stated at a press convention Thursday morning.
On Wednesday night time, a pair of one hundred and first Airborne Division Black Hawks had been conducting routine coaching in southwestern Kentucky. The pilots had been utilizing night time imaginative and prescient, a standard apply for models to apply flying in low visibility. There was no hazardous climate, in response to Nationwide Climate Service information.
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It is unclear what brought about the 2 Black Hawks to crash, however the pilots had been in a position to deliver the plane down in an open discipline, away from a close-by residential space, in response to Lubas. Not one of the troopers on the 2 helicopters survived.
An investigation crew from the service is about to reach on the crash web site Thursday afternoon.
It marks one of many deadliest days for the Army outdoors of fight for the reason that 1994 Inexperienced Ramp catastrophe during which 24 troopers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, died after a F-16 fighter jet collided with a C-130 with the wreckage hitting a C-141 and igniting jet gas and ammunition subsequent to a gaggle of paratroopers.
5 troopers have died in on-duty aviation incidents per yr on common since 2018, in response to information from the Army Fight Readiness Middle, which tracks coaching mishaps. The majority of these incidents concerned Black Hawks, that are produced by protection large Lockheed Martin. In February, two chief warrant officers with the Tennessee Army Nationwide Guard died when their Black Hawk crashed close to Huntsville, Alabama.
Final yr, Lockheed was awarded a $2.3 billion contract to construct no less than 120 H-60M Black Hawks because the Pentagon works on plans for its subsequent era helicopter.
In 2021, after a collection of Black Hawk crashes, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., known as on the Pentagon to evaluate the protection of the plane. “I ask that you simply take all needed steps to promptly examine these incidents to find out in the event that they match a bigger sample of malfunction with the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter,” Gillibrand stated in an announcement on the time.
The investigation into the crash is more likely to take months, with high-profile accidents additionally usually getting intense scrutiny from Congress and the media.
The Navy’s investigation into the lethal sinking of a Marine Corps amphibious assault automobile in 2020, which left 9 service members lifeless, went on for greater than a yr and concluded with a report greater than 800 pages lengthy and a dozen officers reprimanded or fired.
— Steve Beynon might be reached at Steve.Beynon@navy.com. Observe him on Twitter @StevenBeynon.
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