The Army Nationwide Guard has briefly grounded all of its helicopters after back-to-back AH-64 Apache helicopter crashes this month, one in every of which was deadly for the 2 pilots.
Final week, an Apache crashed in northern Mississippi, killing its two-soldier crew. In a separate incident Feb. 12, there was one other Apache crash close to Salt Lake Metropolis, Utah. Each pilots survived, a rarity in rotary-wing plane crashes.
“We’re a fight pressure with helicopters coaching or on mission worldwide daily,” Lt. Gen. Jon Jensen, director of the Army Nationwide Guard, mentioned in a press release Tuesday. “Security is at all times on the high of our minds. We’ll stand down to make sure our crews are ready in addition to attainable for no matter they’re requested to do.”
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The information comes after a sequence of helicopter mishaps throughout a lot of the companies, highlighting mounting issues over the fundamental security of rotary craft — together with how these platforms are maintained and coaching procedures for pilots.
Within the Nationwide Guard, pilots fly considerably lower than is taken into account optimum. Between 2017 and 2019, the majority of Guard pilots flew about 5 hours per thirty days when about seven is the naked minimal and 9 is taken into account optimum, based on a report from the Authorities Accountability Workplace.
The stand-down is to “evaluation security insurance policies and procedures,” based on a press launch from the service part. The grounding echoes a stand-down lower than a yr in the past, when in April the service grounded all its plane following a March mid-air collision of two Black Hawk helicopters that killed 9 troopers primarily based out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
The 2 Guardsmen killed in Friday’s crash in Mississippi had been each skilled pilots. Chief Warrant Officer 4 Bryan Andrew Zemek, 36, was in Alpha Firm, 1st Battalion, 149th Aviation Regiment, and Chief Warrant Officer 4 Derek Joshua Abbott, 42, was in Delta Firm, 2nd Battalion, 151st Lakota Medical Evacuation unit.
The Nationwide Guard makes up a lot of the U.S. airpower abroad in fight zones and in Europe as NATO is bolstering its entrance line amid the continued battle in Ukraine.
The Guard additionally closely depends on its rotary fleet for search-and-rescue missions in addition to catastrophe aid, although security stand-downs usually don’t embody grounding craft used for emergencies or important fight operations, and are typically meant to pause routine coaching missions.
Some 45,000 Guardsmen are at the moment deployed overseas and on home missions.
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