Army temporarily grounds all Apache helicopter flights after fatal crash

The United States Army is temporarily halting Apache helicopter training flights following a deadly crash in Texas earlier this week. [Fox 7 Austin]

The U.S. Army suspended all training operations involving Apache attack helicopters Friday, a decision that followed a catastrophic aircraft accident in Central Texas earlier in the week that claimed two lives.

The twin-seat AH-64 Apache went down Wednesday during a scheduled maintenance test flight near Fort Hood, plummeting into a field and triggering a wildfire that prompted nearby residents to evacuate their homes. The crash claimed the lives of Chief Warrant Officer 2 Deontre T. Huey, 34, of Killeen, and Warrant Officer Seth L. Olmstead, 25, of Belton. Both were assigned to Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood.

According to an Army statement, military leadership ordered the immediate suspension of Apache training flight operations while investigators work to determine what caused the aircraft to crash. The halt will remain in place pending findings from the ongoing safety investigation, according to officials. An investigative team from the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center has taken the lead in examining the accident.

Huey had served in the Army since 2014, while Olmstead was relatively new to the service, having joined in 2023. The Fort Hood base, which spans more than 214,000 acres in Central Texas, serves as a major training and deployment center for the Army's heavy forces.

The temporary grounding represents a significant operational pause for one of the military's primary attack aircraft platforms. The Army indicated that recent safety statistics show Apache helicopters have experienced a higher frequency of mishaps in recent months compared to other rotary-wing aircraft within its inventory, though officials provided no immediate details on the specific cause of the Fort Hood crash.