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.
Genuinely the recent sci-fi trope where the current wave of human civilisation simply sputters to a halt because all the technology is too complicated and unrepairable with built-in obsolescence and all operational knowledge tied up within itself