An order to ground hundreds of the Army’s AH-64E Apache attack helicopters is likely to affect every squadron and is expected to be in place for months as the service conducts a global inspection, an official told Military Times Tuesday.
The “immediate, temporary pause in flight operations,” announced Oct. 2, affects the latest variant of the Apache and is specific to helicopters equipped with Improved Drive System transmissions.
“This action follows ongoing Army technical and airworthiness assessments of the Improved Drive System transmission, including information developed through prior Safety of Flight actions, inspection results, maintenance reporting, and ongoing engineering analysis,” officials said in the announcement.
An Army official told Military Times that about 400 of the Army’s roughly 700 Apaches are affected, and aircraft from every active-duty and National Guard Apache unit are included in the grounding.
The move follows a brief grounding of the entire Apache fleet in August after an AH-64 from Fort Hood, Texas, crashed in a field Aug. 12, killing both pilots.
Defense One reported in May that an Army investigation had found that the AH-64E’s improved drive system main transmissions “can experience an internal failure resulting in loss of accessory gearbox drive, which can result in loss of tail rotor thrust, electrical power, and hydraulics,” though it added the cause was still unclear.
The Army official who spoke with Military Times Tuesday said the Army had been able to “very quickly ascertain” that transmission issues hadn’t caused the Fort Hood crash, which involved an older variant of the Apache. But Army safety reports show four major flight mishaps for the AH-64E in the last fiscal year, and officials noted one “catastrophic transmission failure” among them.
The official said the Army had earlier issued a safety-of-flight message calling for inspections of all the AH-64E transmissions, which ultimately led to the decision to ground the aircraft.
“That triggered a decision point for Army senior leaders who said, you know, let’s accelerate this and just put us on a glide path to do this as quickly as possible while maintaining operational readiness — let’s just go ahead and inspect and repair these as quickly as we can,” the official said. “So that’s where we are now.”
With so many Apache helicopters grounded indefinitely, the official said the Army expected to need to complete a “rebalancing” to meet minimum capability requirements and continue to meet Army missions. Aviation leaders, the official said, will assess how many aircraft in a unit are affected and how long inspections and follow-on actions are expected to take for those aircraft to determine how to move Apaches between squadrons.
The grounding comes a year after Army officials began moving out on a plan to accelerate retirement of its older AH-64D Apaches en route to developing a “pure fleet” of AH-64E helicopters.
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