The U.S. Army is currently intensively considering a new institutional training model for pilots as its helicopter fleet evolves into a complex network of manned and unmanned platforms, the former commander of the Army’s Aviation Center of Excellence said in a recent interview with Defense News.
“Army aviation is not cheap. Training pilots costs a lot of money. From a cost perspective, from an aviation fundamentals perspective, and given that we’re going to be introducing tilt-rotor aircraft in the future, we’re doing a lot of analysis right now to figure out what the optimal path forward is,” Maj. Gen. Mac McCurry, now chief of staff of the Army Futures Command, said last month in an interview shortly before the change of command at Fort Novosel, Alabama.
The Army selected Textron Bell’s next-generation tiltrotor design for its Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) in December 2022. Earlier this year, the Army decided to cancel the development competition for another manned helicopter for assault and reconnaissance missions and instead use more unmanned aircraft for that role.
“I think there are some decisions that need to be made in the next year, primarily related to the department head down here. We also need to look at what the institutional training model looks like before we start the force,” McCurry said.
One consideration is whether the Army has the right aircraft for basic training. The Army retired its Bell TH-67 single-engine training helicopter after deciding to restructure its air fleet in late 2013. The Army replaced the trainer with about 200 LUH-72A Lakota light twin-engine utility helicopters, a move that sparked some controversy due to the aircraft’s operating costs and complexity.
“Nothing has been ruled out. Everything is on the table as far as the type of aircraft and training,” McCurry said.
In addition, due to improvements in simulation technology, flight training is more than ever based on simulator hours.
“With the increasing use of virtual reality and augmented reality, where can we increase the efficiency of training without having to be in an aircraft or a full-motion simulator? What aspects of flight training can really be supported and optimized using these technologies?” asked McCurry.
The pressure to get basic pilot training right is high because Class A accidents are a recurring problem in the Army Aviation Corps. Class A accidents are defined as incidents in which human life is lost or equipment valued at more than $2.5 million is lost.
Earlier this month, an AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed during a routine flight exercise at Fort Novosel, killing the instructor and injuring the student. The circumstances of the crash are still under investigation.
In the first half of fiscal year 2023, more than a dozen Army pilots died in helicopter crashes, a staggering number that led to an aviation-wide freeze in April 2023. The Army lifted the freeze after a thorough review, but five months later, an MH-60 Black Hawk stealth helicopter from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment crashed during a training mission, killing five people.
Accidents continued to occur. In fiscal year 2023, the highest death rate among Army soldiers since the US withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 was recorded: a total of 14 people were killed in ten Class A accidents.
In an average year, Army aviation accidents typically kill six crew members, with the average Class A accident rate of just under one accident per 100,000 flight hours. The current rate this spring was 3.22, more than double the highest fiscal year rate in over a decade, according to data from the Army Combat Readiness Center.
The department “constantly keeps its finger on the pulse of accident rates and root cause factors,” McCurry said. “We’ve definitely been looking specifically at formation flying, which is flying aircraft in close proximity to each other, over the last two years and evaluating those tasks and adding some conditions to them. Most recently, we’ve been focusing on how our pilots respond to changes in tail rotor efficiency due to environmental conditions.”
Earlier this year, the Army announced further measures to improve training to return to basics, which it called “Aviation Standup.”
“Any time we break the dynamics of accidents and focus on what’s important, it usually has some effect,” McCurry said.
This is leading the industry to consider encouraging or requiring every aviation unit to spend time each year raising awareness about aviation safety – regardless of their accident rate.
“Do you just do it routinely once a year to kind of put everyone on notice rather than waiting for interest rates to spike? So we’re considering that,” McCurry added.
Jen Judson is an award-winning journalist who covers land wars for Defense News. She has also worked for Politico and Inside Defense. She holds a Master of Science in Journalism from Boston University and a Bachelor of Arts from Kenyon College.
