Small fleet, fewer flights weaken Army aircraft training, report says

U.S. Army helicopter crews are flying one-third of the hours they did at the peak of the past two decades, as the number of manned aircraft has declined by 20%, according to a government report.

The same report also noted that the Army saw the availability of aircraft increase as its fleet of pilots has gotten younger. The Congressional Budget Office’s findings, aimed at documenting how the Army is using its aircraft, are based on service aviation data from 2000 to 2023.

In 2011, the Army saw its peak of average flying hours in manned aircraft, the majority of which are helicopters.

At that time, air crews flew an average of 302 hours each year. As of 2023, the average flight hours have dropped by more than one-third to 198 hours, according to the report.

The availability of aircraft for training and operations is up over the period covered in the report. In 2000, the percentage of manned aircraft that were mission-capable was just over 50%, according to the report. It has remained above 60% since 2007 and sits at 68% as of last year.

Report authors credit much of the additional flight time to overseas operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As both wars wound down, a drop in flight hours occurred.

Army Times reported Friday that the service is overhauling its aircrew training as the force adapts to new threats, added capabilities to its aircraft, and grapples with a high mishap rate this past year.

Since last October, 14 soldiers died in 10 Class A mishaps. That puts the service at a 3.22 mishap rate per 100,000 flight hours. That rate is double the annual average since 2011, during the end of the war in Iraq.

Over the same period, the number of manned aircraft decreased as the number of unmanned aircraft, or drones, increased.

In 2000 the Army had nearly 5,000 manned aircraft. As of last year, that number went down to 3,900.

The number of AH-64 Apache helicopters and H-47 Chinook helicopters has remained steady throughout at roughly 600 Apaches and nearly 500 Chinooks over that period.

The report provided graphs but not exact numbers of aircraft.

But the number of H-60 Black Hawk helicopters has risen, according to the report.

The Army had fewer than 1,500 Black Hawks in 2000 and has more than 2,000 now.

Other inventory decreases come from the retiring of the H-1 Iroquois, or “Huey,” and H-58 Kiowa, among other platforms. The Army had nearly 2,000 Iroquois and nearly 700 Kiowa two decades ago. Those programs ended in 2016 and 2020, respectively.

Currently, the service’s manned aircraft fleet includes the Black Hawk, Chinook, Apache, UH-72 Lakota helicopter and the fixed-wing C-12 Huron, a passenger airplane used both to transport personnel and intelligence gathering, according to the report.

There are an estimated 2,100 Black Hawks; 700 Apaches; 500 Lakotas; 400 Chinooks in the service’s manned fleet.

The average age of the manned aircraft fleet has decreased somewhat. At its peak, the Army’s aircraft average age was 17.8 years in 2008, according to the report. By 2019 that number had dropped to about 14 years and has remained near that number since.

Some of that drop is due to the retiring of legacy aircraft and programs to extend the service of the Chinook, according to the report.

But the Black Hawk, the Army’s largest fleet, has seen the average age of a Black Hawk rise from 12 years in 2000 to 18 years in 2023, according to the report.

In February, the Army announced it would end its Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, which sought to replace the Kiowa.

At the same time the service announced its aviation investment rebalance, a program to squeeze more service life out of the Chinook, Apache and Blackhawk through airframe and engine upgrades.

On the unmanned side, which continues to grow, Army has 700 large drones, which include 500 RQ-7B Shadows and 200 MQ-1C Gray Eagles.

In April, the Army announced that it would retire the Shadow drone as it seeks a new option for drone-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George told Army Times that he has prioritized ongoing commercial drone buys, with options to purchase new drones as they’re developed rather than committing to a decades-long program for a single type.

The replacement program, dubbed Future Tactical UAS, saw an $8 million contract award to defense company AeroVironment to deliver its Jump 20 drone system as an interim drone capability for one brigade, Defense News previously reported. The service plans to equip the first unit with a new drone by 2026.