The U.S. Army will decommission nearly 8% of its UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters to prepare for the arrival of the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, Defense News has reported.
Maj. Gen. Mac McCurry, the Army’s Aviation Center of Excellence commander, told the news outlet the FLRAA will have lower operational and maintenance costs.
“It’s really about balancing the current readiness with the procurement and fielding in the future,” he said. “As we looked at our utility fleet specifically, we had grown that fleet since early in the 2000s by over 300 aircraft.”
Only the oldest Black Hawks, or those the army calls “operational readiness floats,” will be decommissioned, with the overall fleet age reduced as a result, he added.
The Black Hawk is the U.S. Army's primary medium-lift helicopter and is used to conduct search and rescue operations over land because of its spacious interior.
But the UH-60 and its military variants have crashed many times over the years, with 60 deaths in Black Hawk-related training incidents in the past decade, according to Army data reviewed by Military.com.
Safety concerns surrounding the aircraft gained renewed scrutiny following a March crash in which two Black Hawks collided midair during a nighttime training exercise, killing nine soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Ky.
"This seems to happen often, too often. But there is no common thread, no one cause," Timothy Loranger, an attorney and senior partner with Wisner Baum who has worked on multiple cases involving military aviation incidents, told Military.com.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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