2
Photo Info

Fatal crashes prompt U.S. senator to question Black Hawk safety

By Dan Parsons | February 9, 2021

Estimated reading time 7 minutes, 42 seconds.

Two recent Black Hawk helicopter crashes that killed six Army National Guard soldiers have reawakened concerns in Congress that systemic safety issues in U.S. military aviation are causing unnecessary non-combat casualties.

On Jan. 19, three New York Guard aviators died when their UH-60 Black Hawk medevac helicopter went down just south of Lake Ontario near the city of Rochester. Two weeks later, three Idaho National Guard soldiers died when their UH-60 crashed in rugged, mountainous terrain near the state capital of Boise.

New York Army National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crews conduct water bucket training at Round Lake on May 13, 2020. Eric Durr Photo

Those crashes prompted Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York), to pen a Feb. 5 letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin calling for analysis of recent crashes to “determine if they fit a larger pattern of malfunction with the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter.”

Gillibrand also highlighted the December 2019 crash near St. Cloud, Minnesota, of a UH-60 that killed three of that state’s National Guard aviators. An investigation of that crash, Gillibrand points out in the letter to Austin, concluded that the helicopter’s number one engine failed during a maximum-power check while the number two engine was idling, creating a situation where neither engine provided power to the main rotor system. The failure ultimately was attributed to incorrect installation of the engine’s hydromechanical fuel control unit.

The August 2020 crash of an MH-60 helicopter operated by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment was also offered as a potentially related incident. Two special operations aviators were lost in the crash near San Clemente Island, California. 

“At this time, the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center at Fort Rucker is investigating the recent crashes outside of Rochester and Boise,” Gillibrand wrote. “These incidents are being investigated as disparate events. However, three crashes involving the National Guard’s use of the UH-60 in just over a year raises significant concerns about a systemic issue with the Black Hawk helicopter operation cycle. The further case of the MH-60 crash raises additional questions that we urgently need answered.” 

Soldiers assigned to the New York National Guard Honor Guard carry a casket holding the remains of Chief Warrant Officer 4 Christian Koch, a UH-60 pilot assigned to Charlie Company, 1-171 General Support Aviation Battalion, killed when his helicopter crashed Jan. 20. U.S. Army National Guard Photo by Sgt. Alexander Rector

Gillibrand sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), which oversees military issues, and would be an appropriate forum for hearings on aviation safety, though no hearings for the current Congress have been set. She has asked for Defense Department recommendations and guidance on the readiness of both the UH-60 and pilots and crews who operate them. 

Aviation safety likely will be discussed in future SASC hearings where President Joe Biden’s civilian military appointees and uniformed officers will testify. Gillibrand also requested a classified briefing on the status of investigations into the recent fatal crashes and “any mechanical, software, electrical, or other problems with the UH-60 Black Hawk that cause it to malfunction or make it further difficult to pilot.”

Aviation safety was the sole focus of the National Commission on Military Aviation Safety, which wrapped up an 18-month inquiry in late 2020 with the publication of 130-page report on U.S. military aircraft crashes crashes between 2013 and 2018.

After visiting 80 U.S. military sites and consulting 200 aviation units, NCMAS members found that pilots were not flying enough hours to remain proficient, maintenance personnel were insufficiently trained and suffered from low morale, and that supply chains lacked adequate throughput to keep aircraft in flying shape. 

The U.S. Defense Department as a whole and individual service secretaries, chiefs of staff and aviation chiefs have consistently sounded the alarm that pilots are not flying the minimum number of hours needed to maintain proficiency.

Pilots who monthly flew significant operational hours during the height of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan found it more difficult to gain time in the cockpit as U.S. involvement in those conflicts waned. The problem was exacerbated by an across-the-board 2013 federal budget cut.

One of the primary NCMAS recommendations was a return to 2010 operational and training flight hour levels.

During the commission’s six-year study period, aviation mishaps cost the U.S. military 198 lives, 157 aircraft, and more than $9 billion in damage. The report elaborates on safety issues related to human performance, environmental factors like command structure, morale and operational demand, and “machine” factors, but does not detail or enumerate safety records of individual aircraft types. 

Army data published in the January 2021 issue of Flightfax, an online Army aviation safety newsletter, shows 160 total UH-60 mishaps between 2016 and 2020, of which 18 were “Class A” that resulted in at least $2 million in damage and/or the death or permanent disability of personnel.

That many accidents during a collective 1.7 million flight hours gave a rate of .87 class A mishaps per 100,000 flight hours, lower than the Army’s overall rate of 1.03 and lower than the H-60’s previous five-year rate of 1.04. Flightfax’s review of the period between 2016 and 2020 shows human error was the primary cause factor in 83 percent of the mishaps with the remaining 17 percent attributed to mechanical failure. 

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Notice a spelling mistake or typo?

Click on the button below to send an email to our team and we will get to it as soon as possible.

Report an error or typo

Have a story idea you would like to suggest?

Click on the button below to send an email to our team and we will get to it as soon as possible.

Suggest a story