Two injured in Apache helicopter mishap in Kansas

An Army AH-64 Apache mishap on Tuesday at Fort Riley, Kansas, sent two troops to the hospital, an official from the Army’s 1st Infantry Division confirmed, marking the latest such incident to necessitate medical care for soldiers.

“They are in stable condition,” Lt. Col. Jefferson Grimes, the division spokesperson, told Military Times in a statement Wednesday.

Investigators are looking into the cause of the incident, which occurred at the base’s training area when the helicopter, assigned to the 1st Infantry Division’s Combat Aviation Brigade, experienced a mishap during a gunnery training exercise, Grimes said.

The ordeal comes in the wake of back-to-back Apache mishaps in March that collectively injured four crew members, and follows a series of other helicopter incidents that prompted the Army last month to push for more aviation safety training.

An Army AH-64 Apache crash at Fort Carson, Colorado, on March 27 sent a pair of service members to the hospital, where they were treated for minor injuries and released later that night. That incident came just a few days after an Apache helicopter accident in Washington state.

Those mishaps followed a pair of AH-64D Apache helicopter crashes in February, which led the Army National Guard to order a component-wide pause on flight missions.