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“Several casualties” are confirmed after two helicopters with the 101st Airborne Division crashed in southwestern Kentucky, the Army said without immediately disclosing how many Air Assault crewmembers were killed or injured. Two HH-60 Blackhawk helicopters crashed around 10 p.m. Wednesday in Trigg County near the Tennessee border, officials at nearby Fort Campbell said. “The status of the crew members are unknown at this time,” the statement on the base’s Facebook page reads. Crewmembers were flying “during a routine training mission when the incident occurred.” “We’ve got some tough news out of Fort Campbell, with early reports of a helicopter crash...

There are no survivors after a military helicopter carrying two people on a routine training mission crashed onto an Alabama highway Wednesday, officials said. The Black Hawk aircraft crashed around 3 p.m. near Highway 53 and Burwell Road in Harvest, about 10 miles northeast of Huntsville, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said. The helicopter caught fire upon impact, and both passengers died, military officials said.

A National Guard official called it a "blessing" that no one was injured after two Black Hawk helicopters crashed following an incident in American Fork Canyon early Tuesday. Officials had previously stated the crash had occurred in Little Cottonwood Canyon. Aviation Public Affairs Officer Jared Jones said the UH-60 Black Hawks with the 2nd General Support Aviation Battalion, 211th Aviation Regiment were involved in a winter mountain training accident near Mineral Basin at around 9:30 a.m. As the helicopters were attempting to land in an approved landing zone just outside the Snowbird ski resort, both experienced white out conditions. During...

DARPA has managed to fly ‘smart’ black hawk helicopter without any pilot on board. The ALIAS technology has thus far cost $160 million.During an experimental project led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and Lockheed Martin, the renowned Black Hawk helicopter flew totally unmanned for the very first moment.The initiative is known as ALIAS, which stands for “Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System,” and it was victorious after a UH-60 Alpha-model Black Hawk chopper made its maiden flight without a human operator on board a few days earlier.Image via Lockheed Martin: Sikorsky UH-60A Blackhawk Optionally Piloted Aircraft leaves the...

A video which has been claimed to show a condemned man being hanged from a helicopter seized by the Taliban appears to have been misleadingly captioned. The 11-second clip - which has over 2m views and has been shared thousands of times on Twitter - is blurred and doesn’t give a clear indication of what is going on. Further footage and still photographs seen by the BBC show that the man flying over the city of Kandahar is very much alive. These images show him wearing the Blackhawk helicopter’s diver’s winch and waving the Taliban flag. Several Afghanistan experts, quoting...

This makes Biden an accessory to gruesome executions. Taliban hanging someone from a helicopter in Kandahar pic.twitter.com/TwCkVzUrnL — Old Holborn® (@Holbornlolz) August 30, 2021 WARNING! GRAPHIC!........... VIDEOS AT LINK......................

The Highway of Death was a portent. It looked so bad on the nightly news, a la Viet Nam, but there were no bodies. The News got fixated on its own mirror. It was a Hwy of Death of trucks and tanks. But it was days of future past, because when Arabs and their clients suffer a mechanical breakdown, they don't have the attention span to get it repaired so they can continue on their killer rampage, they just walk away from it. But the Taliban have become the proprietors of a brand spanking new, mobile used car lot of...

Taliban showing off their kill.

Graphic

A video recently posted on social media showed Taliban fighters looking on as an iconic piece of US materiel (military hardware) – a Black Hawk helicopter – was piloted across Kandahar airport. The four-blade multi-purpose aircraft was just taxiing on the tarmac, but the exercise sent a message to the world: the Taliban were no longer a group of ragtag soldiers wielding Kalashnikov assault rifles on battered pickup trucks. Elsewhere, since the fall of Kabul on 15 August to the hard-line Islamist group, the Taliban’s fighters have been pictured showing off a host of US-made weaponry and vehicles. Some of...

Americans who trained Afghan pilots and ground crews are now raising the alarm about their safety. Though some flew out of the country, others are still in Afghanistan, hiding from the Taliban. And they are desperate to get out, fearing the Taliban may learn their identities and retaliate. As videos emerged of Taliban fighters carrying US-made M4 and M18 assault rifles and M24 sniper weapons, the US conceded it does not have the “complete picture” while adding that “a fair amount of it has fallen into the hands of the Taliban”. “Obviously, we don’t have a sense that they are...

[The V280 'Valor' is a replacement for the Blackhawk Helicopter]. The V280 is derived from having a max speed of 280 mph. Article says it attained 230 knots...] - Topher intro On Jul. 31, 2018 the first prototype of the Bell V-280 Valor, registration N280BH, performed a flight demo for invited media and dignitaries at Bell Helicopter Amarillo Assembly Center. The V-280 Valor is Bell’s submission for the U.S. Army’s Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrator (JMR-TD) phase, the technology demonstration precursor to Future Vertical Lift (FVL), a replacement for the service’s Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk (that have just celebrated its 40th...

The United Arab Emirates Joint Aviation Command showed off its new Lockheed Martin/Sikorsky UH-60M Armed Black Hawks (ABH) for the first time in public during the International Defence Exhibition (IDEX) held in Abu Dhabi, February 17-21. The UAE was the launch customer for this integrated weaponization kit, announcing an order for 24 UH-60Ms plus the weapons kit at the 2011 edition of IDEX. Installation of the kits is performed by AMMROC (Advanced Military Maintenance Repair Overhaul Center), an Abu Dhabi-based joint venture between the Emirates Defense Industries Company (EDIC), Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin that supports many of the UAE Armed...

A report from a top U.S. military watchdog has finally acknowledged that the UH-60A+ Black Hawks that the United States is supplying to the Afghan Air Force are less capable and harder to maintain than the Russian-made Mi-17 Hip helicopters they have now. The review raises concerns that this could limit Afghanistan’s ability to conduct operations across the country unless steps are taking to mitigate the loss of capability, something we at The War Zone have long warned could easily be the case. The Pentagon’s own Office of the Inspector General included these frank admissions in a routine, periodic update...

The UAE is the launch customer for Sikorsky's armed Black Hawk. Sikorsky (a unit of Lockheed Martin, Chalet CS02) has completed the six-year development and qualification program for its weaponization kit, tailored for the S-70i/UH-60M Black Hawk. The qualification involved around two years of live firing trials conducted at the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. Using the Black Hawk’s existing digital avionics, the kit allows a range of weaponry to be launched and fired, including precision-guided Hellfire missiles and laser-guided rockets. The system also provides accurate aiming for unguided weapons such as Hydra 70 rockets carried in seven- or 19-round...

After a visit to Afghanistan, which saw a particularly brazen Taliban attack on Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Marine Corps General Joseph Dunford went to Capitol Hill to talk to Senators about the state of America’s longest war. Among other things, America’s top uniformed military officer discussed efforts to improve the capability of Afghanistan’s military, specifically noting plans to deliver a gunship version of the UH-60 Black Hawk to the country’s air force. On Sept. 18, 2017, two UH-60A+ Black Hawks, the first of nearly...

The first confirmed mid-air collision involving a U.S. drone. Helicopter pilots flying over cities have to be extra cautious, as the pilot of this UH-60 (photographed over New York in 2014) undoubtedly was. (Maine Army National Guard) History was made and prophecies fulfilled last week when a quadcopter collided with a UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter over Staten Island in New York. According to the FAA, the event represents the first confirmed inflight collision between a drone and a piloted aircraft in the United States, although there have been other unconfirmed reports. The Black Hawk, which carried a crew of four,...

Just a day after new imagery surfaced of China’s “other” stealth fighter, the Shenyang FC-31, photos have emerged that give us the best look yet of the Z-20, Beijing’s shadowy H-60/S-70 Black Hawk clone. The Z-20, which has been an elusive beast since taking its first flight a couple years ago, differs from the Black Hawk in a number of small ways. Noticible changes include the cockpit area shaping, changes to its tail configuration, and above all, its rotor design. The Z-20 has five rotors instead of the four found on the Black Hawk. A satellite communications array, or at...

The Louisiana National Guard on Monday (March 16) identified the four UH-60 Black Hawk crewmen who died last week when their aircraft crashed during a training exercise in the Santa Rosa Sound in Florida. Four soldiers and seven Marines were aboard the Hammond-based helicopter. Chief Warrant Officer 4 George Wayne Griffin Jr. 37, of Delhi; Chief Warrant Officer George David Strother, 44, of Alexandria; Staff Sgt. Lance Bergeron, 40, Thibodaux; and Staff Sgt. Thomas Florich, 26, of Baton Rouge, died Tuesday."This has been a difficult few days for the entire Department of Defense," Maj. Gen. Glenn Curtis said during a...

<p>A decorated soldier who participated in the Somalia battle immortalized by Hollywood blockbuster “Black Hawk Down” was reportedly found dead in his Georgia home earlier this month.</p> <p>Retired Command Sgt. Maj. Robert Gallagher, 52, died of natural causes as a result of a heart condition, the Army Times reports.</p>