Exclusive: Army Was Sending Junior Pilots Straight from Flight School to Fly Top DC Missions Until 2023
Kristina Wong 20 Feb 2025
A recent deadly collision over Washington, D.C. involving an Army helicopter has brought sudden national scrutiny to the service and its missions over the nation’s capital, but a master Army aviator told Breitbart News that they had been at risk for years.
In fact, the aviator said, the Army was so strapped for experienced pilots that up through 2023 it was sending its most junior pilots fresh out of flight school to fly these specialized missions. At one point, an estimated 40 percent of the pilots assigned to these missions, which can include evacuating leaders in the event of an attack, were on their first assignment, the aviator said.
“D.C. is some of the most challenging and restricted airspace in the country if not the world, so you can’t just send the most junior pilots there, which they don’t anymore. We said, ‘Enough is enough. We cannot take any more new pilots, because the people that we fly are the nation’s most senior leaders, and you need experienced pilots to deal with that and to deal in this airspace,'” the aviator, who wished to speak on background.
“I want to say 40 percent of the formation was first assignment. That’s — that’s huge. The problem with that is because of who we fly and the airspace. When you have these very junior groups, we got to get these people trained, get them out there so they can start flying missions,” the aviator said, adding that instructor pilots are flying their “butts off, trying to get these people just qualified and trained.”
“So a new person comes out of flight school, they’re basically qualified in the Black Hawk. Now you have to get them qualified in the unit’s mission. So in D.C., you got to get them familiar with all the helicopter routes, all the landing zones, the airspace, all the different places [they] go. That’s the structure,” the aviator said. “There’s a lot that goes into it. And so when you, when you have a W-1, or a lieutenant fresh out of flight school, they’re struggling just to keep the spinny side up, you know? And then now, now I’m throwing all this air and it’s challenging.”
The aviator said the directive to stop sending brand new pilots came around the summer of 2023 under Army Lt. Gen. Allan Pepin, who was then in command of Joint Task Force-National Capital Region and U.S. Army Military District of Washington. Pepin, who is commander of U.S. Army North Command, is an aviator himself.
“So he had a much better understanding. Right now it’s an infantryman, and before the aviator was an infantryman,” the aviator said. “We messaged that to the right people, and then we were able to get a hold of [Human Resources Command] and kind of have a handshake deal where no more — no more brand new pilots, just because of the airspace that we operate in.”
The aviator, who personally knew the Black Hawk crew members involved in the deadly January 29 collision, did not directly attribute it to the experience gap, but disagreed with news reports describing the crew was “highly experienced.” The instructor pilot, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves, had just under 1,000 flying hours, but the co-pilot, who was doing her annual flight evaluation at the time, Captain Rebecca Lobach, had just under 500 flying hours.
more
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/02/20/exclusive-army-was-sending-junior-pilots-straight-from-flight-school-to-fly-top-dc-missions-until-2023/
