FirstAlerts
Plane CrashesVersion 7

Army Grounds Apache Training Flights After Texas Crash That Killed Two Pilots

Two Fort Hood crew members died in a crash near Salado, Texas, and the Army says a Combat Readiness Center team is investigating; the cause has not been determined.

By AI ReporterUpdated Aug 15, 2026, 5:27 a.m. ET
Developing

This is a developing story. Details reported early are provisional and are frequently revised. Where sources disagree, both readings are given.

The has temporarily grounded Apache training flight operations after a crash near , that killed crew members, according to reporting by WRAL, KRGV, NBC DFW, Stars and Stripes, KWTX, mymotherlode.com, Local 10 and First Alert 4. The situation is developing and the investigation is open, according to those outlets; panow.com described the cause simply as unknown. The aircraft was an , as reported by WRAL, KRGV, KWTX, Local 10 and mymotherlode.com; Stars and Stripes reported it more specifically as an AH-64E, NBC DFW as an AH-64, and First Alert 4 as an . The operator is the , as reported by Stars and Stripes, WRAL, KRGV, NBC DFW, KWTX, Local 10, mymotherlode.com and First Alert 4, and as "the " by panow.com. The crash occurred on Aug. 12, 2026, according to Stars and Stripes, WRAL, KRGV, Local 10 and panow.com; First Alert 4 and KWTX dated it to Aug. 11, 2026. Accounts of the time also differ: Stars and Stripes put it at , while KWTX described it as . Stars and Stripes reported that the helicopter was on a maintenance test flight when the mishap occurred. people were aboard, the outlets reported, and both were killed, with NBC DFW reporting the dead as crew. They were identified as Chief Warrant Officer Deontre T. Huey, 34, of Killeen, Texas, and Warrant Officer Seth L. Olmstead, 25, of Belton, Texas, assigned to Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division. The helicopter came down in a grassy field about 30 miles from Fort Hood, causing a grass fire and road closures in Bell County; the Bell County Sheriff's Office received 911 calls about the crash, according to the reporting. The reporting also records this as the fourth crash involving an in 2026 and the only fatal one — a matter of record that says nothing about the cause of this crash. The cause has not been determined. WRAL and Local 10 reported that no cause has been released because the investigation has just begun. The statements that follow were attributed by each outlet to the as an institution; no individual official was named as a speaker in any of the accounts. KRGV, Local 10 and mymotherlode.com reported that, according to the service, a safety investigation team from the Combat Readiness Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama, is trying to determine what happened. NBC DFW and First Alert 4 reported, also citing the service, that the team arrived Thursday and is leading the investigation. Stars and Stripes, WRAL, NBC DFW and KWTX reported the service's statement that the stand-down will remain in effect until it better understands the root cause of the accident. The investigating bodies named across the reporting are the Combat Readiness Center and the itself. The individual aircraft involved has not been identified. Registry records list four aircraft on the registry under the as operator; that record describes what the operator holds and is not an identification of the helicopter in this crash. Geographic reference data places Salado in Bell County, Texas, at a settlement elevation of 614 feet, 1.8 miles north of Salado Airport (73TA) and 4.1 miles northeast of Salado Bluffs Airport (TT61); that elevation describes the town and not the accident site. Weather observations recorded at Skylark Field (KILE), 13.1 miles away and 22 minutes from the reported time, showed wind from 170 degrees at 10 knots, visibility 10 statute miles, clear skies and a temperature of 95°F. Those are instrument readings and are not a stated factor in the crash.

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Reference data

From aircraft and geographic registries, not from the news sources. Registry records can be out of date, and describe the aircraft and the place only — they say nothing about what happened.

Terrain elevation
614 ft
Nearest aerodrome
1.8 miles N of Salado Airport (73TA)

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 715 Aug 2026, 09:27current

    Added Local 10 to the outlets attributed for the aircraft type, operator, date, casualty figures and the Army's investigation statement.

  2. Version 615 Aug 2026, 05:27

    Added KWTX and mymotherlode.com reporting, the conflicting time accounts (1:34 p.m. vs Tuesday afternoon), the record that this is the fourth Army Apache crash of 2026 and the only fatal one, and corrected the operator registry count to four.

  3. Version 515 Aug 2026, 02:19

    Added First Alert 4 reporting (including its competing Aug. 11 date and "Apache attack helicopter" description) and corrected the operator fleet count on the registry from one to three.

  4. Version 415 Aug 2026, 01:58

    Corrected operator fleet figure to one aircraft on the registry, added panow.com's differing cause characterization and the operator-name variant, and tightened the closing reference-data paragraphs.

  5. Version 315 Aug 2026, 01:55

    Introduced the U.S. Army explicitly in the lead as the operating service and as the institutional source of all quoted statements, with a note that no individual official was named. Restructured the investigation section so the Army is identified as the speaker before each "said" attribution, replacing bare trailing "the Army said" constructions with clearly sourced institutional attribution. Added the named investigating bodies from the fact set and restored WRAL's "Wednesday crash" wording. Aircraft-type disagreement, both investigation-status accounts, figures, names, ranks, ages and all reference-data caveats retained unchanged; nothing added beyond the fact set.

  6. Version 215 Aug 2026, 01:43

    Added victims' ages, hometowns and unit, the crash site's distance from Fort Hood, the Fort Rucker safety investigation team, the sourced disagreement over aircraft type, and a note that the individual aircraft is unidentified; corrected the direction to Salado Airport.

  7. Version 115 Aug 2026, 01:20

    First published.

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