WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of major accidents involving military aircraft spiked in 2024, internal Pentagon figures show, and a series of high-profile aviation mishaps with deaths and the loss of aircraft in 2025 suggest the disturbing trend may be continuing.
Across the military, the rate of severe accidents per 100,000 flight hours rose 55% in the 2024 budget year compared with four years earlier. The Marine Corps saw the highest increase, nearly tripling its rate over the same period.
The data, which was released by the Defense Department to Congress and provided exclusively to The Associated Press, tracks Class A mishaps — the most serious accidents, which result in death or a permanent full disability.
An aviation expert noted that broader worsening trends are unlikely the result of a single factor but rather a reflection of multiple smaller issues that accumulate to create an unsafe culture. These issues include increased operational demands, riskier aircraft like the V-22 Osprey and interruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a significant curtailing of flying time across the military.
But the rising number of serious accidents has some in Congress looking for answers.
The data was released to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, in January after her office asked for the figures after a spate of deadly mishaps involving the V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. Warren's office provided the data to the AP, which reviewed it independently.
The statistics cover the full budget years 2020-2023 and then the first 10 months of the 2024 budget year, through July 31. In those 10 months of last year, 25 service members and Defense Department civilian employees were killed and 14 aircraft were destroyed.
“These accident rates are incredibly troubling and demand action," Warren told the AP in an emailed statement. She said legislative changes to make accident reports more accessible "are desperately needed so Congress can understand the root causes of these accidents to save service member lives.”
The Marine Corps claimed the rate of their most serious mishaps is lower than the figure the Pentagon provided to Congress in January 2025, but did not immediately provide data to back up their assertion.
The Osprey, which flies like a plane but converts to land like a helicopter, has been among the most dangerous aircraft, as the AP has reported extensively.
In addition, the new Defense Department data shows the Apache helicopter had about 4.5 times the rate of the most serious Class A accidents during the 2024 budget year compared with four years earlier. The C-130 transport plane, a workhorse of the military, nearly doubled its rate over the same period, even as it reported safer years in between.
The Pentagon, when asked about these trends, said they “underscore the importance of safety and readiness at every level” of the military and its leaders “regularly review and improve our processes, share lessons learned from mishaps, and reduce safety risks.”
The Navy's data on just its own aviation mishaps shows a marked increase this year. The Naval Safety Command reported eight Class A aviation mishaps in 2024. In 2025, that total has spiked to 14.
Aviation expert and former military pilot John Nance said the ever-growing demands being placed on military pilots are most likely playing a major part in the growing number of mishaps.
“Whether we’re talking about the end of Afghanistan, whether we talk about deployments to Djibouti, or the back and forth across Saudi Arabia to get to the Emirates, I think that as the pace (of military operations) ticks up, the mishaps are going to tick up,” Nance said.
In a statement to the AP, the Navy acknowledged the rise in mishaps and noted that its aviators regularly operate in “incredibly complex conditions.”
“As a learning organization, we treat every flight and ground evolution as an opportunity to develop better training, create more effective procedures, and safeguard the operational readiness we work tirelessly to generate,” the statement said.
While the data does not continue into 2025, there have been multiple high-profile aviation mishaps this year, including a spate on aircraft carriers at sea and the collision between an Army helicopter and a passenger jet over Washington, D.C., in January, which killed 67 people.
Investigations found that the Black Hawk helicopter’s altimeter gauge was broken, there were issues with the military pilot's night vision goggles, and the Federal Aviation Administration didn't address warnings about the dangers that helicopters presented in the area around the Washington airport.
Unlike their civilian counterparts, military aviators face far less predictability and routine when they fly, Nance said.
“You’ve got aircraft commanders ... making decisions with the best information they’ve got, but on the spur of the moment and there’s a level of uncertainty and a level of unpredictability that is wildly beyond anything the commercial airlines experience,” he said.
In the spring, the Navy's USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier lost two F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets in the span of a few weeks — one to a bad landing and another slipped off the deck of the ship and fell into the sea.
In December 2024, the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg mistakenly shot down an F/A-18 from the carrier.
No aviators were killed in any of these episodes. The Navy has not released the results of investigations into the causes of these mishaps.
More recently, four U.S. Army soldiers who were part of an elite team that does nighttime missions died when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed near a military base in Washington state while on a training mission in September.
Then, in October, a fighter jet and a helicopter based off the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz both crashed into the South China Sea within 30 minutes of each other, though no one was killed.
Nance didn't rule out the possibility that this spike in mishaps is the downstream effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, when military pilots had far less flying time.
“The safety buffer is impacted by a million things,” Nance said. Some things make tiny impacts and others are major. According to him, the pandemic “was a major impact on the operational capabilities.”
Warren's office is now asking for more detailed figures from the Pentagon on aviation mishaps and over a longer period of time, from 2019 to 2025, according to a request sent to the Pentagon and reviewed by the AP. The request includes questions about Class A mishaps but asks for data on the less serious Class B and C mishaps as well.
Warren's office is also asking more questions about how the military trains its aircrews and maintenance staff.
FILE - Rescue and salvage crews pull up airplane wreckage of an American Airlines jet in the Potomac River from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Feb. 3, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
