Army helicopter involved in fatal crash over the Potomac was not using AI, sources say

The Army UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter that fatally collided with an American Airlines passenger plane Wednesday night over the Potomac River was not equipped with experimental autonomous flight capabilities, defense officials familiar with the ongoing federal investigation told DefenseScoop.

There’s said to be no survivors in the aftermath of the tragic crash, which happened around 9:00 p.m. local time on a notoriously highly-congested flight path in the National Capital Region. The Army is closely supporting the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board-led investigation into the incident, officials said.

In statements, press briefings and one-on-one conversations Thursday, several defense officials shed new light on the mid-air collision. Their comments confirm that — despite the Army’s unfolding experimentation with AI and autonomous software — the helicopter involved was not equipped with or deploying any such systems.

“It did not have any AI capability,” Jonathan Koziol, who serves as chief of staff at the Headquarters Department of the Army Aviation Directorate, told DefenseScoop during a media call.

“With any testing like that — with new systems — it’ll be away from populated areas. Just in case a tragic incident happens, we want to reduce the risk of impacting or hurting anyone else in and around that area, so we definitely wouldn’t be testing that type of equipment in this area,” Koziol said.

He emphasized that the latest trends show that the Army had “greatly reduced accidents over the last year.”

Koziol told reporters that he views this incident as a tragic circumstance where two aircraft tried to “occupy the same space at the same time.”

In separate conversations earlier Thursday, three defense officials speaking to DefenseScoop on the condition of anonymity also noted that this specific Black Hawk mission, known colloquially as a “tech flight”, would not incorporate any experimental AI software. 

They suggested that those sort of “gold-top” helicopters, as well as other craft flying in those specific air corridors, would most likely not be employing AI.

Over the past few years, the Army has been exploring how to integrate autonomy and AI-enabled capabilities across its aviation portfolio as part of a larger effort to modernize its fleet. However, many of those efforts are still in nascent research-and-development phases. The service has focused both on fielding new platforms such as the manned Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA), as well as upgrading legacy helicopters with the technology.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is slated to begin experiments this year that would integrate an autonomy system developed by Sikorsky onto an experimental UH-60M “optionally piloted” Black Hawk, designated MX. The modernized version of the aircraft features fly-by-wire controls — a semiautomatic system that replaces an aircraft’s conventional manual flight controls — and serves as a flying testbed.

Under the $6 million contract awarded to the helicopter’s manufacturer Sikorsky in October, the Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command (DEVCOM) is expected to test and mature applications for a range of autonomous flight capabilities, including fully unmanned operations.

The effort builds upon Sikorsky’s previous autonomous flight research conducted over the last few years under DARPA’s Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program. In 2022, the Lockheed Martin subsidiary first flew the MX Black Hawk without any humans onboard during the Army’s annual Project Convergence experimentation event. The company later demonstrated the aircraft’s ability to be controlled by operators in the cabin or on the ground via a tablet. 

Sikorsky did not immediately respond to DefenseScoop’s request for comment regarding the Black Hawk’s autonomous flight capability.

The investigation continues

On the call Thursday, Koziol told reporters that once the investigation is complete, the government will hopefully have retrieved and gained access to flight recorders that were onboard both aircraft that could provide the “real truth” behind the wreck.

“And as long as the black box is recovered and the information is able to be downloaded, which it normally is, we’ll be able to get the voice communications of all the radios and the crew members talking to each other, along with all of the aircraft information itself — how the engines were running, or speed of the rotors, the altitude of the aircraft — so we should be able to have all of that data for the investigation team to come to a conclusion,” he said. 

Among a wide variety of safety concerns now emerging about that D.C. airspace, the collision is also raising questions about how night-vision eyewear could impact military pilots’ flight performance. 

“It was a fairly experienced crew that was doing a required annual night evaluation. They did have night-vision goggles,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a recorded video from his office that aired Thursday morning.

Briefing the media, Koziol said that in his view, it would be acceptable — and possibly even standard — for the military pilots to not have physically worn the goggles even if they had them on hand.

“It does help the air crew members, but we also have requirements to fly. We call it ‘night unaided,’ where we don’t have aided night-vision goggles helping us fly. I don’t know if they were — we’re speculating now, we’ll leave that to the investigation. But they can easily fly at night without the goggles, especially in this environment with all the bright lights and no lights on the river, they could definitely know where they’re at,” he said.

Wednesday’s fatal collision comes after a spike in aviation accidents and mishaps featuring Army aircraft, as fiscal 2024 saw the service’s highest number of Class A flight mishaps — designated for incidents resulting in fatalities, permanent disabilities or destruction of the aircraft — in 10 years.

According to an Army newsletter published earlier this month, there were 15 Class A flight mishaps over the year, compared to nine recorded in fiscal 2023 and four in fiscal 2022. Only one of those incidents involved a UH-60M Black Hawk, the document stated.

Koziol noted that an Army Aviation Safety Stand-Up initiated in April 2024 allowed the service to reinforce and review both its policies and training protocols. Separately from Wednesday’s accident, the Army is looking to publish additional training material and leader development materials related to aviation safety, he said. 

“This is planned well ahead of that, to show how important safety is for Army aviation and trying to curb that trend that we had last year, which we hope was an anomaly because the previous five years were probably the safest in Army aviation we had in a long time,” Koziol said.

During his confirmation hearing Thursday to serve as President Donald Trump’s secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll pledged to focus on aviation safety and prevent any future accidents from occurring again.

“It’s an accident that seems to be preventable. From what we can tell today, that should not happen. I think [there should be] a focus from the top down, on a culture of safety. There are appropriate times to take risk and there are inappropriate times to take risk,” Driscoll told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I don’t know the details around this one, but after doing it, if confirmed, and working with this committee to figure out the facts, I think we might need to look at where is an appropriate time to take training risk. And it may not be near an airport like Reagan.”