Army aviation was having a bad few years—even before Wednesday’s crash

The deadly Jan. 29 helicopter crash outside Washington, D.C., was the Army’s first serious aviation incident in months—but it came on the heels of a fiscal year that saw the service’s highest rate of serious crashes in over a decade.Army aviation saw 17 class-A mishaps—that is, accidents that killed someone or caused more than $2.5 million in damage—during fiscal 2024, which ran from October 2023 through September. Thirteen of them have taken place since last Januar