It is yet another incident in which the United States loses an aircraft in the war
A U.S. Navy unmanned boat “located and rescued” two crew members after a U.S. Army Apache helicopter crashed off the coast of Oman, the U.S. Army said Tuesday morning.
US Central Command spokesman Captain Timothy Hawkins confirmed that “a US Navy surface drone located and rescued the crew from the water. US 5th Fleet Task-Force 59 is the Navy’s first operational task force comprised of AI and drones.”
Task-Force 59, launched in 2021, includes unmanned vessels and drones. It is the first task force of its kind in the Navy.
“The soldiers were rescued to safety within approximately two hours and are in stable condition. The cause of the incident is being investigated,” said US Central Command, the military branch responsible for operations in the Middle East, in a Facebook post.
The loss of the aircraft marks the first loss of an Apache since the start of the conflict with Iran. The incident follows the escalation of hostilities in the region over the weekend, with Iran and Israel exchanging their first direct attacks in months late on Sunday. The US Army reported that the helicopter crashed “while patrolling the waters in the region”.
US President Donald Trump commented on the incident overnight, stating that “the pilots are fine” after being questioned by reporters about the news that a US Army helicopter crashed near the Strait of Hormuz.
“The pilots are fine, no one was injured,” Trump told reporters in New York after watching the NBA Finals game on Monday night.
The New York Times newspaper was the first to report that a US Army Apache helicopter crashed near the strait this Monday and that two crew members had to be rescued.
The helicopters have previously been used to attack small Iranian vessels as part of the American blockade of Iranian ports.
Apache helicopters are primarily used for precision strikes, close air support and aerial reconnaissance, according to the Central Command website.
According to a Congressional Investigative Service report released in May, the U.S. military has lost dozens of aircraft — including at least five fighter jets, seven Stratotanker refueling aircraft, a search and rescue helicopter and more than two dozen drones — since the start of the war with Iran in late February.
In early April, the US Armed Forces had to launch a risky operation to rescue one of the pilots of an F-15E Strike Eagle shot down in Iranian territory. During the secret mission, which involved hundreds of US military and intelligence agents, including special operations forces, the military had to blow up two of its own special operations aircraft on Iranian soil.
In March, a KC-135 Stratotanker tanker crashed in western Iraq, killing all six crew on board. Days earlier, three North American F-15 fighter jets were mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defenses, with all crew members ejecting safely.
Several aircraft were damaged in Iranian attacks on a US air base in Saudi Arabia, while others suffered damage after being hit by Iranian fire mid-flight.
CNN’s Kaanita Iyer and Zachary Cohen contributed to this report
