The U.S. Army has identified the two soldiers who died following a helicopter crash near Fort Hood, Texas, on Wednesday. Chief Warrant Officer 2 Deontre T. Huey, 34, and Warrant Officer Seth L. Olmstead, 25, were killed during what the military described as a maintenance test flight.
The crash occurred on Aug. 12 at approximately 1:40 p.m. local time. The aircraft involved was an AH-64E Apache attack helicopter. According to Army officials, the helicopter crashed in a field in Central Texas, though the specific location within the region was not disclosed in the initial report.
Huey, a resident of Killeen, Texas, joined the Army in 2014 and previously served as a motor transport operator. Olmstead, from Belton, Texas, entered the service in January 2023 as a warrant officer candidate. The Associated Press reported that the crash ignited a wildfire, leading to the evacuation of several nearby homes, though the aircraft did not strike any buildings.
The scale of the incident involves the loss of two lives and the destruction of a multimillion-dollar AH-64E Apache airframe. While the number of households evacuated was described as "several," the specific figure was not reported. Military families and service members at Fort Hood, one of the largest military installations in the United States, often monitor these investigations to understand if equipment failure or procedural issues contributed to the loss of their colleagues.
The investigation will have knock-on effects for Army aviation safety protocols. A safety investigation team from the U.S. Army Combat Readiness Center, based in Fort Rucker, Alabama, has been tasked with determining the cause of the crash. Their findings could lead to fleet-wide inspections or changes in maintenance flight procedures for the AH-64E Apache. What happens next depends on the findings of this team; however, the source did not provide a specific deadline for the completion of the safety report.