US Army Drops the Lakota From Flight School, Then Orders 12 More the Next Day

The U.S. Army selected M1 Support Services on August 13, 2026 to run Flight School Next, the contractor-owned, contractor-operated program that will replace its Initial Entry Rotary-Wing course. M1's winning bid is built around the Robinson R66 turbine, which the Army will designate TH-66 SAGE — ending the UH-72 Lakota's decade as the service's primary training helicopter at Fort Rucker, Alabama.

A day later, on August 14, the Army awarded Airbus Helicopters a firm-fixed-price contract for up to 12 more UH-72B Lakotas.

The training award is potentially worth $10 billion over a 26-year performance period, with the first task order covering an initial three-to-four-year transition. It is sized for 800 to 1,500 Army helicopter pilots a year, against roughly 1,250 produced under the current course. Bell lost the final round with the 505 Jet Ranger X.

Army officials framed the switch as a return to fundamentals: the Lakota's extensive automation and sophisticated avionics, they argued, become a crutch for inexperienced students, and its twin-engine design is more aircraft than the syllabus needs. Airbus has disputed that characterization. The Lakota has been the primary trainer at Fort Rucker since 2015 and passed one million fleet flight hours in December 2025.

The contract announced the following day covers the UH-72B — the MBB-BK 117 D3 — plus jettisonable cockpit doors, air conditioning installation, engine inlet barrier filters and program management. The action is worth $115.4 million and lifts the contract's cumulative face value to $140.7 million; one bid was solicited and one received. Work runs at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, through December 31, 2030, funded from fiscal 2024 and 2025 Army aircraft procurement. The same announcement carried a $29.4 million option exercised with CAE USA for advanced helicopter flight training support at Fort Rucker.

GlobalMilitary.net tracks 478 Lakotas in U.S. Army service in 2026 with 30 already on order — the new award takes that backlog to 42 — plus five more flown by the U.S. Navy. Some 463 airframes have been built since the type entered service in 2007. Flight school is only part of the fleet's work: Army National Guard Lakotas fly homeland-security, medical evacuation and general support missions that the R66 is not being bought to cover.

Attrition has been light but not absent. A Lakota crashed in a field near Opp, Alabama on July 27, 2026 during a Fort Rucker training sortie. Students who finish the course go on to the UH-60 Black Hawk, AH-64 Apache and CH-47 Chinook, all of them heavier and more automated than either trainer.

Robinson is best known for the piston-engined R22 and R44 Raven, staples of civilian flight schools; the R66 is its single-turbine model. The Army has not said what becomes of the training Lakotas once the transition completes, and the Airbus deliveries ordered this month run to the end of 2030 — well past the point at which the R66 is due to take over primary instruction.