The US Army Has 838 Apaches, Two in Every Three Flying Worldwide, and the Count Is Falling

The US Army has 838 AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, according to FlightGlobal’s World Air Forces 2026 directory, which drew its data from Cirium on October 1, 2025. That is the whole US Apache fleet: the Army is the only American service that flies it.

It is also about two of every three Apaches in service anywhere. The same directory counts 1,266 AH-64s across every air arm on Earth.

How Many Apache Helicopters Does the US Have?

FlightGlobal lists 838 AH-64D and AH-64E Apaches in active Army service, plus one more on order. The count leaves out aircraft that Cirium records as not in day-to-day use, so stored and museum airframes are not in it.

The number was already moving when it was printed. In 2025 the Army decided to retire every AH-64D it still had, and by April 2026 it had divested nearly 60 percent of them.

The 838 Apaches, by Model

Three generations of the Boeing AH-64 Apache have served in the Army, and only two are left. FlightGlobal does not split its total by model, but Aviation Week reported in May 2025 that the Army planned to retire 91 AH-64Ds, which puts the D-model at about a tenth of the fleet.

Many of the Army’s Apaches are not new aircraft. Older helicopters go back to Boeing and are rebuilt as the next model: Apache 451, the Army’s last A-model, was retired as an A in 2012 and reconfigured into an AH-64D.

The fleet is organized into 15 attack battalions, 11 in the active Army and four in the National Guard. In May 2025, eight active and three Guard battalions flew the AH-64E, and the rest still flew the D.

For where the Apache sits next to the Black Hawk and the Chinook, see our guide to every type of US Army helicopter.

Why Other Sites Give Different Numbers

Search for this question and you will see 824, 812, about 600, 2,875 and “more than 5,000”. Each one is real, but they count different things.

824 is the older FlightGlobal figure. Earlier editions of the same directory listed 824 AH-64Ds and AH-64Es, and many pages never updated it.

About 600 comes from Congressional Budget Office data on Army aviation from 2000 to 2023, which put the Apache fleet at roughly 600 throughout. It is built from the service’s own aviation data rather than a fleet census, so it does not line up with the directory totals.

2,875 and 5,000 are production numbers, not fleets. Boeing says more than 2,875 Apaches have been produced across the A through E models, while the Army counts more than 5,000 AH-64 deliveries to itself and 18 partners, a figure that can count one rebuilt airframe more than once.

Two smaller things blur any count too. Poland currently leases eight Apaches from the US Army, and in September 2026 the Pentagon’s Lead Inspector General reported that one AH-64 had been shot down over the Strait of Hormuz during the war with Iran. Both happened after FlightGlobal’s October 2025 snapshot.

Where the Number Is Going

Down. The Army Transformation Initiative, announced in spring 2025, set out to retire all of the remaining AH-64Ds and to disband the 11 active air cavalry squadrons, each traditionally equipped with eight Apaches. By late 2025, seven of those squadrons had been deactivated.

In April 2026, Col. Tim Jaeger, the Army’s director of aviation at the G-3/5/7, said the service had divested nearly 60 percent of its D-models in a year. Breaking Defense also reported that Apache procurement funding drops from $361.7 million in fiscal 2026 to $1.5 million in fiscal 2027.

Even the E fleet is shrinking. In May 2026, Aviation Week reported a Pentagon document showing the Army culling AH-64Es in greater numbers the following year, despite its plan to fly the E-model alone.

Some of the retired D-models may fly again elsewhere. Aviation Week reported in 2025 that Boeing could offer them to foreign buyers.

How the US Compares With Everyone Else

No other country comes close. FlightGlobal’s 2026 directory gives the UK’s Army Air Corps 50 AH-64Es, Israel 48 Apaches and Egypt 46, so the US fleet is more than 16 times the size of the next one.

That gap will narrow. Poland signed a contract worth nearly $4.7 billion for 96 AH-64Es in November 2025, with deliveries expected to begin in 2028, and Boeing says the E-model will stay in production into the 2030s for export customers.

Across all aircraft types, Apaches are a small slice of a much bigger fleet. See how many aircraft the US military has for the full count, and our ranking of the best attack helicopters in the world for how the Apache measures up.