Boeing gets nearly $500 million more for Apache support

The U.S. Army has added nearly $500 million to a Boeing contract for engineering services and technical support on the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter, extending the work through February 2031.

Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, awarded the $499.8 million modification to Boeing’s Mesa, Arizona, operation on Feb. 21, 2026, according to the Department of War announcement. The Army solicited bids online and received one, and because work locations and funding will be set with each individual order, the announcement does not say how much money has been obligated so far or where the engineering will be done.

The modification extends a contract the Army first awarded in August 2021, when it gave Boeing a $487 million cost-plus-fixed-fee deal for the same Apache engineering and technical support, originally due to run until Feb. 6, 2026. The new action came about two weeks after that end date, adding a sum roughly equal to the original ceiling along with five more years of performance. Engineering support of this kind pays for the work that keeps an aircraft type flying and evolving after it leaves the factory, from investigating fleet problems and updating technical documentation to integrating new equipment, though the announcement does not list the specific tasks planned for the next five years.

The money arrives as the Army shrinks and reorganizes its Apache force. Under the Army Transformation Initiative announced in 2025, the service is retiring every remaining AH-64D, the older Longbow variant whose last new airframe was built in 2013, and deactivating 11 air cavalry squadrons, most of which flew the D model. The Army has been planning that drawdown for years, and as early as 2020 it sought contractors to dismantle hundreds of AH-64Ds. In April 2026, the Army’s director of aviation said the service had divested nearly 60% of its D models within a year, while procurement funding for Apaches in the fiscal 2027 budget request fell from $361.7 million to $1.5 million.

The newer AH-64E Guardian remains the Army’s only attack helicopter, but its numbers are also coming down. A Pentagon budget document reviewed by Aviation Week showed the service plans to retire some AH-64Es as well, culling the E-model fleet in greater numbers next year even as it completes the move to an all-E force.

Much of the remaining engineering effort is tied to upgrading the aircraft the Army keeps. The service’s priority is Version 6.5, an AH-64E software and hardware update that adds an open-systems interface for faster technology insertion, enhanced Link 16 data sharing for manned-unmanned teaming, and the groundwork for launched effects, the small drones an Apache can release to scout or strike ahead of it. Version 6.5 first flew in October 2023 and is meant to bring every E-model onto a single software baseline, and Boeing said in April that the Army was testing the configuration and that adding it to production would require only a modification to the existing contract.

In May 2026, the Army was investigating a newly discovered transmission problem affecting the AH-64E, at a time when funding shortfalls had forced some units to cut flight hours and speed up the retirement of their D models. The Army has not said whether any part of the new engineering modification is linked to that investigation.