Hegseth says he’ll ‘fix’ suspensions of 8 helicopter pilots who buzzed July 4th beaches

For the second time in five months, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared to wade into an internal Army flight safety investigation late Thursday, tweeting support for eight AH-64 Apache pilots and crew who were suspended by thier unit earlier in the week after flying low passes past crowded July 4th beaches in South Carolina.

“We’ll fix this,” Hegseth tweeted Thursday night, hours after local news reports emerged that the eight South Carolina National Guard pilots had been suspended. “Carry on, Patriots, ” Hegseth wrote, echoing another tweet from March when he unilaterally absolved four other Apache flyers in another safety investigation.

We’ll fix this. Carry on, Patriots. https://t.co/mJXcG7BNDM

— Pete Hegseth (@PeteHegseth) July 10, 2026

The eight pilots were suspended from flight duties earlier this week, guard officials said, after buzzing past several beaches during a statewide holiday airshow known as Salute From The Shore. The annual July 4th event features an aerial parade down the state’s coastline of military aircraft based in South Carolina, passing over popular beaches between Myrtle Beach, Charleston, and Hilton Head.

The Salute From The Shore instagram accounted identified the AH-64 flyers’ unit as the 1-151st Attack Battalion at McEntire Joint National Guard Base, outside Columbia.

Videos of the helicopters buzzing unusually low over beachgoers and swimmers at the event circulated widely on social media. Before Hegseth jumped into the fray, local politicians far outside the crews’ chain of command had began to call for the suspensions to be lifted.

“The @SCNationalGuard needs to drop this review and restore these pilots immediately,” wrote South Carolina representative Russell Fry on social media. “These pilots should be celebrated, not sanctioned.”

Others wondered if Hegseth would weigh in as he did in a similar kerfuffle in March, after a flight of Apaches from the 101st Airborne Division buzzed the Tennessee home of singer Kid Rock. When video of that flyby emerged, leaders at the 101st suspended the crew as part of a safety investigation, but Hegseth short-circuited the inquiry with his first “Carry on, Patriots” tweet.

Hours before Hegseth weighed in, state guard officials appeared to be in full damage control mode. In a post on social media, the guard released a full-color informational graphic — replete with ‘shaking hands’ and ‘group heart’ logos — that soft-peddled the suspensions as “non-punitive.”

“We sincerely appreciate the strong community support for our service members and the enthusiasm surrounding the ‘Salute from the Shore” event,” the statement said. “We are also aware of the public feedback and concerns regarding the temporary suspension of the Apache pilots involved. We want to assure the community that a temporary suspension from flight duties is a routine administrative measure whenever a flight profile is under review.”

Helicopters and public events can be deadly mix

Though the Kid Rock and South Carolina episode did not end in injuries or damage, other recent, well-intentioned public displays with military helicopters have.

In April 2025, a pre-approved, carefully planned “visit” by an Air Force Air Force HH-60W rescue helicopter to an elementry school on Kadena Air Force Base, Japan, went terribly wrong. A Japanese woman was killed when the helicopter inadvertently landed too close to a crowd of children and teachers. Rotorwash from the landing knocked the woman over onto a concrete sidewalk. She died of a head injury hours later. Several children from the school were also knocked over, but were largely unhurt.

An investigation board found that event planners with the 33rd Rescue Squadron had approached the flight with a deep concern for safety, noting that some squadron members involved with the visit had children who attended the school. But planners and the crew assigned to the event had followed Air Force safety rules for normal field operations, rather than a seperate, far more conservative set of rules the Air Force maintains for public events like air shows and demonstration flights.

As a result, the woman and many children were less than 100 feet from the helicopter as it landed, rather than 600 feet required by the safer rules. Both the crew and squadron leaders, the report said, approached the flight with a “false confidence of safety.”

Though the Air Force has a specific flight manual dedicated to flight rules around air shows and public events, the Army does not. Instead it includes directions for public events like Salute From The Shore in its primary flight manual, AR 95-1, with additional guidance included in its Pubic Affairs rules. Both documents generally defer to civilian rules for public events, which are governed by the Federal Aviation Administration.

FAA rules generally require fixed-wing aircraft to fly 500 feet over airshows in “non-congested areas” like a typical beach on the ocean, but 1,000 feet over airshows and other large crowds classified as “congested areas.” Though either of those definitions might apply to the Salute From the Shore flyovers, the FAA lets helicopters vary from those rules if following approved helicopter flight paths.