 The first aircraft was delivered to the US Army on 11 December 2006 in Columbus, Mississippi.On 12 December 2006, General Richard A. Cody, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, and Joe Red Cloud, a chief of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Lakota nation, accepted the first UH-72A in an official ceremony.The service estimated that delivery of the planned 345 aircraft would continue until 2017.