Stealth Helicopter crashed in Osama's Compound?

[svenphantom]

The Helicopter That Crashed in the Bin Laden Raid Was a Secret Stealth Helicopter
By Clay Dillow Posted 05.03.2011 at 2:19 pm


It’s not uncommon for U.S. military forces to destroy an aircraft downed in a foreign land, but U.S. Special Forces had particular cause to blow up the ill-fated helo that participated in Sunday’s raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. Apparently, it was a secret stealth helicopter, the design of which U.S. military commanders would not be keen to share with the Pakistanis or anyone else.

For analysis we turn to Bill Sweetman over at Aviation Week’s Ares blog, who knows much about such things:

It was a secretly developed stealth helicopter, probably a highly modified version of an H-60 Blackhawk. Photos published in the Daily Mail and on the Secret Projects board show that the helicopter's tail features stealth-configured shapes on the boom and tip fairings, swept stabilizers and a "dishpan" cover over a non-standard five-or-six-blade tail rotor. It has a silver-loaded infra-red suppression finish similar to that seen on some V-22s.

The special ops team succeeded in destroying the critical technology, though the tailboom survived (it ended up outside the compound wall). It’s from this that many journalists and defense wonks were trying--with much trouble--to identify the downed aircraft.

But, as Sweetman notes, the images from Pakistan do answer some questions about Sunday’s raid. While we may not get the details on exactly what technologies the modified Blackhawks were packing, we do now have a pretty good idea of why Pakistani air defenses didn’t see them coming.

Interesting, what are your thoughts about a stealth helicopter, it seems that first-strike stealth works.

[runi_dk]

Might have been a a MH-60G Pave Hawk or HH-60 Pave Hawk, not sure of stealth properties though..

[LinkF16SimDude]

Pictures of the helo remnants from Reuters. Thought it was a Commanche tail at first but after a second look....nope. Wonder if they have the wherewithall to reverse engineer anything from that.

[SpudmanWP]

Semi-Officially Confirmed as a stelthified Blackhawk

The helicopters that flew the Navy SEALs on the mission to kill Osama bin Laden were a radar-evading variant of the special operations MH-60 Black Hawk, according to a retired special operations aviator.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/05/a ... wk-050411/

Here is someone's opinion on a possible configuration.


http://cencio4.wordpress.com/2011/05/04 ... helo-down/

[1st503rdsgt]

Looks to me like the pilot came in over the wall and landed short (either by error or because of mechanical failure), knocking his own tail off.

[LinkF16SimDude]

Semi-Officially Confirmed as a stelthified Blackhawk

Would it be safe to assume then that all 4 helos were Stealth Hawks since none of 'em were detected? Several accounts mentioned 4 aircraft with speculation that it was a mix of Pave Hawks and MH-47s

Looks to me like the pilot came in over the wall and landed short (either by error or because of mechanical failure), knocking his own tail off.

Well if he was indeed bitten by the "settling with power" thing the article mentioned, the walls of the courtyard may have compounded the problem by creating a strong updraft along with the down wash and stalled the rotor disk. I guess that's why most helipads are unbounded. But I'm a fixed-wing guy, so what do I know?

[discofishing]

Ya know, the second I saw pictures of the crashed helicopter I had originally thought it had just knocked down a street light. This is something I've never heard of before and I'm a big time rotorhead. The pictures looks like the tail section of a helicopter. I bet we're actually looking at the tail rotor they failed to destroy. The tail rotor is a source of higher frequency noises and the tail rotor swash plate and pitch links can create whistling noises at 100% RPM. Same with the main rotor head. They probably reflect a good amount of RF energy as well. This has to be one of the coolest finds I've seen in a long time. Too bad it crashed, I don't think we should know about this thing.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/top-secre ... d=13530693

[discofishing]

http://defensetech.org/2011/05/04/what- ... look-like/

more artist renditions

[slicktry]

Interesting how they mention an electronic attack happened at the same time. Interesting indeed....

God Bless
Jer

[discofishing]

Interesting how they mention an electronic attack happened at the same time. Interesting indeed....

F-22s with EA capability? New stealthy drones?

It seems pretty evident that the helicopters used were modified not only to be quieter, but be harder to detect on radar. Hell, they could be completely new designs for all we know. I seriously doubt MH-47s were used at all. It is surprising that the team spent around 40 minutes on the ground next to a major Pakistani Army base. Did the helicopters fly in and shut down? Did they orbit? Did the SEALs actually HALO jump into the area and the helicopters were merely for extraction? If not, those helicopters must have been very quiet and it must have been a very dark night.

[LinkF16SimDude]

All your questions will be answered in time, Grasshoppa.

[minneford]

The Press said Chinooks were used. I bet every NAVY SEAL was a Marine.

They know how to do successful raids. This Helicopter is obviously a heavily modded Blackhawk with a quieter tail rotor system. Stealth was only a bonus if the Heli was made from Carbon Fiber rather than Aluminum covered in RAM Paint. It does look like technology from the canceled Comanche made it to Blackhawk.

Do we really need stealth planes now that we can make our own version of the Plasma Cloud Device that renders planes and heli's radar invisible?

Sikorsky and Bell and Boeing could lose the tail rotor completely by using Kamann Synchrocopters. These are heavy lift helis used for mostly helilogging, but could be adapted for military use. Sikorsky's latest heli has two rotors stacked like a Russian Kamov Alligator.

[discofishing]

The Press said Chinooks were used. I bet every NAVY SEAL was a Marine.

Chinooks are fast and have range, but they sure are loud. They kick up a dust storm the size of a small town when they land and take off. Can Marines try out for BUDS?

It does look like technology from the canceled Comanche made it to Blackhawk.

Yeah I agree, We've had to have learned something from the Comanche program. Everything on the empennage of that wreckage tells me they designed it to suppress noise and radar returns.

Do we really need stealth planes now that we can make our own version of the Plasma Cloud Device that renders planes and heli's radar invisible?

Plasma Cloud?

Sikorsky and Bell and Boeing could lose the tail rotor completely by using Kamann Synchrocopters. These are heavy lift helis used for mostly helilogging, but could be adapted for military use. Sikorsky's latest heli has two rotors stacked like a Russian Kamov Alligator.

It would be a lot harder to hide the stacked rotor system's mechanical linkages than on a traditional helicopter design. The mechanical stuff around a main rotor head/hub makes a lot of noise and probably reflects a good bit of RF energy too.

[minneford]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_stealth

I thought that everyone here knows that the B-2 uses high voltage to fly.

I found out about Plasma Cloud from Jane's Combat Aircraft 2000.

The book says the Mig 144 might use the system.

Now they can make bare aluminum metal, completely unpainted acid treated stealth radar absorbing material!

It looks shiny like aluminum.

[Roscoe]

Stop feeding the trolls...