Crashed Helicopter Sparks Concern Over Stealth Secrets 484
Hugh Pickens writes "The crash of a helicopter involved in the raid on Osama bin Laden's Pakistani hideout has prompted intense speculation about whether the aircraft was specially modified to fly stealthily — and whether its remains could offer hostile governments clues to sensitive US military technology. Remnants of the helicopter, including a nearly intact piece of its tail, suggested that the aircraft involved in the raid wasn't the typical Black Hawk flown by special-operations forces. Aviation experts who scrutinized photos of the scene say the tail had unusual features that suggested the helicopter had been extensively modified to fly quietly, while appearing less visible to radar. 'The odds are fair — based on my knowledge of the subject area — the vast majority of the special MH-60s aircraft were purpose-built to make those aircraft as stealthy as they could possibly be,' says aviation expert Jay Miller, adding that the remnants of the aircraft suggested extensive use of nonmetallic composite parts, which reflect less radar energy. Experts also say the tail rotor's design suggested an effort to reduce the 'acoustic signature' (video) of the helicopters to make them fly more quietly."
Yes it was modifed (Score:5, Interesting)
Or a new design. That tail rotor is not from any know US or even NATO Helicopter. How much was compromised? Maybe some materials It will depend on if Pakistan gives it back or not. They will probably pass some parts onto China since they are working with them on new aircraft. Or we will sell them some more F16s cheap if they give back to US.
The reason it crashed too? (Score:5, Interesting)
According the NYtimes the reason it crashed was not mechanical failure but lack of lift. two reasons were given 1) thin air 2) the walls of the compound created a vortex. So apparently just some modestly walls to guide air will reduce the lift enough to crash this thing. I wonder how it is supposed to land between buildings? I wonder if perhaps the noise reduction and stealth features came at a price of reduced performance.
Re:The reason it crashed too? (Score:5, Informative)
According to Aviation Week the reason it crashed was the tail rotor struck the top of the compound wall during the landing attempt, breaking the tail rotor off, which resulted in a hard landing. That's the reason the tail section was on the opposite side of the wall from the rest of the helicopter, and why it didn't get destroyed when the Seal team blew up the helicopter.
Re:The reason it crashed too? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's credible. Now please explain to me how they got 24 seals complete with combat equipment, two flight crews, a body and lots of swag - total at least 6,000 pounds - out in the one remaining chopper.
Re:The reason it crashed too? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:The reason it crashed too? (Score:5, Informative)
I've read reports of 70+ men on the team. Two Blackhawks for the initial strike, plus a bunch of Chinooks for the mopup crew, arab language experts to rifle files, and a few burly men to haul the loot back to the Chiniooks.
Re:The reason it crashed too? (Score:5, Insightful)
2 special Black Hawks for insertion, two standard Chinooks lifted the Team, gear, and swag.
And that would explain why a neighbor a good distance away was (unwittingly) Tweeting about the operation. He probably didn't hear the stealthy insertion but the Chinooks used for extraction make a boatload of noise and annoyed the piss out of him and everyone else a decent radius around there.
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If this tech is so top-secret, why don't they spend some time and build a self-immolate feature into the entire helicopter? They don't really seem to try to not let the tech fall into the wrong hands...
Because you don't want it to accidentally self-immolate in the air when hit by small arms fire?
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You don't want to give them intact military avionics - especially not our jammer and radar technology, nor our FLIR systems. Even if the aircraft is not classified, the US isn't going to give up avionics tech to an established enemy or otherwise hostile entity. What they ought to do though is have explosive devices within each component - a stable incendiary device (not shock sensitive so getting hit by enemy fire won't ignite it) but remotely triggered, like you see in Sci-Fi and action films where a veh
Hardly secret or surprising (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact that civilian aviation experts were able to look at the pictures and say "gee, that's a so-and-so modification to reduce noise" suggests to me that this is hardly top-secret technology. Also, the fact that special forces have relatively stealthy helicopters is hardly surprising.
What next; controversy about a crashed police car 'revealing' secret tuning and suspension modifications?
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Re:Hardly secret or surprising (Score:4, Informative)
No way... the truth I there is tons of technology that our military uses that only those with a need to know are usually aware of.
We spend 1.8 trillion on the military industrial complex per year from taxes, and that isn't including DoD budgets or pentagon budgets. Damn straight we're gonna have crazy technology that people aren't aware of. Most civilians have no idea what we even amount to in this field, and most soldiers won't even see or hear about the tech they don't directly work with.
We pay for it, that's for sure.
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1.8 trillion total since the GWoT started more like.
FY2007 Department of Defense appropriations: $70 billion(estimated) for Iraq War-related costs
FY2007 Emergency Supplemental (proposed) $100 billion
FY2008 Bush administration has proposed around $190 billion for the Iraq War and Afghanistan
FY2009 Obama administration has proposed around $130 billion in additional funding for the Iraq War and Afghanistan
FY2011 Obama administration proposes around $159.3 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars
US defense bud
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The visualisation I find most enlightening isn't this one
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/3/31/1270053920845/Info-is-beautiful-defence-001.jpg [guim.co.uk]
but this one
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/3/31/1270054039818/Info-is-beautiful-defence-001.jpg [guim.co.uk]
Compared to the GDP yearly of the US, our defense budget is just 4%, that isn't very much. Another enlightening set of graphs are
Raw Number of Soldiers
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/201 [guim.co.uk]
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I'm experiencing deja vu.
I remember this same discussion back in 1991, when a stealth fighter crashed in Iraq, and "experts" were worried that the crash parts would be stolen and help enemies build their own stealth fighter. So far I've not seen any great harm caused. Remember: These pundits are paid to talk, even if it's just "the sky is falling" nonsense and/or hand-wringing like an old maid.
Re:Hardly secret or surprising (Score:5, Informative)
I'm experiencing deja vu.
I remember this same discussion back in 1991, when a stealth fighter crashed in Iraq, and "experts" were worried that the crash parts would be stolen and help enemies build their own stealth fighter. So far I've not seen any great harm caused. Remember: These pundits are paid to talk, even if it's just "the sky is falling" nonsense and/or hand-wringing like an old maid.
You mean 1999 during the Kosovo war? The only operational (combat) loss of an F-117 (S/N 82-0806) was in Yugoslavia.
They were right to be worried since China has developed a stealth fighter [wikipedia.org] from the technology stolen from that very plane.
source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iE3jMTTaEhm5I8l63W9OzWiji0-Q?docId=e8f4fe6f3cc042d8af123a99e96b2a96 [google.com]
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They were right to be worried since China has developed a stealth fighter [wikipedia.org] from the technology stolen from that very plane.
No, the F-117 and the Chinese jet have fundamentally different designs.
What you probably mean is that China gained some knowledge of stealth coatings from the F-117 crash (what is in them, perhaps how they are applied... But certainly not how to manufacture them)
But the paint is only a small part of "stealth".
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The only stealth fighters that crashed were...
S/N 79-0785 was lost on 20 April 1982 during takeoff on its maiden flight in California, recovered.
S/N 80-0792 was lost on 11 July 1986 in California, recovered
S/N 85-0815 was lost on 14 October 1987 in Nevada, recovered
S/N 82-0801 was lost on 4 August 1992 in New Mexico, recovered
S/N 86-0822 was lost on 10 May 1995 in New Mexico, recovered
S/N 81-0793 was lost on 14 September 1997 in Maryland during air show, recovered
S/N 82-0806 was lost on 27 March 1999 in Ser
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Sun Tzu understood why this was a concern: "Be extremely subtle even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate."
If you know what materials are in use, and what technologies are implemented by your opponent, then you're no longer looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. You know exactly what the other guy is using, and can then build systems specifically designed & tuned to hinder/counter/neut
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Noise reduction in this case is only part of the intriguing things in this helicopter. Never came across something that is probably something completely new and never wanted to know more about it?
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Who mod this guy as "interesting"? Noise reduction in this case is only part of the intriguing things in this helicopter. Never came across something that is probably something completely new and never wanted to know more about it?
I'm not saying that it isn't interesting or intriguing (because it is); I'm saying it's not an "OMG National Security" disaster. Because it probably isn't.
Re:Hardly secret or surprising (Score:4, Informative)
Knowing that composites reduce radar signatures is well known in the civilian world. What specific composite works well against whatever brand of radar the pakistani's use is a whole other matter.
Everyone knew the F117 was a stealth fighter bomber, it had a shape, coating materials etc for that purpose. 10 years after it was built the russians still very quickly scooped up all the pieces they could find when one crashed in yugoslavia.
There's a big difference between knowing in general things that make something stealthy, it's quite another to have specific implementation you can copy/steal/learn from. In the same way that we all know nuclear bombs exist, and the basic principles of operation, but actually building a 5 Megaton bomb is a somewhat different problem.
The concern here is both what you can see externally, and then any of the electronics hardware on the inside that you can't see. When that EP3 spying on China in 2001 was forced to land on Hainan the important part wasn't the aircraft, it was the NSA operating system and all of the electronic stuff that we know sort of in general was there, but not how it worked.
The only thing to me is that Pakistan is officially a US ally in this, so for them to turn over the remains of the aircraft to anyone else would be... problematic (especially since it's a free market and who has more money to spend than the US?). Random bits that went flying around the neighbourhood, sure, they're gone. But any of the parts big enough to need a vehicle to move I'd guess the US will be wanting back.
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The only thing to me is that Pakistan is officially a US ally in this, so for them to turn over the remains of the aircraft to anyone else would be... problematic (especially since it's a free market and who has more money to spend than the US?). Random bits that went flying around the neighbourhood, sure, they're gone. But any of the parts big enough to need a vehicle to move I'd guess the US will be wanting back.
From what I've come to understand the main concern isn't that Pakistan as a country would sell this off to China or Russia but rather that less trustworthy elements in the Pakistani military/government (essentially the same thing most of the time) would either use this tech themselves (they are after all a nuclear power even if a lot of people tend to think of them as little more than "towelheads") or have bits of it "disappear" only to have it turn up in Russia or China at about the same time as said offic
"retire early ... to his newly purchased mansion" (Score:2)
I hear there's one in Abbottabad that recently became available.
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Re:It looks like a stealth assassination copter. (Score:4, Funny)
"Doesn't make a sound, "
Except for all that wind being blown around by the ginormous fan.
Hmm honey, why suddenly is all the dust in the alleyway being blown around like a tornado just hit?
Even if they could do silent, you're not going to be within 1000 feet of your target without them knowing exactly where you are.
Re:It looks like a stealth assassination copter. (Score:5, Insightful)
That twitter guy who became famous for live-tweeting the raid when he was annoyed by a helicopter certainly seemed to have heard it.
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Additionally, a truly designed-from-the-ground-up model would most likely have NOTAR instead of a tail rotor. It's what police helicopters around the world like to use as it completely removes the choppy sound (which comes from airflow from main rotor hitting the airflow from tail rotor). Obviously engine sound itself remains, but that's a small fraction of the choppy noise. This is most likely a modifier version in a sense that they slapped add-ons on top of already existing model, rather then fully rework
Only now? (Score:2)
http://cencio4.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/stealth-black-hawk-down-revised-sketch/ [wordpress.com]
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Cutting edge (Score:5, Insightful)
The key factor is that this mission was so important - even the President was personally involved in its planned - that the very best, most advanced technology available would have been employed. If there are secret helicopters and eavesdropping equipment and spy gadgets, then they would have been employed for this. I think the design (5 blade), material and aerodynamic shape of the tail rotors would be the biggest thing up for grabs after this incident. It also makes me wonder if China, Russia, etc, have their act together enough to quickly place buyers in Pakistan to purchase whatever photos, or even actual pieces of the wreckage, they can. One thing is for sure, China and Russia are very good at reverse engineering.
Re:Cutting edge (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not expert in this stuff, but I did do some time on submarines and participated in refueling overhauls and decommissions. When the sub is in drydock the screw is kept covered with a tarp at all times, lest somebody just see the shape of it and glean anti-cavitation tech. So it is plausible to me that just seeing the shape of one of the rotors would be significant.
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Is it this one [flickr.com]? Or maybe this one [1913intel.com]?
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Re:Cutting edge (Score:5, Interesting)
The real achievement wasn't the helicopters, it was flying from their station in Afghanistan without being picked up by Pakistan's military. A lot of that had to do with know where the coverage was and the terrain combined with great flying and planning. Never underestimate the skill of those flying these machines. Flying helicopters in the dark at the levels and speeds they were moving isn't for the feint at heart.
The explosives were most likely done to break up certain shapes and destroy electronics. I doubt the materials themselves used to skin the helicopter are as important as compared to the shape of the various components of the copter.
Re:Cutting edge (Score:5, Funny)
Pakistan's military didn't notice Bin Laden living in his giant compound a quarter mile from their elite military training school.
Somehow I think we could've flown a bunch of bi-planes trailing a banner with "We're coming for you Bin Laden" in giant letters, with wing walkers and dropping tootsie rolls onto the onlooking public and the military still wouldn't have noticed.
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Truth be told, I'm having a hard time believing that Pakistan didn't know he was there. I think the more likely scenario is he was there under house arrest as part of some deal he made with the Paki's. He did have access to quite a bit of money and giving the US access to Afghanistan via roadways and airspace for an extended period of time has proven to be quite lucrative to the Paki government. I think the Paki's full well knew he was there and kept pointing intel to the tribal regions for a variety of reasons.
I think the Pakistanis were keeping here there to keep the gravy train flowing. They knew that once Bin Laden was captured, our Afghanistan operations would be winding down. Now that Bin Laden is dead, expect our Afghanistan operations to be winding down within the next few years. With us not being in Afghanistan, we will have much less need for Pakistan. Since we will have no use for Pakistan, expect the funds to dry up.
Bin Laden was the golden goose for Pakistan.
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It's not that far-fetched to wonder if maybe we didn't steal, buy or reverse engineer some of that technology from the Russians, helicopters are in their DNA after all, and the Black Hawks are made by a company named Sikorsky. Stealth is usually a matter of integration of simpler techniques into a system, what I've seen isn't that much different than RAH-66 Comanche [wikipedia.org]. It's not uncommon for a failed project to product technologies used to upgrade existing end-items.
Re:Cutting edge (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, security among nations perhaps, but not security for people in totalitarian states. If Libya had better tech to defend against NATO, that country would probably be at "peace" right now in the sense that no nation would bother its sovereignty, but it would have a few hundred thousand less of its people, and harsher lives for those who remain. If either of their histories is any indication, Russia and China are indeed totalitarian states not too far removed from Libya in their stance towards dissent. What a wonderful peace for people of the world to look forward to.
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"Millions displaced"? The country's entire population is six million total. Of these, only a small fraction is in rebelling towns. And in every rebelling town, it's mostly young men. Of those, only a few leaders would be killed along with their families to make an example with rest being punished financially. There is plenty of historic precedent on this from how Gaddafi handled his power.
Hell, the main reason why he's still in power is because he was never a true tyrant to his own people - he left most of
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"If so, it will be a good thing for this tech to end up with China and Russia just to balance out the power a little bit."
Screw balance of power, I cant wait for cheap China RC helicopter toys that will come from this!
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I sincerely hope that China "balances out" the USA by invading whatever shithole you live in. Fucks like you are the first to blame the USA when they *don't" intervene. If it was not for our intervening, you'd be eating some sort of sauerkraut/sushi mix for breakfast every day.
Dumbass. I doubt there would be a single democracy on the planet were it not for the USA.
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Well, than maybe we should just bring home our toys and not help out the Libyans, maybe renew the old isolationist policy and let the rest of you kill yourselves off. When the shit started hitting the fan in the middle east recently, all I heard on TV was people asking why the US wasn't helping out, and it is exactly attitudes like yours as to why we didn't help out right away, it took a couple weeks, and then I heard on the TV about how (many times the very same people as earlier) felt that Obama went too
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I know what it was... (Score:2)
Seriously, though, what kind of "stealth" is this? It showed right up in the picture.
What exactly is the concern? (Score:2, Interesting)
Concerns are irrelevant either way. We worked on a stealth helicopter design for a while (RAH-66 [wikipedia.org]) which failed to materialize, but it makes sense lessons learned from the project could be put to use. In regards to people knowing about it (or having access to its parts), well, if you use it in combat you might lose one, and then it's out there for everyone to see.
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Stealth Blackhawk BETA (Score:2)
All kidding aside, it is quite unfortunate that it's debut was the result of a crash in a country that has been known to export nifty knowledge and new technology they acquire (i.e. A.Q Kahn and nuclear weapons).
lol stealth helicopter (Score:5, Funny)
Helicopters are the opposite of stealth.
Naval Aviator: "You know how a helicopter flies?"
me: "uhh.. the main rotor, lift, drag, etc?"
Naval Aviator: "Wrong. They make so much goddamn noise the Earth gets away from them"
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Re:lol stealth helicopter (Score:4, Funny)
A helo's an array of spare parts flying in fairly loose formation.
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They beat the air into submission.
tweets (Score:2)
What about that guy who tweeted that the copters were shaking the windows?
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/05/02/heres-the-guy-who-unwittingly-live-tweeted-the-raid-on-bin-laden/ [techcrunch.com]
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According to several sources were four helicopters, two of these Chinooks. Perhaps it was these two that it shook the windows
Exactly... It would seem likely that Chinooks were sent in only after a delay and after the Pakistani authorities knew something was amiss. By that time, the raw power and performance of the Chinooks would be far more desirable than stealth. The stealth-modified helicopters almost certainly perform more poorly than unmodified versions of the same aircraft.
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Exactly... It would seem likely that Chinooks were sent in only after a delay and after the Pakistani authorities knew something was amiss.
I've been wondering whether the raid was accompanied by a preemptory "stand down (or else)" order to the Pakistanis.
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Then after that they could use Chinooks to have more cargo capacity, could eventually have to bring more stuff than the soldiers of the attack and may have had to evacuate the soldiers if one of the attack helicopters was lost, as happened.
And the author from the blog where I found the image of what could be the "stealth hawk" have a interes
Re:tweets (Score:4, Insightful)
the author from the blog where I found the image of what could be the "stealth hawk" have a interesting theory: To ensure they got to the house without being noticed by the Pakistanis, it is possible that the Chinnoks were also stealth versions.
Standing off some distance and being more easily detected would also have been something of a diversion.
That makes sense (Score:2)
It seemed a little odd that when a helicopter broke down a quarter mile away from a supposedly allied military base, the U.S. military would blast it to pieces rather than just asking Pakistan to keep an eye on it till it could be picked up. For a random helicopter, scuttling it in nominally friendly territory is wasteful and over-the-top, but for a super secret stealth helicopter, it's quite prudent.
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Well Osama was found in a populated city filled with Pakistani Military and Spy agency personnel and by all indications he had been there along time. That leaves a few possibilities :
1. The Pakistanis are completely incompetent at security, and therefore could not be trusted to protect our bird.
2. The Pakistani Government knew where Osama was and was protecting him from us, they are therefore not actually or allies but an enemy who has been playing us, and therefore could not be trusted to protect our bird
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That leaves a few possibilities :
You overlooked a fourth alternative: The US government has known exactly where Osama was for some time, and chose instead to watch the building to see who came and went. Of course, that says nothing about where the Pakistani government knew.
So, why did they go in last weekend? A UK paper has speculated it was because enough information was in the Guantanamo Bay files distributed by WikiLeaks to tip off Osama that his hideout had been compromised. They had to act before Osama disappeared again.
Picture of what it might look like (Score:2)
Full Wired Article [wired.com]
Why all the worry? (Score:3)
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"and protect it is secrets" What does that even mean?
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the bigger puzzle (Score:3)
Re:the bigger puzzle (Score:4, Informative)
Two Chinook helicopters followed the two stealth helicopters. This was intended so that the SEALs could make a ground escape if necessary (to be picked up nearby).
One or both of those likely picked up the other SEALs.
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Two Chinook helicopters followed the two stealth helicopters. This was intended so that the SEALs could make a ground escape if necessary (to be picked up nearby).
One or both of those likely picked up the other SEALs.
Thanks. hmm... then why didn't the Pakistanis shoot down the Chinooks? Got a link?
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The Pakistanis might be fair weather allies *cough*, but they're not that stupid.
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Yes.
My impression is that once the cat is out of the bag (after the assault team is inserted), there's not as much worry about telling the host country that those Chinooks are not actually on a training flight, but are going to land and extract a team.
Most of the secrecy was probably aimed at not letting OBL get away, either by directly alerting him, or by alerting any spies that he had placed in the local command structure.
(Was it hundreds
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How did they fit 24 commandos, 4 pilots, a dog, a body, and retrieved materials into the remaining stealth Blackhawk? Did the military developed stealth midget commandos for this mission?
See comment 36048786 [slashdot.org]
Stealth in, Chinooks out (Score:4, Informative)
Two stealth helicopters got them in; they had two helicopters in reserve to get them out.
creepy and exciting tech (Score:5, Interesting)
The first time I heard about this whole mission, I thought, whoah, American helicopters managed to fly 150 km into Pakistan without being noticed? Pakistan isn't a slouch when it comes to military equipment: they've fought several wars with India, and are used to trying to track some of the finest military hardware in the world. Yet two helicopters flew in, invisibly. It sounds like they were supported by two Chinooks, that came in a bit later, and those *were* seen by the Pakistani air defense, but the first group in weren't seen. A lot of other countries are going to want to figure out how we did this.
There have been a lot of US projects in making low-observable helicopters, from the modified Hughes OH6 Loach [wikipedia.org] used to surreptitiously place wiretaps on lines during Vietnam, that also used increased numbers of blades, and the cancelled RAH-66 Comanche [wikipedia.org], that was supposed to be quiet and have a vastly reduced radar signature. The ones used Monday are probably Blackhawks modified based on the stuff learned from the Comanche, but they could be completely new aircraft: the descriptions of the amount of personnel and material taken in are at the very edge of what two stock Blackhawks could carry, and adding lots of stealth technology adds a *lot* of weight.
Among other interesting things I've read and observed: the stock Blackhawk is manufactured with sheets of aluminum riveted together along the edges, like most planes. The pictures show rivetless construction, and in one picture it looks like there's a long weld seam that appears to have been done by hand rather than machine, making me think there are a very small number of prototypes of this. I also saw a link somewhere, that I can't find now, to a press release by a company who was adding small servos into the collector linkages that added continuous slight variance to the blade angle, to minimize noise by distributing it across different frequencies, which seems pretty cool. I've even seen a few claims that the whole aircraft was covered in material that could emit low levels of light, to blend it visually against a lighted sky (a technique used back in WWII by putting headlights on the leading edges of aircraft wings so that they could dive-bomb submarines without being seen until it was too late for the sub to dive [tripod.com]. This was distinct from the british Leigh lights, that were used in after-dark attacks along with radar.)
I'm betting a whole lot of people are bidding on the wreckage that was recovered -- which is, itself, surprising, at least to me, because it sounds like the commandoes were able to completely destroy the whole main fuselage, leaving just the tail. Under the hurried circumstances that's pretty surprising. (I wouldn't be surprised to find out they actually hooked it to one of the Chinooks and dragged it out along with them.)
um... (Score:2)
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110501/23343014105/interesting-world-man-unwittingly-live-tweets-raid-that-killed-osama-bin-laden.shtml
What if the helicopter hadn't crashed? (Score:4, Interesting)
I also have to wonder if, given the number of helicopters (two modified Black Hawks and two Chinooks), the original mission was just a capture mission. With this kind of carrying capacity, they could have removed everyone in the compound that wasn't killed in the initial raid. They would have landed the SEAL team first with the stealth Black Hawks, pulled out the Black Hawks and then followed that up a while later with a Chinook or two to pull out captives and the SEAL team. With no-one alive in the compound, the US would have had some degree of plausible deniability. On top of that, they'd have a large number of presumably senior al-Quaeda members to interrogate.
Instead, the crashed helicopter would have taken out a large chunk of the LZ (leaving no landing space for a Chinook), it would have taken up crew to dispose of the wreckage and tend to any wounded from the crash. Combine this with an already limited timeframe and being stuck with only one aircraft to remove the SEAL team and Bin Laden, and this may have suddenly become a kill mission.
Live blogger (Score:2)
Wasn't the guy live blogging [yahoo.com] it on Twitter saying that "The noise alarmed him"? Not sure the "stealthy" part worked out so well.
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Quiet Helicopter? Hardly. (Score:2)
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According to the tweets about the incident, as it happened, if we've got a stealthy, quiet super-secret high-tech helicopter here, then I think we might have overpaid for it. Check out the article, and then read the tweets: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/05/02/osama.twitter.reports/index.html?hpt=Sbin [cnn.com]
Whoops - I see this has already been answered ad naseum. Please ignore my post as you should. That's all - thanks.
So What? (Score:3)
Any kind of mechanical device, out out in the real world, will eventually make it into the hands of the "enemy".
There have always been technology transfers via this mechanism.
If it was so damn important, it shoud never have been put into the field.
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That would have killed a lot of civilians, undermining the decision to use special forces in the first place.
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Ok then a single bunker buster into the center of the compound. No civillian casualties as the explosion would have been contained by the compound walls. but everything inside would have been blown to 1/8th inch bits and ejected up into the air.... Little pieces of Osama all over the place...
They did it this way to get all the intel. All the hard drives are worth far far more than the talking meat head. Al-Quieda is screwed hard.
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Probably because there were other civilians in the compound, namely Osama bin Laden's wife and kids. Maybe the overriding motivation then was to not make people related to Osama into new martyr figures, and maybe secondary motivations are that the US doesn't want to cause unnecessary casualties, or maybe they were targets of arrest but the 2 choppers left over couldn't fit them on and the US was hoping Pakistan would arrest them and perhaps hand them over later (probably not gonna happen).
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Probably because there were other civilians in the compound, namely Osama bin Laden's wife and kids. Maybe the overriding motivation then was to not make people related to Osama into new martyr figures, and maybe secondary motivations are that the US doesn't want to cause unnecessary casualties, or maybe they were targets of arrest but the 2 choppers left over couldn't fit them on and the US was hoping Pakistan would arrest them and perhaps hand them over later (probably not gonna happen).
Supposedly there was a plan to do it with bombs a while back, but they decided on a raid in order to (a) minimize civilian casualties, and (b) make sure there was a body to identify.
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Not to mention that the compound was in the middle of a rich suburban neighborhood. Pakistan was understandably miffed that we violated their airspace and conducted a military raid in the middle of their country, but we get a certain amount of pass on that becasue of the nature of the target and the egg they have on their collective faces for not taking care of this themselves. Dropping aircraft bombs on the equivalent of Bel Air would be a little tougher to paper over (and contrary to our "minimal civili
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We are in Pakistan with cooperation, not invasion. Your idea is retarded.
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Daisy Cutters [wikipedia.org] will not fit into a B-52, they are too big and heavy, neither will the MOAB [wikipedia.org].
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WE could easily take out every single Pakistan base and silo before they even had time to fart. They may be a nuclear power, but they are no threat at all for retaliation as we can easily overwhelm them so fast they wouldn't even get a plane off the ground.
Honestly this strike is a great example of how bad their military is. 4 VERY LARGE helicopters flew under their radar into their biggest military city and got out of the country before they even scrambled one jet.
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If people could do it, they would. Noise is wasted energy. Wasted energy is greater fuel consumption.
The trade off making it quieter is presumably that you get less thrust to move the chopper around with. There are suggestions that this lack of manoeuvrability is what caused the crash in the first place.
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If it crashed its not stealth anymore.
Nonsense, if anything it's less likely to be spotted on radar...
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seal team 6 is going back in to assassinate whoever has the parts and taking them back
Or maybe Apple's lawyers.
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European Citizen #486432154 please go outside and surrender to the UAV above your home. you will be taken back to a Patriotism enforcement camp until you are fit for return to society...
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You want to know the "real" conspiracy? In that clip, they used the code word "Geronimo" used for the operation that used "whisper mode" helicopters ... coincidence? I think NOT!