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Mysterious US Helicopter Used in Bin Laden Raid
- latch 15y agoI don't know anything about aviation..but I did see a show years ago about a new prototype US helicopter...and the first image on Wired, to me, 100% reminded me of it. Googling, I'm sure what I'm talking about is the RAH-66 Comanche. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing/Sikorsky_RAH-66_Comanche http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing/Sikorsky_RAH-66_Comanche Do a google images search, the thing looks [relatively] identical.
- Element_ 15y agoThe angles on the tail roter look similar however according to reports the downed helicopter was carrying half of a 25 man seal team so it had to be something bigger if the government was telling the truth.
- jonah 15y agoThe tail rotor is noting like the shielded one on the Comanche: http://sitelife.aviationweek.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/0/14/8065b635-752f-4a63-ae97-84beaff28a19.Full.jpg http://sitelife.aviationweek.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store...
- brndnhy 15y agoIndeed it's more like this: http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=155097 http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/attachment.php?attachme... via: http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/450526-stealth-uh60-used-obl-raid-2.html http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/450526-stealth-uh60-u... Potential forward sweep of stabilizer, "coolie hat" on the rotor.
- pibefision 15y agoI want to believe
- nettdata 15y agoIt's a stealth optimized MH-60. Nothing to see here, really.
- eggspurt 15y agoYes. Given the number of remains, it appears to be trivial. If it wasn't they'd clean them up not just blow them up. They'd blow it up in a hostile country such as Serbia where the remains of F-117 were transported to China afterward and the present Chinese stealth technology is a result of reverse engineering of those remains. F-117 was 20 years old in 1999 - and if this helicopter was so new and so secret that nobody has seen it before, they'd go pick it up as Pakistan is a "friendly" state. It's just a standard transport helicopter (like MH-60 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_UH-60_Black_Hawk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_UH-60_Black_Hawk) modified for special forces to have less of a radar cross-section. For example, they put rotor screws under a plate. It's not so important for a helicopter to be stealth - if the pilot has NVG, it can fly during the day right over the trees, and few radars can pick it up, unless it accidentally flies over (in the radius of about 8km) of a mobile surface-to-air missile launcher. And they know where these are: JSTARS tells them where the sources of radiation are, and they set their path around those. They also avoided all towns where someone would detect them based on noise and make a phone call, or, god forbid, tweet.
- kinkora 15y ago"They also avoided all towns where someone would detect them based on noise and make a phone call, or, god forbid, tweet." you mean like this? -> http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2505610 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2505610 edit: changed link. did not realise i was linking to a fake hacker news site.
- damncabbage 15y agoIt's a little bit tough to avoid the town that contains your target.
- est 15y ago
- Gaussian 15y agoWhat's amazing to me, especially after seeing these few photos of wreckage, is that everybody inside got away alive, according to the Pentagon. Intuitively, I've always thought that any helicopter crash = death sentence. Clearly, that's not true.
- JshWright 15y agoAccording to the official explanation, it didn't crash, it was forced to land, and was subsequently destroyed by the crew and passengers.
- latch 15y agoI always thought the opposite...since you can't eject from a helicopter, I always thought (and pretty sure I've been told) they are built to maximize survivability during a crash. There were survivors to both downed black hawk in Mogadishu.
- pcestrada 15y agoThe Russian Ka-50 Black Shark attack helicopter has an ejection seat for the pilot. According to Wikipedia, the rotor blades and canopy are blown away by explosive charges before the ejection seat is triggered.
- gaius 15y agoIIRC the Eurocopter Tiger also has this feature.
- _djo_ 15y agoNope, it doesn't. The Ka-50 is the only production helicopter to be equipped with an ejection seat. Part of the reason other attack helicopters don't have them is that ejection seats in helicopters add complexity and weight for not that much of an increase in survivability, considering the usual flight profiles that these helicopters fly. It makes more sense to focus on improving the survivability of crashes through measures such as collapsing seats and landing gear designed to absorb impact forces. With these types of improvements the crew of modern helicopters can survive even severe accidents without serious injury.
- minalecs 15y agoaccording to the guy that was live tweeting the event.. it wasn't that quiet
- jonah 15y agoMore likely Radar and IR stealth than silenced. It was the trip in from Afghanistan they concealed. By the time they were over Abbottabad it was too late to do anything about it.
- rbanffy 15y ago> By the time they were over Abbottabad it was too late to do anything about it. It could be too late to prevent the strike, but it wouldn't be too late to shot down the surviving choppers. Of course, in that situation, the F-22s would have protected them.
- cop359 15y agoThis brings up another good question. Can a helicopter really fly all across Pakistan and back to an aircraft carrier? Could they even make it to Afghanistan? I was under the impression that helicopters don't exactly have a whole lot of range
- jonah 15y agoI assumed they returned to Afghanistan and transfered the body to a plane.
- thematt 15y agoThey did. Some of the supposed pictures of Osama are from in the hanger at the Afghanistan airfield.
- hugh3 15y agoThat's also where (as I understand it) they did all the DNA testing and so forth. The final stage in which the body was flown to the aircraft carrier was just for disposal (a decision I think was sensible -- rather than allowing "the body" to become a rallying issue for terrorists it's better just to dump it in the sea before anyone knows you've got it).
- rkon 15y agoFrom the Army Times article: That crash landing might have been caused by a phenomenon known as “settling with power,” which occurs when a helicopter descends too quickly because its rotors cannot get the lift required from the turbulent air of their own downwash. “It’s hard to settle with power in a Black Hawk, but then again, if they were using one of these [low-observable helicopters], working at max gross weight, it’s certainly plausible that they could have because they would have been flying so heavy,” the retired special operations aviator said, noting that low-observable modifications added “several hundred pounds” to the weight of the MH-60, which already weighs about 500 to 1000 pounds more than a regular UH-60 Black Hawk. http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/05/army-mission-helocopter-was-secret-stealth-black-hawk-050411/ http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/05/army-mission-helocopte...
- nradov 15y agoA WSJ article stated that the high walls around the compound induced a vortex ring effect. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704569404576299500647391240.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870456940457629... In a normal landing the rotor downwash would spread out across the ground but in this case the walls channeled the moving air back up and into the rotor again, causing it to lose lift. Of course I don't know whether that's true or not, but it seems plausible. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Vortex_ring#Vortex_ring_effect_in_helicopters https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Vortex_ring#V...
- ratsbane 15y agoThere's also Loss of Tail Rotor Effectiveness[1] (LTE), caused by the tail rotor entering a vortex ring in much the same way the main rotor is affected in settling with power. LTE will cause a helicopter to yaw sharply in a direction opposite the main rotor's rotation. The position of the wreck, with the tail broken over a wall, makes me think there might have been a yaw problem. Or they might have been in a high hover, had a problem, and hit the wall on the way down. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_tail-rotor_effectiveness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_of_tail-rotor_effectivenes...
- 15y ago
- wslh 15y agoIt's incredible that I tried to search the type of helicopter used via Google without success. All results where about the crash not the type of helicopter. Few hours later the answer came via Hacker News.
- cosgroveb 15y agoDoes anyone else think the helicopter in the photo looks too small to be anything but a drone?
- mds 15y agoThe pictures only show the tail section -- that's the rear rotor in the photos..
- zaius 15y agoAh, that makes a lot more sense than how I was picturing it. Thanks!
- watmough 15y ago"What the hell's this? A helicopter for ants?" Yeah, part of the back, maybe ECM detail, looks like it should be the front, and it crossed my mind it might be a drone. But yeah, just the back part.
- jordan0day 15y agoIt has to be at least... three times that size!
- quanticle 15y agoThe hub looks to serve the same purpose as the ducting around the tail rotor in the canceled Comanche project. It serves to reduce interaction between the main rotor and the tail rotor, thereby reducing the amount of noise the helicopter makes.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- rubyrescue 15y agoexcept that there would be lots of people, not the least bin laden himself, who would love to prove his non-death?
- rbanffy 15y agoUnless he is alive and being interrogated. Now, seriously, I always doubted he would be captured alive. Just imagine how embarrassing would it be all the information about the CIA operations during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan becoming public on a trial. Of course he resisted capture.
- thematt 15y agoOccam's razor, him being dead is probably true. However, I thought about that scenario too. Make his followers think he's dead so he loses his figurehead status, then spend the subsequent years interrogating him. As for embarrassment, who said he'd ever be put on trial if we had him? If we can hold his followers indefinitely, certainly we could hold him.
- flipbrad 15y agoIt seems so improbable that they shot him if he was unarmed. If people knew he had been captured, securing his release by threatening future terrorist atrocities would become aim #1 for Al Qaeda, would it not?
- rbanffy 15y ago> If people knew he had been captured, securing his release by threatening future terrorist atrocities would become aim #1 for Al Qaeda Indeed. Even if he is alive, he's dead. At least until Al Qaeda is effectively neutralized.
- 15y ago
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- espeed 15y agoDr. Steve R. Pieczenik said yesterday that Osama Bin Laden died in 2001 and that he was prepared to testify in front of a grand jury (see interview for details http://goo.gl/PaMRa http://goo.gl/PaMRa). Pieczenik is on the Council on Foreign Relations and served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under three different administrations, Nixon, Ford and Carter, while also working under Reagan and Bush senior, and still works as a consultant for the Department of Defense. He is a former US Navy Captain, and he went through Harvard Medical School while he simultaneously completed a PhD at MIT.
- burgerbrain 15y agoTestifying in front of a grand jury is boring. Providing evidence is interesting.
- espeed 15y agoListen to the hour-long interview where he provides details.
- btmorex 15y agoI'd rather not waste an hour of my life listening to a conspiracy theorist.
- espeed 15y agoPeople from the State Department are now conspiracy theorists?
- burgerbrain 15y agoAnyone who propagates conspiracy theories are conspiracy theorists. Who they works for is completely irrelevant.
- espeed 15y ago
- abbasmehdi 15y agoSorry for being off topic, but I'm really glad none of the troops suffered casualty or injuries. These guys also didn't lose their cool, granted they are the seals bit still.
- firebones 15y agoHow many helicopters and of what kind would it take to evacuate 22 people/bodies plus the SEALs and pilots? Certainly more than a single remaining Blackhawk. I wonder if the inadvertent tweeter might have been hearing the support copters coming in after the initial raid to pick up the prisoners/crew and that the explosions were also after the fact--the post-raid destruction of the downed helicopter. I suspect that as the story is progressively refined, we'll learn that rather than being a flawless triumph, the actual reason for success was the depth of backup planning and redundant systems. This will be ultimately be a story that becomes a lesson in how the military learns from its failures (Operation Eagle Claw: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Claw http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Eagle_Claw and the Rattle of Mogadishu aka Black Hawk Down: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993)) rather than from its successes.
- ajays 15y agoThere were a total of 4 helicopters (including the Chinook), from what I've read. Two went in, while two others hovered nearby. Apparently, Obama himself asked them to have a backup plan: http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/03/obama-pushed-for-fight-your-way-out-option-in-bin-laden-raid/ http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/03/obama-pushed-for-fight-...
- hugh3 15y agoObama himself asked them to have a backup plan: [blah blah url] Do you really think that the US Navy Seals don't bother to think "Hey maybe we should have a backup plan for this hugely important and very risky mission" unless the President comes up with the idea? The linked article does smell a bit like the President trying to insert himself into the story. Mr Burns: You, Strawberry, hit a home run! Daryl Strawberry: Okay skip! (hits a home run) Mr Burns: I told him to do that. Smithers: Brilliant strategy, sir.
- dkarl 15y agoThe President might have known something the Seals didn't about the possibility of resistance from the Pakistani military. Other folks pointed out that forty minutes was plenty of time for Pakistan to scramble jets, etc., and much has been made of the precarious nature of power in the Pakistani military. Perhaps Obama had intelligence that the incursion might provoke a group of Pakistani military officers to defy their government's orders and launch an armed response, possibly because of the location of the strike, or possibly as a prelude to a coup. He wouldn't necessarily have shared that with the SEAL team, he would have just told them to be prepared to "fight their way out" if necessary.
- bzupnick 15y agostop posting bin-ladin news! this is HACKER news, not ANY news!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- omouse 15y agoCool, more $$$ down the drain just to kill one man in someone else's country. Good stuff. It looks like an oversized UAV more than a helicopter. I also like how computer geeks ignore the politics of the situation and get distracted by shiny things ;p
- burgerbrain 15y ago1) That is the tail rotor, not a fuselage... 2) Even if that were the fuselage of a UAV, there wouldn't be anything particularly "oversized" about it. UAVs are pretty big. 3) That is rather matte, not really shiny at all.
- mrinterweb 15y agoAfter seeing those digital mock-ups, I remembered seeing this helicopter before: http://j.mp/k57dFf http://j.mp/k57dFf