Stealth Black Hawk prop exposed in the Osama Bin Laden raid movie trailer October 13, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in : Osama Bin Laden raid, Stealth Black Hawk , 1 comment so farDo you remember the photograph a U.S. soldier posing in front of a mysterious seemingly radar-evading chopper published on this site few months ago?
The helicopter, neither similar to any known type of American helo, was later identified as a prop, used for a new movie titled Zero Dark Thirty, due out Dec. 19.
The action movie will recall the chronicle of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. Including the night of Operation Neptune’s Spear, when OBL was killed and a real Stealth Black Hawk crash landed inside the compound at Abbottabad.
The new trailer gives a hint at how the stealthy chopper has been imagined in Zero Dark Thirty.
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This is what taking part to a U.S. Special Forces raid on board a 160th SOAR MH-60 Black Hawk looks like October 4, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in : Helicopters, Special Operations , 1 comment so farThe following picture provides an interesting point of view: that of U.S. Special Forces (USSF) soldiers scanning the ground below for threats while flying on a 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment‘s MH-60 Black Hawk during a Fast Rope Insertion Extraction System training exercise.
USSF fast roped onto a specific target during the Special Forces Advanced Reconnaissance, Target Analysis, and Exploitation Techniques Course, John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School on Fort Bragg, N.C., Aug. 28, 2012
The Black Hawk of the 160th SOAR (A) barely visible in the picture is believed to be only loosely similar to the advanced stealthy MH-X “Silent Hawk” (or Stealth Black Hawk) that the “Night Stalkers” used to infiltrate and exfiltrate U.S. Navy SEALs during the Osama Bin Laden raid in May 2011.
Image credit: U.S. Army
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[Infographic] Osama Bin Laden raid (based on “No Easy Day”) September 12, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in : Military Aviation, Osama Bin Laden raid , 4commentsOn May 6, 2011, few days after Osama Bin Laden had been killed, I published an analysis of Operation Neptune’s Spear, with the assets involved in the raid, known and unknown facts (and some speculations).
Although “No Easy Day” does not provide much details about the Stealth Black Hawk exposed by raid, the U.S. Navy Seal Team Six operator’s first person recollection of the raid contains some interesting details about the way the operation was conducted, the most important of those is that the radar-evading choppers did not approach Abbottabad from the west, but from the east, with a presumed violation of India’s airspace.
“Presumed” because we can’t be sure New Dehli was not informed of the raid (even if it is quite unlikely, considered the secrecy surrounding the raid).
An interesting review of the book with the most interesting aviation-related details can be read on Aviationintel website.
Anyway, based on the details revealed by “No Easy Day”, I’ve asked Ugo Crisponi to update the first Neptune’s Spear infographic, and here’s the latest view of what has happened the night Bin Laden was killed.
1) A pair of reserve MH-47s (maybe Stealth Chinooks?) were on stand by at a Forward Air Refueling Point (FARP) north of Abbottabad. They carried personnel and material to set up the FARP as well as a team for the eventual Combat Search And Rescue (CSAR) mission.
2) The two MH-Xs flew to Abbottabad using callsigns “Chalk 1″ and “Chalk 2″
3) One of the MH-47s flew to the compound to pick up the crew of the downed helicopter.
4) After recovering the crew of the crash landed MH-X, the MH-47 flew directly to Jalalabad
5) and 6) Both the MH-47 and the MH-X returned to Jalalabad from the FARP (the latter had made a fuel stop there after the raid).
7) the SEALs Team Six was flown from Jalalabad to Bagram in an MC-130
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New theories about the Stealth Black Hawk emerge as the UH-60 turns 40. June 7, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in : Stealth Black Hawk , add a commentThe famous Stealth Black Hawk helicopter revealed by the Osama Bin Laden raid is one of the hot topics of this blog. I still receive many comments about readers who give hints about the actual shape of the so-called MH-X.
Following the last article on the subject and the revised shape of the stealthy chopper, a reader who signs himself “John Doe”, has sent me some emails to show me some interesting past designs that could have been used to design the current secret shape of the Stealth Black Hawk.
The last version of the Stealth Black Hawk features fixed landing gear, unlike the original rendering, that had a retractable landing gear. I “opted” for a fixed gear because a retractable one could be extremly difficult and costly to implement.
However “John Doe” pointed me to the YEH-60B SOTAS (Stand-Off Target Acquisition System) a particular version designed to detect moving targets on the battlefield and downlink the information to an Army ground station.
The only SOTAS built for the U.S. Army (flown in the early 1980s before the program was cancelled in favor of the E-8 JSTARS) had a retractable main gear whose shape could have been used on the MH-X as well.
Image credit: Sirkosky Archives.
“The gear can always retract up into a fairing with doors. As long as the fairing is properly shaped, it will have a much lower signature,” he wrote me.
“The tail wheel is probably retractable, as it is otherwise a great reflector.”
Then, he suggests few more upgrades based on past prototypes, as the ACAP, the Army’s Advanced Composite Airframe Programme (ACAP), whose goal was the development of an all-composite helicopter fuselage lighter and less costly to build than the predominantly metal airframes in general use.
“I would bet it has a flat windshield with a gold layer, for electrical continuity. I would also think that it has a fairing to cover the push rods and main rotor mast, plus a fairing to cover the entire main rotor hub, like the tail rotor. Lastly, there is probably a different IR suppressor as the hover suppressor likely has a big signature. I’d guess ones like this.”
Anyway, as the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter turns 40, the Israeli Air Force celebrated the anniversary with an interesting article on the official website, that provides some little known facts about the famous multi-mission combat chopper that has been in service with 21 countries.
Although it does not confirm the existence of Stealth Yanshuf (“Owl”), an Israeli top secret radar-evading chopper allegedly used to drop spies in Iran, the article discloses, among the others, some interesting details about the Black Hawk activities in Israel and the rest of the world.
For instance, the article recalls that, along with the head of the FBI and, obviously the President of the United States, the Black Hawk has carried the Head of Nuclear Energy, the UN Secretary General and the Pope.
When he visited Israel in 2000, an Israeli Yanshuf, covered in red fabrics and new linings, was used to fly Pope John Paul II. Three UH-60s were used to ferry the Pontiff during his visit: along with the one helicopter carrying the Pope, another was used to carry his medical team and a third was available on standby.
In the Second Lebanon War, in 2006, the two Israeli Black Hawk squadrons received a special citation from the IDF’s Chief of General Staff. Both “The Rolling Sword” and “The Southern Bells” performed more than 100 rescues, most in the battlefield, while under attack during the war. “As long as we have you, we are capable of confronting any operation and challenge”, said the previous IDF Chief of General Staff addressing a message to the Black Hawk personnel.
Image credit: U.S. Army
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Stealth Yanshuf: the Israeli top secret radar-evading chopper used to drop spies in Iran May 17, 2012
Posted by David Cenciotti in : Stealth Black Hawk , add a commentAccording to F. Michael Maloof, a former Pentagon senior policy analyst the Israeli Air Force is equipped with the same Stealth Black Hawk helicopter used by the U.S. Navy SEALs to kill Osama Bin Laden last year.
Believed to be an exclusive U.S. “black project”, the radar-evading chopper (most probably a quiet one, rather than an actual helicopter invisible to radars), such helos would be used by the IAF to drop Iranian dissidents into Iran to gather intelligence on the Tehran’s nuclear program, according to a report written by Maloof for G2 bulletin, a global intelligence newsletter.
This is the first time someone reports about radar-evading choppers in the hands of Israel.
Even if it’s quite unlikely that the Washington shared the secrets of its most advanced helicopter with Jerusalem, considered that the American Stealth Hawk is probably based on 1978 study freely available on the Internet, we can’t rule out the possibility that the Israeli industry has found a way to modify the IAF Black Hawks (nicknamed “Yanshuf”, English for “Owl”) to make them stealthy.
Provided a Stealth Yanshuf really exists, this is what it would look like in two updated versions of the renderings I conceived with AviationGraphic.com‘s Ugo Crisponi: above, the famous highly modified version with retractable landing gear MH-X (please remember this is not the actual designation), whose shape reminds the one of an S-76; below, the more likely slightly-modified Stealth Black Hawk (described here).
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