Mysterious helicopter emerges in China: a new, stolen model or a cloned Bin Laden raid’s stealth chopper?

An interesting image has emerged from the prolific Chinese Internet.

It depicts a mysterious helicopter being moved on a truck in China. Even if the aircraft is hidden below a protective covering, its shape can be guessed.

The chopper seems to have something in common with the U.S. UH-60 Black Hawk, hence it may be a Z-20, a Chinese model believed to be based on the S-70C, a medium transport/utility helicopter manufactured by Sikorsky already in service with the People’s Liberation Army.

However, there is another intriguing and (less likely) possibility: China has reverse-engineered the Stealth Black Hawk helicopter used by the Navy SEALs in the Osama Bin Laden raid.

Obviously this is a far fetched theory, since only a few chunks survived the crash landing at Abbottabad. Still, on Aug. 14, 2011, several media outlets all around the world, published the news that China was given access by Pakistani intelligence to the remains of the Stealth Black Hawk used during Operation Neptune’s Spear.

What if they copied the general design of the tail rotor and, just like this author did with Ugo Crisponi, designed a chopper whose shape is similar to the one of the U.S. black MH-X or the Israeli Stealth Yanshuf?

Image credit: via Chinese Military Aviation

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About David Cenciotti

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David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.