
Mysterious US Helicopter Used in Bin Laden Raid - Element_
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/aviation-geeks-scramble-to-i-d-osama-raids-mystery-copter/
======
firebones
How 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> and the Rattle of
Mogadishu aka Black Hawk Down:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993)>) rather than from
its successes.

~~~
ajays
There 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-...](http://swampland.time.com/2011/05/03/obama-pushed-for-
fight-your-way-out-option-in-bin-laden-raid/)

~~~
hugh3
_Obama 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
The 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.

~~~
hugh3
Perhaps this, perhaps that, or perhaps like any other politician Obama pushes
himself into the limelight when things go well and blames someone else when
things go badly. I don't hold it too far against him because it's what all
politicians do, but I reserve the right to call him out on it too.

* 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.*

The operation was under the direct control of the CIA, and I think we can
assume the CIA has just as much intelligence knowledge as the White House
does.

And now personally, if I had reason to believe that men under my command were
_likely_ to be entering into actual hostile contact with the military of the
sixth largest country in the world (and a nuclear power to boot) then I'd
probably actually have shared that information with them. They're big boys,
they can handle it, and if they see the Pakistani Army showing up then they
need to know whether they're allowed to shoot.

~~~
dkarl
_And now personally, if I had reason to believe that men under my command were
likely to be entering into actual hostile contact with the military of the
sixth largest country in the world (and a nuclear power to boot) then I'd
probably actually have shared that information with them._

When he (purportedly) said "fight your way out," who else could he have been
talking about fighting? I think it's safe to assume they got a lot more
specific than speculating about fighting undefined hypothetical resistance
that might happen to materialize outside this compound in the middle of
Pakistan.

------
Gaussian
What'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.

~~~
nettdata
Odds are the helicopter hit a tail rotor on a fence or some such thing, and
had a relatively uneventful landing, even though it was too damaged to be used
for extraction.

Helicopters can quite easily land if they lose power, etc., through a process
called autorotation.

It was the explosive charges that were set and detonated before the team left
that did the vast majority of the damage.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I landed my AH-64 Longbow using autorotation many times in the late-90s Janes
simulator. I really wish somebody would come out with a good battle helicopter
sim again.

~~~
daviding
DCS Black Shark is an excellent PC sim. Recommended, plus available on Steam
too.

<http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/series/black_shark/>

(Also, check out the A-10 sim too - it's from work they did with the US
National Guard Air wing as a training simulator).

------
nettdata
It's a stealth optimized MH-60. Nothing to see here, really.

~~~
eggspurt
Yes.

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>) 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
"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>

edit: changed link. did not realise i was linking to a fake hacker news site.

~~~
damncabbage
It's a little bit tough to avoid the town that contains your target.

------
cosgroveb
Does anyone else think the helicopter in the photo looks too small to be
anything but a drone?

~~~
watmough
"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.

~~~
quanticle
The 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.

------
latch
I 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>

Do a google images search, the thing looks [relatively] identical.

~~~
jonah
The tail rotor is noting like the shielded one on the Comanche:
[http://sitelife.aviationweek.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store...](http://sitelife.aviationweek.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/0/14/8065b635-752f-4a63-ae97-84beaff28a19.Full.jpg)

~~~
brndnhy
Indeed it's more like this:

[http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/attachment.php?attachme...](http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=155097)

via:

[http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/450526-stealth-
uh60-u...](http://www.pprune.org/military-aircrew/450526-stealth-uh60-used-
obl-raid-2.html)

Potential forward sweep of stabilizer, "coolie hat" on the rotor.

------
minalecs
according to the guy that was live tweeting the event.. it wasn't that quiet

~~~
jonah
More 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.

~~~
cop359
This 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
I assumed they returned to Afghanistan and transfered the body to a plane.

~~~
thematt
They did. Some of the supposed pictures of Osama are from in the hanger at the
Afghanistan airfield.

~~~
hugh3
That'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).

------
wslh
It'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.

------
rkon
From 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-
helocopte...](http://www.armytimes.com/news/2011/05/army-mission-helocopter-
was-secret-stealth-black-hawk-050411/)

~~~
nradov
A WSJ article stated that the high walls around the compound induced a vortex
ring effect.
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870456940457629...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704569404576299500647391240.html)
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#V...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Vortex_ring#Vortex_ring_effect_in_helicopters)

~~~
ra
Given the level of skill, training and experience a pilot would need to be
allowed to fly that thing, and after rehearsing the raid in a life size
replica of the compound - I think it's unlikely.

Even doing a PPL you learn about the effects of vortexes, wind shear, turbine
wash etc. And these guys have many, many, many orders of magnitude more
training than that.

More likely some combination of weight, altitude, excess speed... but I guess
we'll never know.

~~~
astrodust
Apart from the obvious, such as landing under fire, dealing with the effects
of the other helicopter in a confined area, or simply pilot fatigue after the
fast, low flight to get to the compound, it could be some freak effect like
that.

Flying deep into Pakistan undetected and landing in Bin Ladin's backyard is a
hell of a trick, no ordinary pilot could do that.

------
bzupnick
stop posting bin-ladin news! this is HACKER news, not ANY news!

------
abbasmehdi
Sorry 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.

------
pibefision
I want to believe

------
mrinterweb
After seeing those digital mock-ups, I remembered seeing this helicopter
before: <http://j.mp/k57dFf>

~~~
tintin
I don't get why people use short URLs. Yours isn't working already. And I
could never know where the link is taking me. Maybe it will take me to your
honeypot.

~~~
calloc
It leads to this picture: <http://imgur.com/s0rzv> which is of Airwolf.

------
omouse
Cool, 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
1) 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.

------
espeed
Dr. 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>).

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
Testifying in front of a grand jury is boring. Providing _evidence_ is
interesting.

~~~
espeed
Listen to the hour-long interview where he provides details.

~~~
btmorex
I'd rather not waste an hour of my life listening to a conspiracy theorist.

~~~
abbasmehdi
It's not good to be dismissing unpopular ideas, a very popular idea before
Iraq invasion was ....(you know the story). I'm just saying listening to both
sides of the argument before conclusive making up ones mind is a good idea. I
have not seen the said video and am not endorsing it, just commenting on the
idea of openness, with all due respect. :-)

~~~
hugh3
This particular dumb theory can be easily disproved: if the US government
really _were_ involved in some dumb-ass scheme to kill Bin Laden in 2001 and
then not bother to tell anyone about it for nearly ten years (even, say, circa
2004 when Mr Bush _really_ would have liked to have that for his re-election
campaign) then they'd also be supervillainish enough to kill this guy for
talking about it.

Sometimes it's not good to dismiss "unpopular" ideas, but it usually is a good
idea to (provisionally) dismiss dumbass ideas which don't appear to make sense
and for which there isn't any damn evidence.

~~~
abbasmehdi
Think you missed my point my man, you are talking about analyzing and then
dismissing the idea (totally agree and cool), I am speaking of people who
dismiss prior to analysis just because the idea is unpopular and not a part of
the mainstream ideology. Hope this makes sense.

~~~
hugh3
Well for a start it's not about "ideology". Ideology is about the way the
world _should_ be, and it's a matter on which the reasonable people of the
world can and should disagree.

The date of bin Laden's death (if indeed he is dead, if indeed he ever
existed) is a fact-of-the-matter thing; it's either one way or it's another
way, and there shouldn't be much room for reasonable people to disagree at
all. Reasonable people may be _uncertain_ on such matters, but they should all
share similar degrees of uncertainty.

~~~
abbasmehdi
I am not sure why you insist on missing my point repeatedly when I have
clearly stated right from that start that "I have not seen the said video and
am not endorsing it". My point was about attitude not the video, again in even
simpler language:

Dismiss because everybody says so without giving any thought = Bad. Dismiss
after thinking about it and looking into it = Good.

Ironically, I should dismiss your response because you’re repeatedly beating
the same dead horse. ;)

~~~
hugh3
_Dismiss because everybody says so without giving any thought = Bad. Dismiss
after thinking about it and looking into it = Good._

So whom, exactly, are you accusing of dismissing it without giving it any
thought?

~~~
abbasmehdi
I am happy you finally get what I've been trying to say Mr.3. And no, I'm not
getting into it again with you :-) (it's a public forum, look it up). It's not
that serious anyway. Happy Cinco! :)

