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Mysterious stealth helicopter used in bin Laden raid...

:( sadly this is not true. the chinese in particular are very, very good at reverse engineering.

I was not saying they could not reverse engineer, but once it is known something is possible, figuring out how is not that bad. This was known to be possible already, and based on the needs the rough design would be fairly clear.
 
We still use Hellfires?

yeah - even though they suck; they have the "benefit" of being small, so we can load them on the UAV's. But two (or hey, more, i'm almost always a fan of more) of them should have been sufficient to seriously degrade the ability of anyone to reverse engineer a tail rotor.
 
I was not saying they could not reverse engineer, but once it is known something is possible, figuring out how is not that bad. This was known to be possible already, and based on the needs the rough design would be fairly clear.

i'm less worried about capability (though probably composite materials - which you know as well as I do can be classified pretty highly - will probably be a big boon for them there), and more worried about defeat mechanisms. It's less that they now know how to do it (though that is important) and more that they now know how we do it.
 
If that tail piece (let me say, thingy), is so super-secret then why was it not destroyed? The SEAL team extracted a number of people and none were injured; thus, they were not likely under fire when leaving. If they were not leaving under fire, then they had all the time (and presumably stuff that explodes) they wanted.

Did they run out of time or exploding stuff? No drone shot? No bonfire made from furniture?


I think they left behind a thingy with cardboard and duct-tape mods.
 
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If that tail piece (let me say, thingy), is so super-secret then why was it not destroyed? The SEAL team extracted a number of people and none were injured; thus, they were not likely under fire when leaving. If they were not leaving under fire, then they had all the time (and presumably stuff that explodes) they wanted.

Did they run out of time or exploding stuff? No drone shot? No bonfire made from furniture?


I think they left behind a thingy with cardboard and duct-tape mods.

Seldom do you know how much time is left or if all enemies are suppressed
 
If that tail piece (let me say, thingy), is so super-secret then why was it not destroyed?

it fell outside the wall. they got the rest of the helo, but at night, they didn't see/go after the tail.

The SEAL team extracted a number of people and none were injured; thus, they were not likely under fire when leaving.

bare minutes from a major military base. time is limited on these things.

I think they left behind a thingy with cardboard and duct-tape mods.

:lol:
 
I thought they went in in the afternoon.
true.
The tweeter dude said it was 1 AM when he first heard the helicopter. I would be amazed if they went in during daylight.

Watch this video, particularly at 2:06. There are several reports that this occurred.

SEALs Used Secret Stealth Helicopter
Very interesting. I don't know how to explain the tweets in light of this. Maybe the EMP didn't reach his house or something.

If that tail piece (let me say, thingy), is so super-secret then why was it not destroyed? The SEAL team extracted a number of people and none were injured; thus, they were not likely under fire when leaving. If they were not leaving under fire, then they had all the time (and presumably stuff that explodes) they wanted.

Did they run out of time or exploding stuff?
They were under serious time pressure because Pakistan didn't know about the operation, and were likely to scramble fighter jets to the area as soon as they learned something was up.
 
true. but you don't design a helicopter for use between the hours of noon and 7pm local time. you design it for a 24 hour op potential. given that combat is a competitive game, we are rapidly getting to the point where we are perhaps even better at night than we are during the day. Charlie fears the night, now.

Actually, believe the mission was conducted 3:00 in the afternoon our time. Translated to 1:00 AM local time.

And from what I have read nothing only the craft was silver or shiny. The skin is that radar evading stealthy composite used on the planes....


.
 
If that tail piece (let me say, thingy), is so super-secret then why was it not destroyed? The SEAL team extracted a number of people and none were injured; thus, they were not likely under fire when leaving. If they were not leaving under fire, then they had all the time (and presumably stuff that explodes) they wanted.

Did they run out of time or exploding stuff? No drone shot? No bonfire made from furniture?


I think they left behind a thingy with cardboard and duct-tape mods.

This is the first time I've been able to examine this photograph for more than a few seconds when it was flashed on the TV screen.

It appears to me that the tail boom in on the outside of the compound. We also know that that aircraft made a hard landing, which could mean that he under shot his LZ and snapped the tail boom off when he hit the wall.

Now, if it is actually on the outside of the compound, it's understandable how the members of the assault team wouldn't have been able to actually exit the compound and destroy it properly. The Pak units in the area were being held at bay, but that wasn't going to last forever.
 
It would never have been used if the chance of it being revealed was not acceptable.



Again, that it is something that was supposed to be destroyed with the rest of the chopper. You weren't supposed to see it. Period

The 160th pilots are top notched to say otherwise. However, they have their share of crashes on real missions. **** happens

Um, no. You simply cannot use cruise missiles for something like that. The team in place has to destroy as much as it can, which is in fact what was reported to have happened.

Why they didn't call in a run. Haven't a clue
 
The Pak units in the area were being held at bay, but that wasn't going to last forever.

Affirmative.

Freedom of movement - restricted
The town - paki .mil. No time to pile it up in a nice neat bundle and burn throughly.

The longer you are on an objective, the greater chance of a counter of some sort is. In and out...in and out
 
Jesus, one of the... if not the... most dangerous and sophisticated black ops missions ever attempted was successful beyond belief, yielding thousands of documents, thumb drives, computers, cell phones that will delight our intelligence analysts for years to come... and all some of you can do is piss and moan about it? This couldn't just be partisian hackery, could it? I mean, we're ALL Americans and we're ALL proud of this razor-sharp military achievement... amirite? Well, AM I?

Sheesh. :roll:
 
Partisan hackery? Excuse me a moment, I've a question.

If we extracted a dozen or so people (or did the Pakis do that?), then someone should have had time to blow the wall and blow the tail. Hell, throw a cinder-block of c4 over the wall and go back to the extraction. The only thing I can figure is that people came to the tail very soon after it landed and blowing it would have killed civilians. I don't get how people are painting this as a "mistake". I think there was time to make the move, drones were probably overhead and could do it themselves (and those drones surely saw the piece if it was outside the wall), etc... There's a reason it did not get blown. It was probably not just "oops! forgot about that!".

I still say it was duct-tape and cardboard (maybe a can of grey spraypaint). I add that I suspect civilians (or Paki police/etc) were somehow near it or within blast danger.
 
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Why they didn't call in a run. Haven't a clue

probably they didn't realize it was there. Raids are merely organized chaos - at high speed and the enemy and weather both get votes that can counter your own. They had kind of sort of just launched a raid into an area of questionable stability, killed target No. 1 in the world, and were on a tight frame. We lost no one, and though this sucks; it's an acceptable loss.
 
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probably they didn't realize it was there.

I doubt that

They trained with mock ups, over and over and over until they had it down from muscle memory and mental timing and given the level these guys operate at, I find it hard to believe. the pilot would smack that much tail off

Must have been a mechanical mal

Again, lots of **** can happen in an accident.
 
You don't believe in heavy modifications? And first of all, the fact that the helicopter had to be left behind is not Obama's fault. Secondly, the SEALs destroyed as much of it as they could. I doubt the Pakis have the technology to make use of what's left.

The Chinese do unfortunately. They reverse engineer everything; flaws and all. We should have flattened the compound with a barrage of munitions that would have shaken the entire region.

Hindsight is 20-20.

Could the light touch after the fact been a result of political correctness? It's cost us much... could this be another instance?

.
 
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Déjà Vue; like Jimmy Carter and Operation Eagle Claw in Iran. Those pesky helicopters just can’t seem to function properly in high profile special ops. What’s give or take $28 million and handing over stealth technology to the highest bidder worth? Priceless…
 
I'm sure they are going to reverse engineer stealth bombers with the duct-tape/cardboard mod on the tail of a helo. Hell, North Korea will probably use it to design ICBMs too.
 
I doubt that

They trained with mock ups, over and over and over until they had it down from muscle memory and mental timing and given the level these guys operate at, I find it hard to believe. the pilot would smack that much tail off

Must have been a mechanical mal

Again, lots of **** can happen in an accident.

ever been on a night raid? ever had to destroy a helicopter in place?
 
I'm sure they are going to reverse engineer stealth bombers with the duct-tape/cardboard mod on the tail of a helo. Hell, North Korea will probably use it to design ICBMs too.

see, the problem with your theory is that it's useless. leaving a cardboard mock-up as a deception measure would be pointless, because nobody older than 5 would buy it.
 
The only thing that the tail rotor would have of value is a bit in the design, but that would be minor to the possible material construction of it. Provided it is using a new material and not just a rehash of stuff already developed.

Where the US truely leads is in the electronics aspect of military equipment, and that is where China is most likely far behind
 
design is important - so is material and the skin. but you are right that the electronics are the mother load - and that thank goodness is slag.
 
ever been on a night raid? ever had to destroy a helicopter in place?

When your bro/relative/friend comes back, don't ask them what he had to do to stay alive - you don't want to know.

Just be glad they are back and don't ever ask them.
 
design is important - so is material and the skin. but you are right that the electronics are the mother load - and that thank goodness is slag.

Design is important, but it can be copied from pictures, materials cant, neither electronics
 
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