OBL raid: US raid team member claims Chinook resupply helicopter evaded attack by PAF F-16

[LeGenD]

But we are talking about Chinooks.

There are some inflitration-specialized Chinooks with LO treatments and powerful EW gear. These have jet black signature suppressing coatings as well.

 

[Basel]

So called 'Analyst'. Before measuring the thickness of my cranium, please take the effort to read the article.

Those words are not mine! These words are of the Pilot in Command of the chopper operation into Abbottabad.

And what is this BS about F-16 not getting clearance ? Just made up something or can you back it up with sources?

And where did India come in the picture ? Are you so obsessed !?

PAF don't engage targets till allowed to do it, that is why 9 IAF birds were not engaged although all of those were locked and only trigger press was needed to fire AIM-120s.

 

[Amaa'n]

There are Chinooks with LO treatments and powerful EW gear as well. These also have jet black signature suppressing coatings.

Articles says, a/c was unable to shoot, so he did get the lock on but was able to break it. Considering how fast a)c would fly past the target which is low and slow, EW suit on board the Chinooks would help break the lock..... Plus f-16 was unable to fire

 

[Windjammer]

But this Chinook we are talking about.

Do we know for sure that they were Chinooks besides if we can make Indians deaf and blind in bright daylight...one can imagine what technology America possesses that it can deploy in the dark of night.

 

[Amaa'n]

PAF don't engage targets till allowed to do it, that is why 9 IAF birds were not engaged although all of those were locked and only trigger press was needed to fire AIM-120s.

Not to forget JFT's had a lock on too and SD10s were waiting ...

 

[Hakikat ve Hikmet]

1. US is nobody's God, but it is a technological juggernaut.

2. You are not privy to top secrets of conventional warfare. If you had bothered to study even history of conventional warfare, you would have known better.

3. Pakistani defenses are not infallible. Not even close.

4. Journalists know jack shit about top secret military operations. There books are as valuable as mud in the streets.

Good points!!! Hence, folks need to work more on EWs - the more, the better!!! The recent Turkish "targeted" ops inside Syria at the presence of the Russians with their top notch gadgets has proved the importance of EW!! You don't necessarily always need 5th gen aircrafts, or the ace pilots for the "mundane" ops with a "gigantic" diplomatic fallouts, which strengthen your hands at the negotiating tables, or "messages" intended for the third parties!! What you need is damn good engineers and scientists to get it done via EW, AI, ML, mechatronics etc...

 

[Windjammer]

F16 that are mlu'ed or blk52+ would not lock on due to iff, so how will we shoot that a friendly a/c or a drone....ADF can lock on i guess?

This happened in 2002, before MLU or the Block-52s.

 

[LeGenD]

The Stealth Chinook involved in the Osama Bin Laden raid and why the Stealth Black Hawk crashed in Abbottabad

An interesting article published yesterday by the Associated Press and commented by Wired/Danger Room, provided some interesting details about the Osama Bin Laden raid. Indeed, anonymous government sources have told the story to the AP even if information they disclosed, raise more questions…

Anyway, first of all, I can’t help but notice that my possible explaination of Operation Neptune’s Spear (OBL raid’s name), published on May 6, was not disproved by facts disclosed so far!

Five aircraft flew from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, with three school-bus-size Chinook helicopters landing in a deserted area roughly two-thirds of the way to bin Laden’s compound in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, two of the officials explained.

Good. The departure aerodrome is Jalalabad (my guess was right) and there were also 3 Chinooks. Let’s have a look to what I wrote on May 6:

“I think there are two possibilities: both [helicopters involved in the raid] were Silent/Stealth/Upgraded/Modified/etc. Black Hawks; or 2 were Stealth Black Hawks and Stealth Chinooks. I don’t believe that “normal” MH-47s were involved as some media speculated (for the above mentioned considerations on the stealthiness of the formation) so, I’m almost sure only new Black Hawks were used. However, since we now know that a Black Helicopter exists, I can’t completely rule out the possibility that, along with a Stealth Black Hawk, somewhere there’s also some sort of modified Stealth Chinook flying“.

Since the officials confirmed that 3 Chinooks were involved and given that a mixed formation of stealth and non-stealth helos would have rendered the entire formation clearly visible on radars and audible from distance, I believe that there must be also a modified MH-47 flying with the 160 SOAR. Unlike the Black Hawk, we have no photographic evidences of it, but I think that their existence is somehow confirmed by the fact that the officers admitted their presence on the scene. Furthermore, it is quite obvious that the sources are trying to deceive the public opinion when they say to the AP journalist that:

The Black Hawks were specially engineered to muffle the tail rotor and engine sound, two officials said.

You can’t reduce noise by modifying only the tail rotor. Even the main rotor had to be fixed. And what about the anti-radar finish to enhance stealthiness? In my opinion, as explained in the last post on this subject, the Stealth Black Hawk is a highly modified version of the UH-60 helicopter.

I’ve asked once again to Ugo Crisponi to prepare a sketch of how a Stealth Chinook might look like by applying more or less the same modification used for the Stealth Black Hawk.



The same AP article then gives some details about the Stealth’s crash landing:

The added weight of the stealth technology meant cargo was calculated to the ounce, with weather factored in. The night of the mission, it was hotter than expected. […]

The plan unraveled as the first helicopter tried to hover over the compound. The Black Hawk skittered around uncontrollably in the heat-thinned air, forcing the pilot to land. As he did, the tail and rotor got caught on one of the compound’s 12-foot walls.

On this topic I had a chat with a friend of mine, who’s a former helicopter combat pilot with some Tour of Duty in Afghanistan. He’s quite skeptical about the “weather factor”: Abbottabad is “only” 4.000ft AMSL and at night, the temperature is always (well) below 30° C. Even a heavy modified helicopter should not have problem hovering over the compound. Hence, there could have been three kind of “root cause” for the crash landing:

1) flying a very risky mission at night with Night Vision Goggles, the pilots could have lost situational awareness and impacted the compound’s wall while approaching it for landing. This would explain why the tail is cut as images show

2) the helicopter, flying at lower altitude than the other Stealth Black Hawk, was hit by wake turbulence generated by the other chopper’s rotor. “It’s a very dangerous situation” my friend told me “since the turbulence hits both the main and tail rotor, giving almost no chances to react”

3) there was a “recirculation condition”: exacerbated by proximity to walls or cliffs or trees, this occurs when the air passes down through the rotor disc, hits the ground, moves out horizontally, hits the wall, goes up and then gets sucked down again through the rotor. You then have air that is already moving down coming through the disc and this leads to a greater power requirement which can then make the effect worse. This accident may not have been helped by the modifications to the tail rotor to make it stealthy that also reduced its efficiency and need for more power. It may not have been helped by pilot’s under pressure, coming in low and fast, possibly with obscured vision behind the first aircraft throwing up dust/sand.

https://theaviationist.com/2011/05/18/mh-47x/

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Pakistani defenses are good - no doubt about this. Better than Indian as well. No neighboring country can infiltrate our airspace easily, not even close.

But WE are talking about USA here. They can do much more than others.

 

[Amaa'n]

This happened in 2002, before MLU or the Block-52s.

I was talking about shooting down the Chinooks sir .

 

[zhxy]

Why don't Americans find a way to integrate a 155m gun on the Chinook, with the strong firepower and Chinook's versatility, it will be a nightmare for all enemies.

 

[dbc]

Part of SoF pilots training is avoiding enemy aircraft and being able to evade them. All things considered, it is extremely difficult to shoot down a low flying chopper at night.

Rotary wing aircraft are easier to detect and target at all altitudes because of EM backscattering from the fast moving rotor vs fixed wing jet. Using terrain masking or jamming may not always work, particularly if there are multiple hostiles at different altitudes and heading. Last hope is counter measures and evasive maneuvers.

Rotation of rotor blades in a helicopter modulates the phase function of radar backscattering, induces frequency modulation on returned signals, and generates side-bands about the center frequency of the helicopter's body Doppler frequency. The modulation induced by rotations can be regarded as a signature of the interaction between the rotor blades and the body of the helicopter, and provides additional information for target recognition complementary to existing recognition methods.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241596883_Radar_signatures_of_rotor_blades

 

[LeGenD]

Articles says, a/c was unable to shoot, so he did get the lock on but was able to break it. Considering how fast a)c would fly past the target which is low and slow, EW suit on board the Chinooks would help break the lock..... Plus f-16 was unable to fire

Well, Sir. Americans have best EW capabilities in the world. Not much of news TBH. :p

Few understand the difference between conventional warfare and asymmetric warfare. Modern conventional warfare is largely fought on EW spectrum even in broad daylight conditions. Asymmetric warfare is largely fought on visual spectrum.

US will clean sweep any force in conventional warfare but visual firefights can get really ugly for soldiers on either side as noticed in Afghanistan.

Much of the sophisticated American equipment will prove very effective in EW spectrum.

B/W This revelation shows how impressive radar system of F-16 Block 52+ is, particularly in nighttime conditions. And even this radar system is low-tier in American arsenal as of late.

Rotary wing aircraft are easier to detect and target at all altitudes because of EM backscattering from the fast moving rotor vs fixed wing jet. Using terrain masking or jamming may not always work, particularly if there are multiple hostiles at different altitudes and heading. Last hope is counter measures and evasive maneuvers.



https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241596883_Radar_signatures_of_rotor_blades

That is true but (stealthy) helicopters have largely unrecognized features, signatures and sounds. Bare minimum content in public domain.

 

[dbc]

That is true but (stealthy) helicopters have largely unrecognized features, signatures and sounds. Bare minimum content in public domain.

Frankly I don't know, in theory yes if they are able to make a composite blade strong enough to resist the torsional stress of high RPMs.

 

[TsAr]

I am pretty sure that the Americans came prepared with all their electronics gadgets. The pilot of the Chinook would surely have employed everything he had at this disposal but there is no way for him to know if the F-16 intended to shoot it or not. I am sure F-16's were not given the green light (rightly so) to shoot down the Americans.

 

[LeGenD]

Frankly I don't know, in theory yes if they are able to make a composite blade strong enough to resist the torsional stress of high RPMs.

When I saw photos of the tail of the helicopter that crashed in Abbottabad (the only leftover part), I was like WOAH never seen anything like this before. On a positive note, Pakistan got a good look at it before returning it to USA; decent food for thought for Project Azam for FREE.

An excellent read: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...-back-over-33-years-before-the-bin-laden-raid