Special programs

It was this empennage which piqued the interest of military analysts, in that is revealed a previously unknown design.

Those familiar with the H-60 family of helicopters were able to quickly identify the fuselage remains from recognisable components in the machine’s burnt out but still partially intact main rotor hub as being that of a Black Hawk. So what kind of helicopter did the mysterious empennage come from? A few days after the raid, US officials confirmed that the destroyed helicopter had entered a state known as ‘settle with power’ after its downwash became trapped within the high compound walls and was recirculated back up and through the blades, thus causing a dramatic loss of lift. The pilot was able to put the helicopter down inside the compound without injury to the crew or its valuable cargo of US Navy SEALs, but the tail boom apparently struck the wall and snapped off, landing on the outside of the wall.

The damaged tail rotor appears to have five or maybe six blades – the standard Black Hawk has four – as well as a flat and tapered ‘dish plate’ hub cover to mask the intricate and unstealthy tail rotor mechanism from probing radar waves.

The horizontal stabiliser on a standard Black Hawk is a large slab of aluminium aerofoil just below the tail, whereas the machine used in the bin Laden raid appeared to have two stabs made of smooth composite material, with an unusual forward sweep. The bulge on the top of the tail which houses the tail rotor transfer box appears to have also been reprofiled, with a larger composite and faceted covering with no visible external fasteners. Unfortunately no other detail was visible from the photos, and the wreckage was quickly removed from the site by Pakistani officials.

Another until recently previously unknown aircraft was believed to have also been used in the bin Laden raid – the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel UAV. Developed in secret by Lockheed’s famous Skunk Works, the RQ-170 was first spotted at Kandahar in Afghanistan by a visiting journalist in 2009, but wasn’t officially acknowledged by the Pentagon until the following year. The aircraft is believed to be a stealthy tactical unmanned reconnaissance and communications platform, and was reported to be carrying a new ‘hyper spectral’ optical payload in support of the Abbottabad raid, from which planners and the US leadership could watch the raid in real time. Analysts had previously wondered why a stealthy aircraft had been deployed to the benign air defence environment that is Afghanistan, although some had wondered whether it was being used to monitor the border regions with Pakistan, and possibly events in neighbouring Iran as well.

But should we really have been surprised by the exposure of this ‘black’ helicopter? The US has been using otherwise standard aircraft in ‘special’ roles for decades, some with few external clues as to their real missions, but others which are hidden away from the public and only allowed out at night.

The C-130 Hercules is a classic example of this. The ubiquitous transport aircraft has been used over the years as an air-to-air refuelling tanker in special operations support roles, as an aerial retrieval aircraft for ‘packages’ dropped by parachute from other aircraft or even satellites in orbit, as an electronic warfare platform, as a psychological warfare broadcast platform able to tap into radio and television networks, as a UAV launch platform, and as the AC-130 gunship armed with 105mm and 40mm cannons and mortars, miniguns and, in its latest USMC Harvest Hawk iteration, even air-to-surface missiles.

Boeing’s 707/C-135 family has also been used in various non-standard roles, from the familiar E-3 AWACS, to a plethora of RC-135 variants including the Rivet Joint communications and electronic intelligence (COMINT/ ELINT) aircraft, to the US Navy’s E-6 Mercury, which is used to relay ultra-low frequency (ULF) communications to submerged nuclear submarines.

Even the usually pedestrian Beechcraft King Air has come in for some special treatment, with COMINT/ELINT and reconnaissance versions in service with various US government agencies, and seeing daily operational use in Afghanistan and other regions of interest.

But back to the Black Hawk – the machine is reportedly part of a batch of a dozen or so aircraft modified in the late 1990s and early 2000s and based at a remote facility in the Nevada desert north of Las Vegas.

Crews from the US Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment reportedly flew regular Black Hawks at their Kentucky base, but rotated through Nevada to train on the special birds as well.