Osama Bin Laden was the world's most wanted man for decades. But he proved to be the means for China to leapfrog technical barriers in its development of military technology. With a little help from Pakistan! At least one of the Tomahawk missiles malfunctioned in flight. The Communist Chinese reverse-engineered the missile and dissected its components allowing them to learn its vulnerabilities and defeat its capabilities.
The US had launched the attack on Bin Laden in to retaliate against suicide bomb strikes against its embassies in Kenya and Tanzania earlier that year. Ironically, back then itself, US experts had expressed concerns of Pakistan handing over technology from the Tomahawk to China as Pakistani officials claimed they were studying the missile. In , former Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif claimed that Pakistan had reverse-engineered the Tomahawk missile that malfunctioned.
Click here to join our channel TheWeekmagazine and stay updated with the latest headlines. Home News World. The Nighthawk and then the B-2 Spirit were the first low-observable production aircraft, and today, the US military flies fighters like Fs and F, both of which have bodies that appear curvy; so does a rendering of the forthcoming B Raider bomber from Northrop Grumman.
But helicopters, with their big sides, huge swinging top rotor, and smaller tail rotor also twirling around in another orientation, pose an even greater challenge. Whirlybirds are loud, in-your-face machines , and attempting to retrofit one to be low-observable would be hard. Todd Harrison, who directs the aerospace security project at the Center for Strategic and International studies, sees it the same way.
But it could be helpful to just be less observable, or less loud, than usual. Photographic evidence provided a tease of the design of the helicopters used in the raid, and people dug into it right away in Because one of the Black Hawks crashed—the team blew it up before they departed—a piece of the tail remained.
Looking at that photograph in the present day, Osborne comments that a few modifications from a standard Black Hawk are clear. An additional blade or blades would let that rotor spin more slowly, but still achieve the performance the helicopter needs. He also notes the presence of additional smooth, cover-like material. Most of Pakistan's radars are on the ground, and therefore angled in such a way that makes low-flying aircraft difficult to detect, Mr Osborne says. A Pakistani intelligence official who wished to remain anonymous told the BBC's Syed Shoaib Hasan that the helicopters were not picked up on radar and were only detected when seen entering the country from Afghanistan.
He said there were four helicopters, coming in very low. There has been speculation that there was one more stealth helicopter, identical to the one that crashed, and that these were used as pathfinders, backed up by two larger Chinooks. The RAH Comanche had some stealth technologies. Aviation Week. The rumored nickname? That's right, like the cheesy '80 TV show. Aside from one IT consultant who unwittingly live-tweeted the bin Laden raid, reports from Pakistani sources of a crashed helicopter were the first evidence that something was going down in Abbottabad.
One local news agency claimed the downed bird was Pakistani. It wasn't until several hours later that U. The official's insistence -- echoed later by Panetta -- that there were just two choppers involved in the man raid raised some eyebrows. According to Capt. Crispin Burke, a U. Army Blackhawk pilot and Danger Room pal, two of the copters together can just barely squeeze in 25 people plus their weapons and other gear.
But it's inconceivable that a single surviving Blackhawk could have transported all 25 members of the assault team. Anyone who's ridden in a Blackhawk knows that. More than two choppers were present over bin Laden's compound, despite what the administration was saying. That was the first indication that, as far as helicopters were concerned, something unusual was afoot. Then came the photos. When the sun rose in Abbottabad, enterprising photographers with the European Press Agency and the Associated Press snapped pics showing the remains of the destroyed U.
The snapshots apparently depicted features not found on standard Blackhawks.
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