On May 2, a team of navy seals managed to sneak past Pakistani air defenses aboard two helicopters bound for the town of Abbottabad. Although its mission to find and kill Osama bin Laden was a hugely celebrated success, one of the helicopters crashed during the operation, giving the world its first look at a stealth helicopter deployed in a live military operation.
It will be years (if ever) before the public learns exactly how the Army managed to conceal the whomp-whomp of helicopter rotor blades, but photos of the wreckage offer clues. Defense experts say the helicopters were modified H-60 Black Hawks—workhorses of the U.S. Army—swathed in a suite of closely held stealth technologies that probably migrated over from the prototype RAH-66 Comanche, a stealth helicopter program canceled in 2004 after costs spiraled. Richard Aboulafia, vice president of analysis at the Teal Group, a defense and aerospace consultancy based ...
