I think we're going to be left to our own devices in deducing just what sort of a helo got stuck on OBL's service yard; at least I've seen no-one from the armed forces, CIA or the White House willing to discuss anything about it. Not that anyone's asked them either? Some people here have (what to me appear superhuman) skills of going through impenetrable seeming documents and sources from airspace restrictions to federal budget footnotes and come up with reasonable assumptions. I'm in awe.
From a design standpoint a helicopter doesn't seem like a prime candidate for stealth, even with the RAH-66s of this World ... I've bookmarked a couple of links to bespoke rotor flow softwares which seemed exclusively flow dynamics related. It's been a couple of years since I've visited them, but both were billed "state of the art" at the time and even now - it seems to me - it'd be a bit of a stretch to make them "multiphysics enough" to include both acoustics and RCS and coalesce all the design goals into a perfectly integrated product. Dunno, perhaps finite element methods have leaped forward in the mean time and this sort of thing is within the reach of any wet behind the ears mech BEng these days. I do vaguely remember a German Prof. Whatshisname working on reducing noise by adding small, actuated control surfaces to the main rotor - but that was for Eurocopter, I think. Me, I was just slightly surprised to see the tail rotor "stealthized", I would've thought NOTAR an obvious choice for such an "application". But then again I don't design helicopters.
About the raid being handled "extremely poorly" vis-a-vis a ficticious Pakistan nukes-grab and general political expediency ... I think our "allies" have clearly stated that the US will not be privy to their weapons' location; the existence of any agreement to "secure" the stockpiles in case of a radical uprising has been debunked. US intel dropped the ball way back with AQ Khan already (even instructing European spooks to stand down, I think), directly resulting in the worst rogue nukes profileration in memory - at the bare minimum Libya, North Korea and Iran got their goods (or "bads") from them. The idea of DevGru or even a battalion of Rambos solving this by the way of stealthy insertion ... is fanciful. On top of the manifest tenuousness of trust, it's the old guard, the Musharraf generation that was at least willing to play give-us-military-aid-and-we'll-behave-ball; worryingly there's increasing radicalization in the younger ranks coming up. And to add to the reality check - Pakistan ranks as the 6th most populous country in the World; by mid-century there'll be more folks there than there are in the US now. Can you imagine, say, the Chinese sending a commando force to "forcibly disarm" the US, or the UK?
By the way of "operational quietness" this option was the most stealthy put on the table by those who actually have to execute such things; having a couple of B-2s drop a precision payload on the compound would've also been linked to the US fairly instantly, I think. That the Pakistanis had to be excluded from the planning (as per McRaven's doctrine and previous "relations empiricism" i.e. high value targets getting tipped off) obviously necessitated accepting a level of exposure after the fact. As to the element of surprise, I think Al Qaeda - after at least a decade of relentless pursuit - has had more than a fair warning by now. We play the hands we are dealt and right now OBL's catch-me-if-you-can "mystique" is coming back to bite him and his pet projects. Besides, in a couple of predominantly islamic countries there have already been revolutions based on ... "On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict" (Robert L. Helvey, AEI) and social media tools specially engineered by human rights activists.
Not a resounding success for OBL and his band of blowhard acolytes, for I doubt said "Arab Spring" revolutionaries' ideal is to have an omnipotent medieval caliph replace their decrepit and/or dynastic strongman. Especially as we have competing examples of such religiously driven systems on full display in Iran and Saudi Arabia.
From a design standpoint a helicopter doesn't seem like a prime candidate for stealth, even with the RAH-66s of this World ... I've bookmarked a couple of links to bespoke rotor flow softwares which seemed exclusively flow dynamics related. It's been a couple of years since I've visited them, but both were billed "state of the art" at the time and even now - it seems to me - it'd be a bit of a stretch to make them "multiphysics enough" to include both acoustics and RCS and coalesce all the design goals into a perfectly integrated product. Dunno, perhaps finite element methods have leaped forward in the mean time and this sort of thing is within the reach of any wet behind the ears mech BEng these days. I do vaguely remember a German Prof. Whatshisname working on reducing noise by adding small, actuated control surfaces to the main rotor - but that was for Eurocopter, I think. Me, I was just slightly surprised to see the tail rotor "stealthized", I would've thought NOTAR an obvious choice for such an "application". But then again I don't design helicopters.
About the raid being handled "extremely poorly" vis-a-vis a ficticious Pakistan nukes-grab and general political expediency ... I think our "allies" have clearly stated that the US will not be privy to their weapons' location; the existence of any agreement to "secure" the stockpiles in case of a radical uprising has been debunked. US intel dropped the ball way back with AQ Khan already (even instructing European spooks to stand down, I think), directly resulting in the worst rogue nukes profileration in memory - at the bare minimum Libya, North Korea and Iran got their goods (or "bads") from them. The idea of DevGru or even a battalion of Rambos solving this by the way of stealthy insertion ... is fanciful. On top of the manifest tenuousness of trust, it's the old guard, the Musharraf generation that was at least willing to play give-us-military-aid-and-we'll-behave-ball; worryingly there's increasing radicalization in the younger ranks coming up. And to add to the reality check - Pakistan ranks as the 6th most populous country in the World; by mid-century there'll be more folks there than there are in the US now. Can you imagine, say, the Chinese sending a commando force to "forcibly disarm" the US, or the UK?
By the way of "operational quietness" this option was the most stealthy put on the table by those who actually have to execute such things; having a couple of B-2s drop a precision payload on the compound would've also been linked to the US fairly instantly, I think. That the Pakistanis had to be excluded from the planning (as per McRaven's doctrine and previous "relations empiricism" i.e. high value targets getting tipped off) obviously necessitated accepting a level of exposure after the fact. As to the element of surprise, I think Al Qaeda - after at least a decade of relentless pursuit - has had more than a fair warning by now. We play the hands we are dealt and right now OBL's catch-me-if-you-can "mystique" is coming back to bite him and his pet projects. Besides, in a couple of predominantly islamic countries there have already been revolutions based on ... "On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict" (Robert L. Helvey, AEI) and social media tools specially engineered by human rights activists.
Not a resounding success for OBL and his band of blowhard acolytes, for I doubt said "Arab Spring" revolutionaries' ideal is to have an omnipotent medieval caliph replace their decrepit and/or dynastic strongman. Especially as we have competing examples of such religiously driven systems on full display in Iran and Saudi Arabia.