Secret Stealth Helped U.S. Accomplish Bin Laden Raid

When it comes to using aviation to take care of business, it's hard to find a more dramatic example than the U.S. military raid on Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 1. Stealthy helicopters and the still-secret Lockheed-Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, a stealthy unmanned or optionally piloted, tailless flying wing, may have played pivotal roles in the raid. Photos of the tail wreckage of one helicopter, which the Seals destroyed following its crash at the compound, show significant differences from U.S. Army Sikorsky MH-60K Black Hawk models that are used to insert special forces.

Off-the-record briefings quoted by The Washington Post and Time magazine suggest that the raiding party flew to and from Abbottabad via Bagram airbase in Afghanistan in two Black Hawk helicopters. One or more Boeing Chinook helicopters, presumably MH-47Gs, also flew into Pakistan with backup forces, and one of these recovered from the compound those special-forces members whose helicopter crashed and was destroyed there. The RQ-170 might have provided communications and imagery relay during the raid and might also have previously flown into Pakistan airspace to provide video imagery of the compound.