The West Coast.
I saw the renderings on various internet sites. From memory, as this was some time ago, I first saw a drawing after viewing a stealth mock up of a helicopter. Another poster said that the mock up was inaccurate and that there were already drawings of 'the actual' stealth Blackhawk online and that the Chinese (no mention of who in China) had posted the drawings.

The mock up was all black and with a person dressed in black in front of it (it may have been a movie prop, I can't remember now, but maybe you have seen the same pic) whereas the 'Chinese' picture was in dark grey and a side profile just like Sqn pics and looked exactly like the tail section left at OBL's house.
The same 'Chinese' drawing appeared on all sorts of sites within 24 hours of the raid.


I'm not entirely sure why the idea of a stealthy (using stealthy loosely) helo is so far fetched. Even though the US is downsizing its military it still has a lot more cash to spend than anyone else, and has poured a lot of money into this idea already. We only need to consider the advance from the F117 to the F22 to perhaps assume that things have improved since the Comanche.

Undoubtedly there will be some surprises when the real thing rolls out at Palmdale and she will look a bit different from the drawing- but it sure does look like lower risk won the day. I think the Pentagon had very little appetite for a clean sheet design and big promises....

Barnstormer - are you thinking of the photographs and profile pictures here -
The Aviationist » stealth helicopter
These were all produced after the raid.

The West Coast.
The top image was the initial pic I saw while looking for something entirely different. It's funny, but working from memory I remembered the chap in front wearing black.

The rendering of the 'real' item was different to the other pics you posted. I saw those too after the raid.

A rendering side on like the top version here, rather than a photo style side on view below.

http://i736.photobucket.com/albums/x...C19605BBAC.png

I'm sorry I can't give you more detail but my searches were in relation to apaches as I had planned to model a (made up) stealth Apache for a display.

Thanks very much indeed barnstormer1968. All you need to do now, to substantiate your case, is to provide incontrovertible evidence to the forum that these "Stealth Blackhawk " images actually pre-date the timing of the raid itself.....In which event I totally accept that my individual analysis collapses;.
Can you do so?
I would also love to see any alleged likely images of this machine ( from whatever source) over the half decade plus of its alleged squadron service.
( Not, of course including the pathetic photo shopped nonsense on a couple of kiddy sites)

However, , if this is not the case.............

Hakara.
I'm not sure I follow the case you put. How would a rendering from before the raid prove anything to YOU.
If we were to assume that what ever was left at the raid site (be it real or fake) was built before the raid, and maybe at least six months to a year before so how would a pic from before the raid prove anything to you.
The rendering could be a rendering of a fake helicopter.

I'm not really a fan of conspiracies and am happy to accept that he US has the capability and the cash to built a stealth Blackhawk, that they also have a long history of building aircraft that can spend a long time unseen and of using those aircraft on OPs.
To clear things up for me a little are you suggesting the Anericans didn't build the aircraft (even though they have built something similar before) or that they couldn't build it?

There's actually incontrovertible evidence that the images posted on this thread do NOT pre-date the raid.

The photo with a human being in it is from the set of "Zero Dark Thirty", which is easily Google-able and by definition cannot pre-date the raid.

The artists' impressions from David Cenciotti's weblog (http://theaviationist.com/) are stated at the source to have been based on the wreckage pictured at Abbotabad, so also don't pre-date the raid.

If there are any other images of a stealth Blackhawk that purport to be a real aircraft (there are some videogame constructs) and which pre-date the raid, I'd love to see them but I don't think they were around.

Well spotted boss eyed.
The rendering isn't the one in question as I pointed out above, but was used as an example to show a rough idea to point out that the Chinese image wasn't like the lower pic, but more basic like the top pic.
Clearly I can't go back and retrace web searches, but do know I made the model after seeing images but some time before the raid because it was on display at a kids party. For what it's worth my 1/32 stealth Apache had a fenestron canted tail rotor, larger cover on top of the rotor mast and side ladders for picking up downed crew (taken from a computer game).

Remember, you saw it here first!

Barnstormer1968 (Good number BTW)

Sounds like the RAH-66,

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped.../c9/Rah-66.jpg

Davef68

The tail was just like that. The model I made was loosely based on the Apache from a console game called desert strike. The Apache in that game used the tail from the Comanche for some reason, but then also had rope ladders it lowered to pick people up :)
Sorry for drifting this into a spotter/modeller text.

It's interesting to see how others are thinking along the same lines about that 'stealth' helicopter, as I wrote last year. I'm still looking forward to some contradictory evidence. By the way, has anyone got a good photo showing damage to the wall or chewed up soil from where this 'stealth' helicopter thrashed itself to pieces? All the videos I've seen of helicopters dismantling themselves involve a considerable amount of earth and debris being flung around.

It's interesting to see how others are thinking along the same lines about that 'stealth' helicopter, as I wrote last year.

Quote:
18th May 2015 20:24 by Mechta
There's always the possibility in the OBL raid, that after the hit itself, a sizable piece of a redundant experimental helicopter was dropped on the site (maybe from one of the CH-47s reportedly involved in the raid) to:

Make an iconic photo opportunity of an otherwise pretty nondescript location.
Give other nations the impression that the Americans were further ahead with putting stealth helicopters into service than they really were.
Add a significant amount of 'wow-factor' to the story.
Establish the level of co-operation between the Pakistanis/Chinese and/or others, before the subsequent retrieval of the 'wreckage'.
The Americans would have been well aware that the wreckage would soon be inspected by knowledgable foreign parties, thus a film set type mock-up would have been rapidly outed. Whatever was left behind would have had to be pretty convincing.



I'm still looking forward to some contradictory evidence.


By 'others' you of course mean 'one other'. As for offering 'contradictory evidence', the great thing about conspiracy theories is that you can't disprove them...

But you can in this case of course.(bearing in mind that this is not 'per se" a conspiracy theory ,merely objectively citing the lack of firm evidence supporting a popularly encouraged assertion .)
The popularly implied version of events can be supported simply by showing incontrovertible evidence of the existence (pre or post the event) of the alleged :"Stealth Blackhawk" , which so far only exists in the public domain from merely commercial artists' impressions of an entire vehicle. These themselves only being based upon the sole evidence of an apparent tail pylon and rotor assembly dumped at the scene.
This alleged evidence of such a machine has been seen ,only once, half a decade ago and after a mission shrouded , of necessity in that political environment, in disinformation.

Oh , and I am pretty confident to say the least, that I not the "one other " supporting this analysis.

Given that the stealth Black Hawk was never meant to be seen by public, I think it's a fairly safe assumption to say that neither myself nor anyone else without the highest level of clearances is going to be to provide you with that evidence, incontrovertible or not.


That said, it does not "only exist in the public domain from merely commercial artists' impressions of an entire vehicle". It exists in the public domain in photographs taken of the tail section of the aircraft which crashed.


If it is the artists' impression in particular that troubles you, you may wish to note that most new aircraft have been introduced to the public in such a fashion before they were ever seen in the flesh, so to speak.


And as for it being half-a-decade since the event, I am not sure how that makes the case one way or the other for the existence or not of the stealth hawk. It was close to a decade from the F-117's first flight to the public finally catching sight of it.


As I said before, you really can't disprove conspiracy theories - they're like Chinese finger-traps, where the harder you pull you more you get dragged in.

Haraka

I would dearly love to believe that it were true that a bunch of SF guys had dumped a fake tail at the scene of a raid just to mess with the Chinese/Russians.

It would be truly fantastic and I would be in awe of their ambition and sense of humour.

Unfortunately, this is the real world.

The idea that onto an already very risky and highly complex mission with enormous capacity for embarrassing the POTUS if anything went wrong you would add on unnecessary complications like carrying in a tail just for a little disinformation is truly the realms of tinfoil hats.

Occam's Razor, Haraka - Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions (they crashed a helicopter) should be selected, or in other words the simplest answer is most often the correct answer.

It's a cool idea, but if the tail assembly WAS fake and dumped on the edge of the compound, anyone inspecting it would certainly try to get their hands on at least some of the remains of the rest of the helicopter wreckage and surely any inspection of that would reveal if the tail was the same material as the burnt out section.

How would you fake that? Wouldn't an entire airframe need to be dropped on the site and then blown up?

Agreed , IF they had access and that was the point of the exercise.
Any evidence of this? Photos etc?

Occam's Razor indeed Melmoth.
The only bit of evidence supporting a hypothesis of a certain type of Stealth Helicopter appeared during an otherwise highly classified operation in a politically complex area and where indeed such an alleged capability could arguably provide deniable cover for other cooperating agencies.

So with no verifiable collateral supporting information before or since over many years, would not the simplest explanation be that it never existed,as such, in the first place?

No, given that photographs of (parts of) it exist.

Anything else is just conspiracy-fuelled hokum. As Tourist rightly points out, there was already too much hanging on this mission without adding a further level of complication for no discernible reason.