It appears that one of the two helicopters used in the OBL take down was damaged and had to be intentionally destroyed.
Why would it be destroyed? Is Pakistan not an ally of the US? Was there concern that the technology in those helicopters might be used by terrorists against the US at some point?
And how did they fit all of the various troops from two helicopters into one? Didn’t they also have to make room for OBL’s body?
Osama hid for years in a compound located a stone’s throw from their main military academy. You tell me.
In any case, even if we actually trusted the Pakistani government, that’s no reason to let them have access to all the technical secrets contained in a modern military helicopter.
It would necessarily be that they didn’t want the technology from the copter to end up in the Pakistani’s governments hands… more that they didn’t want random people (potential enemies and/or al-qaida people nearby) getting their hands on it.
They didn’t. According to the news reports, when the first helicopter crash-landed a third, (empty on arrival) stand-by helicopter was immediately flown in and took the crashed helicopter’s place.
The news channels were all interviewing “experts” (typically “general … (retired)” types) who all claimed that having stand-by equipment like this is now standard procedure in these kinds of operations.
It’s always been necessary – Mongol horsemen brought strings of spare ponies with them on their raids – but history is full of examples of trying to do it on the cheap and operate without backup gear. History is, not coincidentally, also full of tales of disaster and defeat.
I read that the helicopters employed some nifty stealth technology to evade Pakistani radar, so that isn’t something they’d want to fall into anyone else’s hands. I’m sure there was other stuff also. Remember, Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientist sold secrets all over the world, and got his wrist slapped, so they are not exactly trustworthy partners.
Indeed, even the UK doesn’t get our top of the line stuff. And trust issues with the Pakistani government aside, if the helo was damaged fighting Al Qaeda types, it’s entirely possible they destroyed it to keep the same Al Qaeda types from getting at it. Thermite is cheap, peace of mind is expensive.
Yeah, the gummit probably had some thermite left over from an old operation, and they wanted to get rid of it.
I strongly suspect that the helecopters that the SEAL team were using were not simply off-the-shelf models that you can pick up at your local helecopter mart, or even standard military models. Rather they undoubtedly had lots of secret squirrel, whiz-bang stuff on them that they would strongly prefer not get into the hands of, well, anyone else, much less the Pakistani military or intelligence services, of which the U.S. is deeply suspicious.
I heard to keep the technology from China.
Pakistan has good diplomatic relations with China and would be pressured by them to share the secrets the helicopter had.
Aviation Week magazine reported today that it was a stealth helicopter of a previously unknown type.
The photos sure don’t look like anything public.
I suspect that the White House was thinking in terms of avoiding a disaster on the level of the rescue attempt of the Iranian hostages in 1980.
Notice that the reserve helo was a Chinook. That’s enough room to take everybody back, even if both SEAL helos got pranged during the op.
I’m quite sure that the pilots spent the 40 minutes on the ground removing equipment, wiping computer systems, and laying bricks of C-4 where it would do the most good.
It may not be whiz-bang technology they are trying to protect, merely information with would be useful for some kind of counter-intelligence activity by an enemy. For instance, the radios might reveal which frequencies the teams use (or could use) on operations. Or an American IFF transponder. There are all kinds of small things that might be gleaned from an inspection and inventory of an intact helicopter. Do the helicopters have a winch? If so, how much load will it bear?
It might be repaired. It might be later used as some kind of “trojan horse” to get an enemy into some American protected zone.
There is a very long history in war of each side taking every opportunity to get hold of the other side’s equipment and learn everything they can.
Pakistan is our “friend” now, not a very reliable one, and might not be even that next week. It is much simpler to blow a piece of hardware to slag and not worry about it.
Well, yeah, maybe they just had some left over and were like “You know, they never let us set anything on fire back on the ship. Might as well use it here. BOBBY! YOU GOT THOSE MARSHMALLOWS IN YOUR PACK?!”
“It blowed up real good!”
Alternately: “DAMMIT JIMMY, WE SAID THIS WAS A NON-SMOKING FLIGHT! THIS IS WHY THEY DON’T LET US HAVE NICE THINGS!”
GI jane on the Navy seals:
question: any one know what happend to the second helicopter? was it shot down?
Like a lot of details of the story so far, it keeps changing. There are reports that said it was a mechanical failure and it crash-landed in the compound. I heard other reports say the tail rotor hit the compound’s fence during landing. At least one report said it failed at some staging point before ever getting to the compound.