Here’s a question many readers have been asking; how did four helicopters, likely from the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, make their way inside Pakistan’s air defense intercept zone and carry out a 40-minute raid before the Pakistani military could react?
The answers are myriad. One theory in circulation is that the Predator drone reported to have been involved in the attacks wasn’t a Predator at all. Instead, it was the Air Force’s secret, stealthy-looking RQ-170 Sentinel better known as The Beast of Kandahar. The Sentinel famously earned its nickname after being spotted numerous times operating out of Kandahar International Airport in southern Afghanistan. When the Air Force finally acknowledged its existence, all it would say was that the drone was that is supports “combatant commander needs for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance to locate targets.” Still, many wondered why the air force was using such an advanced drone for this mission in a country where the U.S. enjoyed total air superiority. Can’t regular drones handle ISR missions in Afghanistan? Theories abound that the stealthy-looking plane is actually being used to snoop on neighboring Iran or Pakistan. Some have even postulated that the numerous humps found along the airframe house a variety of electronic warfare gear, the type of gear that could be used to confuse Pakistani air defenses during a raid like the one on Sunday. As Steve Trimble at the DEW Line notes, it may have also been used to provide the White House and other mission planners with real time video of the raid.
Or maybe, the plane is just in Afghanistan to be field tested in more realistic conditions than those found over the Nevada Test and Training Range, as some say. This leaves other possibilities as to how the U.S. snuck up to 80 men into a garrison town a little more than 30-miles from Pakistan’s capitol. Could it be, the “cooperation” that White house officials say Pakistan provided on the mission included turning a blind eye to the four helos and one drone? Still, the New York Times is reporting that Pakistani troops were scrambled upon literally hearing the commotion going on in Abbottabad. ABC news also reports that Pakistani fighter jets were scrambled to intercept the American choppers. They obviously didn’t arrive in time to do anything about the mission.
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Perhaps the multi spectral imaging is how they knew which room he was in… That would be yet another”game changer ” the ability to detect heat signatures through walls. The US military is so far ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to this high tech stuff, free electron lasers, scramjets, hyper spectral imaging… Love seeing tax dollars spent on this!
I wonder what would have happened if we kept our eyes on the compound, and solely notified the Pakistani Military about where Osama was – then If, for some reason, Osama left in a scrambling hurry, we'd conclude that Pakistan is, in fact, double crossing us, and assassinate Osama while he was fleeing.
Granted, it would possibly have lead to another war, but it would have put all the cards on the table.
By that logic the US is behind the wikileaks intelligence drops. All it takes is one bad apple. (don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's a *lot* more than one in Pakistan, but you get the point)
OBL being tipped wouldn't necessarily mean the entire Pak military was double-crossing us, it would only take a few people within their Military or Intelligence forces to leak that sort of information. Since we already know that some parts of Pak's Mil and Intel are playing for the other team, we'd learn something we already know at the expense of an opportunity to nail Bin Laden. No thanks.
yeah, great idea, getting into another war a muslim country: an even larger, nuclear armed country with serious paranoia, and that borders China (just in case the Chinese wanted to get involved).
Also, would you trust the Pakistani's to turn over all the computers and documents that we got?
Everybody informed, has been knowing for long that Pakistan is in fact double crossing us – there IS no doubt!
I don't remember whether it was you guys or another blog I follow that posted a story a few weeks back about EA-18G Growlers being able to upload viruses into enemy computer networks. If we have that capability, could this drone then be the delivery system for the STUXNET virus?
I read "free election lasers" …lol
Airborne jammers are _not_ viruses as they don't run software on the enemies devices. Simply put, they mask the enemy radar systems return signals either by transmitting a high power signal to cover the fainter real signals, or by transmitting fake return signals, which are hard for the radar to distinguish from the real return (or a combination of both). They function in a fundamentally different way and you are doing everyone a disfavor calling them viruses.
IMHO all this talk about beaming viruses with an aesa is nonsense caused by excessive dumbing down and vagueness in the purposefully ambiguous electronic warfare media releases by the DoD. IIRC, this claim first appeared after an official answered "That could be the case." to a reporter's question about the possibility.
I will spare you the wall of text it'd take for me to go into the details why I think this is going to be very hard against an opponent using even basic protection methods like commercially available encryption and smart communications security procedures.
I do understand the difference between radar/communications jamming and virus uploading. I was suggesting that, in addition to the UAV's jamming capability, it could use its powerful electronic transmission capability along with its ability to enter enemy airspace undetected, to upload the virus when it was in Iranian airspace, if it ever was. Because the virus operates like a worm, it would only have to be uploaded once in order to infect an enemy computer network.
I believed that it played a big role in during the mission but the troops that carried out the mission deserves the credit they did a fantastic job I am a 32 year military vet and I was glad to serve so all I say is God bless the president and God bless America.
We never should have announced that we got OBL or the hard drives. Instead, we should have announced that we attacked a suspected terrorist site and due to mechanical failure had to abort the mission. Imagine the electronic traffic that could have been monitored while the terrorist network frantically communicated that OBL was missing.
I feel that both the CIA and ISI of Pakistan knew where Obama was hiding for quite some time and other factors decided the timing of the raid. It is inconceivable that the five aircraft could have penetrated so far into Pakistan without being spotted whatever the high tech involved. The Pakistani army did nothing to interfere with the raid but it immediately cordoned off the area once it was over this too is a telltale sign. Pakistan top brass were almost certainly in the know about the operation and provided various kinds of support. However, given the sensitive nature of the operation it is politically prudent for the Pakistani rulers to deny that they had any knowledge of it and for the USA also to endorse this.