Aviation Geeks Scramble to ID bin Laden Raid’s Mystery Copter

The May 2 raid on Osama bin Laden’s luxury compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, had it all: painstaking intelligence-gathering, a heroic Navy SEAL assault team, satellite and drone surveillance, and biometric forensics.

And now this: a possible super-secret, stealthy helicopter, unknown to the wider world before one crashed during the assault.

Aviation specialists are picking apart pixel-by-pixel the dozen-or-so photos of the copter that have appeared online. They’re assembling digital mock-ups of the aircraft and comparing them to lost stealth designs of the 1980s and ’90s. Speculation abounds, and so far no one from the government is commenting. But depending on what the copter turns out to be, it could shed new light on everything from the abilities of U.S. commandos to the relationship between the United States and Pakistan.

Opinions about the copter seem to fall into three basic camps. The most-cautious observers believe the wreckage is from a conventional chopper that got so badly mangled during the crash that it became unrecognizable. In the center, there are those who think the helicopter is an Army MH-60 Blackhawk tweaked to make it quieter and more stealthy. On the fringes, the true believers are talking about a brand-new, radar-evading helicopter design.

Considering the proliferation of bewildering photos from the crash site, the conservative viewpoint seems unlikely. Equally, the notion of a brand-new “black” helicopter seems far-fetched, especially considering the Army’s long history of heavily modifying existing rotorcraft for secret missions.

That leaves an upgraded, stealth-optimized MH-60 as the most likely candidate — a conclusion that jibes with CIA director Leon Panetta’s assertion Tuesday that the 25-man strike team was “carried in two Blackhawk helicopters that went in.”

A story by ace reporter Sean Naylor in Army Times, published just minutes after the initial version of this post, supports this conclusion. Naylor quotes a retired Special Forces aviator saying the special Blackhawk, modified by Lockheed Martin, has “hard edges, sort of like an … F-117″ stealth fighter from the same company.

According to a source who spoke to our own Spencer Ackerman, the modifications might have taken place with the help of a mysterious Army organization called the “Technology Applications Program Office,” located at Fort Eustis, Virginia. The rumored nickname? Airwolf. That’s right, like the cheesy ‘80 TV show. …

via Aviation Geeks Scramble to ID bin Laden Raid’s Mystery Copter | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Mummified Body of Cult B-Movie Actress Found

Posted by bluemana on May 4, 2011

This is creepy as well as tragic. Andrew Blankstein writes in the LA Times:

Vickers Yvette Vickers, an early Playboy playmate whose credits as a B-movie actress included such cult films as “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches,” was found dead last week at her Benedict Canyon home. Her body appears to have gone undiscovered for months, police said.

Vickers, 82, had not been seen for a long time. A neighbor discovered her body in an upstairs room of her Westwanda Drive home on April 27. Its mummified state suggests she could have been dead for close to a year, police said.

The official cause of death will by determined by the Los Angeles county coroner’s office, but police said they saw no sign of foul play.

Vickers had lived in the 1920s-era stone and wood home for decades, and it served as the background for some of her famous modeling pictures. But over time it had become dilapidated, exposed in some places to the elements.

via Mummified Body of Cult B-Movie Actress Found | Disinformation.

Mystery ‘UFO’ lights spotted over Russia shock masses

YouTube – Mystery ‘UFO’ lights spotted over Russia shock masses.

They predicted that a UFO would appear in the skies over Russia on Wednesday night — and sure enough, they were right. In this case, however, “they” weren’t flying-saucer fans or doomsday soothsayers, but rather military space experts who knew that the scheduled launch of Russia’s Meridian 4 military communication satellite would put on a show.

The Soyuz rocket’s successful liftoff from northern Russia’s Plesetsk Cosmodrome was followed by the separation of strap-on boosters and the Fregat upper stage, producing the magnificent light show you can see in the Russia Today video above. In another YouTube video, observers marvel at the scene and ask “What’s that!?” (in Russian). More videos can be seen here, and here, and especially here. Don’t miss this sequence of images tracing each step of the ascent.

via MSNBC

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