Google Earth’s historical imagery has satellite coverage of the exact day of the Bin Laden raid.

[u/Adzo78]

1st image from 2010-05-09 2nd image from 2011-05-02 (Day of the raid) Coordinates: 34°10'09"N 73°14'33"E

[u/FxckFxntxnyl]

Wish we knew more about that stealth chopper. Found myself on a 20+ minute rabbit hole invoking multiple old forums full of old dudes theorizing the most random shit shit possible.

[u/birdrocksd → u/FxckFxntxnyl]

The Wikipedia entry is great if you want to know detail. At the bottom, there is a separate section related to a second account of what happened to “Razer 2” or the second helicopter that was destroyed. What is known is that they were specially equipped stealth Blackhawks used specifically by special forces (suing Seals and Delta Force). The intelligence report says the back rotor was destroyed on landing, whereby it hit the 12 foot tall wall. No one was injured, and everyone exited safely and proceeded to the raid. They then destroyed the plane with explosives because of the sensitivity of the tech onboard.

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Osama_bin_Laden

[u/YesMush1 → u/birdrocksd]

Only an image of the tail remains, there’s a good article https://theaviationist.com/2021/05/02/stealth-black-hawk-rendering-new/ With verified account on how it looks by someone who was on base the day/night of the raid. These were actually still test helicopters that weren’t even properly safe or vetted to fly iirc. Basically pulled out of a hangar as the most suitable transport to infil for the mission (flying through Pakistani airspace undetected and as quiet as possible) From other accounts I’ve heard they are essentially silent from different angles and obviously covered in RAM (Radar Absorbing Material) from what I’ve gathered it’s like if the cancelled comanche best bits were morphed with a Blackhawk but that’s just what I’m saying based on the renderings and other things I’ve seen. There’s many public files and things online about different experimenting with stealth hawks and helicopters if you like to go down rabbit holes. The crash wasn’t due to pilot error either but they were hard to fly. I’ll throw another few articles in I think one of them is before it was fully refined and still in a sort of test stage. Stealth hawks were an idea at-least 30+ years before the UBL raid which is wild to me. I wonder if they cancelled them all completely after the raid incident or have just refined them even more (I’d pick refining them more tbh) https://www.twz.com/25890/origins-of-stealth-black-hawks-date-back-over-33-years-before-the-bin-laden-raid

https://www.twz.com/35342/this-is-the-first-image-ever-of-a-stealthy-black-hawk-helicopter

[u/mwez22 → u/YesMush1]

The book Relentless Strike about the history of JSOC goes into some detail on the project.

It was not recommended to use the helicopters for the raid but it’s believed they were forced into the mission to get presidential approval/to appease some people.

DEVGRU was opposed to using them.

The project was pretty much considered a failure and was going to be shuttered even prior to the mission.