Why Stealth Black Hawks Weren’t Used For Maduro Capture Mission
By all accounts so far, the planning and preparations for the operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro mirrored, to a degree, that of the raid that led to the death of Al Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden. However, one asset that featured prominently in the Bin Laden mission looks to have been notably absent in the force that descended on Caracas over the weekend: stealthy Black Hawk helicopters. There are clear reasons why this was not the case, but it also prompts questions about the current status of those helicopters and possible successor platforms.
Videos shot from the ground during the mission to capture Maduro, as well as his wife, dubbed Operation Absolute Resolve, show typical special operations MH-60 Black Hawks and MH-47 Chinooks belonging to the U.S. Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), better known as the Night Stalkers. Some of the MH-60s were in a unique armed configuration, called the Direct Action Penetrator (DAP), which you can read more about here.
The 160th SOAR’s publicly acknowledged helicopter fleets also include AH-6 and MH-6 Little Birds, which do not appear to have been present during the operation. There has been no confirmation of any other helicopters taking part directly in the operation to snatch Maduro this past weekend.
Stealth Hawk Status
The stealthy Black Hawks used during the Bin Laden raid belong to an adjacent highly classified realm of special operations aviation, with units that have been known by various names over the years, like the Flight Concepts Division (FCD) and now the Aviation Technology Office (ATO). The origins of the ‘Stealth Hawk’ concept itself trace back to the 1970s.
Back in 2020, TWZ published what still looks to be the only known picture of a Black Hawk variant in a stealthy configuration, or at least mocked up to reflect one. We will come back to all of this later on.
The current status of the U.S. military’s Stealth Hawk fleet is unknown. The two examples employed during the Bin Laden raid have been described as effectively experimental, exotic in their outward appearance, and as having been pulled out of storage at Area 51 for that operation.
In his 2015 book on the secretive U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Relentless Strike, author Sean Naylor wrote:
“The stealth Black Hawk gained almost mythical status, like a unicorn. ‘I remember first hearing about it … in 2000 to 2001,’ said a Delta source. The program quickly gained traction. ‘I remember in 2004 hearing that it was a line item in the budget,’ he said. Knowledge of the special access program was on a strictly need-to-know basis, and hardly anyone needed to know. Shortly thereafter the 160th regimental leadership came looking to 1st Battalion—the core unit of Task Force Brown—for two crews to go down to Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, and start training on the new helicopters. In the end, one crew went after a couple of pilots volunteered. ‘I never saw them again,’ said a 160th source. ‘They’d be permanently assigned out there.’ The program became more formalized. The aircraft were based at Nellis [actually Area 51], but 160th crews trained on them at some of the military’s other vast landholdings in the Southwest: Area 51; China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station in California; and Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona. U.S. Special Operations Command planned to create a fleet of four and make them the centerpiece of a new covered aviation unit in Nevada. By 2011 Special Operations Command had canceled that plan, but the first two stealth helicopters still existed and certain 1st Battalion crews would rotate down to Nellis to train on them.”
TWZ cannot independently confirm the content in Naylor’s book.
Past reports had said the unique features of the versions employed in 2011 made them challenging to fly, to begin with, and that the decision to use them at all was made reluctantly based on other operational considerations. There are claims that then-President Barack Obama was unaware that they even existed before the mission planning was well underway. One of the helicopters was lost during the mission, and it is thought that only two existed prior to it.
Rob O’Neill reveals the story of secret helicopters that even the President didn’t know about
A much improved iteration of the Stealth Hawk concept, sometimes called Ghost Hawks (not to be confused with the Air Force’s unrelated HH-60Us that are also sometimes referred to by that name) or ‘Jedi Rides,’ is said to have emerged after the Bin Laden raid. How many total variations may have been developed is not known.
The extent to which Stealth Hawks of any type have been employed operationally in the past is another unknown. In Relentless Strike, Naylor wrote that newer versions of these helicopters had been used during a failed attempt to rescue American and other hostages from ISIS in Syria in 2014.
Last year, The New York Times reported that unspecified “stealth rotary aircraft” were part of a quick reaction force embarked on U.S. Navy ships positioned somewhere in the vicinity of North Korea during a botched clandestine mission in that country in 2019. The story does not explicitly refer to them as Black Hawk variants or otherwise describe them. None of the backup forces were employed in the end, according to the Times‘ report, which remains very much unconfirmed overall.
There is also the reality that a helicopter matching this description has never been seen. If they existed in any sort of quantities, there would be a decent chance that they would be spotted, even in grainy videos, at some point, as they would need to train with operators. It’s possible that a small handful of more advanced Stealth Hawk types are operational, but are tightly contained to highly secure locales and training areas in order to remain hidden.
Whether or not stealth Black Hawks still exist in U.S. inventory, the underlying requirement for a rotary-wing aircraft able to get in and out of confined and otherwise complex locations, and do so with as low a possibility of detection as possible, would not have gone away, especially for supporting covert and clandestine special operations. TWZ has also previously delved in great detail into what is publicly known about U.S. military efforts to develop larger, stealthy, short and/or vertical takeoff and landing capable transport aircraft to support these same kinds of operations.
The Helicopters Of Absolute Resolve
The full force package used in Absolute Resolve included a large array of crewed and uncrewed fixed-wing aircraft, with a heavy emphasis on stealthy types, as well as naval assets off the coast. Other helicopters were used to support the mission, but we only know of the 160th SOAR MH-60s and MH-47s taking part in missions inside Venezuelan airspace. Approximately 200 special operators, led by the Army’s Delta Force, made up the ground component of the operation.
“As the night began, the helicopters took off with the extraction force, which included law enforcement officers, and began their flight into Venezuela at 100 feet above the water,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff U.S. Air Force Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine had said during a press conference on Saturday. “Those forces were protected by aircraft from the United States Marines, the United States Navy, the United States Air Force, and the Air National Guard. The force included F-22s, F-35s, F[/A]-18s, EA-18s, E-2s, B-1 bombers, and other support aircraft, as well as numerous remotely piloted drones.”
The drone component of the force is known to have included at least one, and possibly two, stealthy RQ-170 Sentinels. Some of those secretive uncrewed aircraft are also understood to have surveilled Bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in the lead-up to the raid in 2011, and to have been overhead while it occurred. This is just one of the parallels between that mission and Operation Absolute Resolve.
“Elite U.S. troops, including the Army’s Delta Force, created an exact replica of Maduro’s safe house and practiced how they would enter the strongly fortified residence. The CIA had a small team on the ground starting in August who were able to provide insight into Maduro’s pattern of life that made grabbing him seamless, according to one source familiar with the matter,” according to a report from Reuters. “Two other sources [said] … the intelligence agency also had an asset close to Maduro who would monitor his movements and was poised to pinpoint his exact location as the operation unfolded.”
“Because of the intelligence gathered by the [CIA] team, the United States knew where Mr. Maduro moved, what he ate and even what pets he kept,” The New York Times separately reported. “That information was critical to the ensuing military operation, a pre-dawn raid Saturday by elite Army Delta Force commandos, the riskiest U.S. military operation of its kind since members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in a safe house in Pakistan in 2011.”
Though largely absent during the operation to capture Maduro, we know that Venezuela’s air defenses were a major factor in the planning. TWZ had previously explored how the Venezuelan military’s air defense capabilities, while limited, could still present real threats.
“As the force began to approach Caracas, the Joint Air Component began dismantling and disabling the air defense systems in Venezuela, employing weapons to ensure the safe passage of the helicopters into the target area,” Gen. Caine had also said on Saturday. “The goal of our air component is, was, and always will be to protect the helicopters and the ground force and get them to the target and get them home.”
Broadly speaking, the extremely high-profile nature of Operation Absolute Resolve and risk calculus would certainly point to an environment where using a highly specialized asset like a Stealth Hawk, designed to be more survivable in higher-threat conditions, would be warranted. This is further underscored by the use of the RQ-170s, as well as stealthy F-22 and F-35 fighters, and EA-18G and EC-130H electronic warfare aircraft, as TWZ has previously noted.
At the same time, there are glaring reasons why the decision would have been made not to employ Stealth Hawks, or any other similar rotary wing platforms, if they even exist, during Operation Absolute Resolve.
For one, these would be extremely low-density assets with highly specialized capabilities. The U.S. government could easily be reluctant to expose them on any level, unless it is absolutely necessary. As already mentioned, the existence of operational stealthy Black Hawks only emerged after one of them went down, and not as a result of enemy fire, something that is always a potential risk. U.S. forces were not able to secure that crash site after the helicopter was partially demolished using explosives on the ground, and Pakistani authorities had custody of the wreckage for more than two weeks afterward. It was reported that China and possibly Russia got to examine the tail section and its radar-absorbent coating. This would have compromised the operational security around the design, at least to a degree.
CNN: Raid glitch reveals secret helicopter
Even more importantly, various specific aspects of Operation Absolute Resolve would have factored into the decision. It’s not surprising at all that larger MH-47s were included in the main body of a force used to bring 200 troops to the objective in Caracas. This is a remarkably large force to have to convey in an aerial assault into a tight area. MH-47s can carry many more operators than an MH-60. Even if the Stealth Hawks exist, there may not be enough of them to even come close to moving this number of troops, and a mixed force is out of the question. It’s all stealth or not, as one non-stealthy helicopter would give away the presence of the whole force just the same as ten of them.
The attack capabilities found on the 160th SOAR’s DAP-configured Black Hawks, which proved to be particularly valuable during Operation Absolute Resolve, would not be directly portable to a stealthy variation of the helicopter, either. The site Delta Force and others had to be delivered to was a full-on top military installation housing a man that the U.S. wanted in a fortress-like facility. It would be defended by regular troops and Maduro’s inner protective cadre, reportedly made up of specially trained Cuban operatives, dozens of whom were killed in the assault. So once again, unless Stealth Hawks could somehow provide the hard-hitting, fast-reacting support that a DAP could, they would be far more vulnerable on arrival than the helicopters that assaulted the Bin Laden residence. While his compound was not far from a major military academy, U.S. forces were not assaulting the military academy itself, nor was a top target for the U.S. housed at the academy during a military standoff. It also wasn’t a military base located in the capital of the country.
The Bin Laden mission focused on a non-military target that was not a point of interest in relation to Pakistan’s air defense network, the attention of which is centered on threats from India, not Afghanistan. That focus on the other direction helped the Stealth Hawks slip deep into the country from the west. Pakistan’s mountainous terrain also offered cover for the helicopters as they ingressed and egressed the area. This was not the case in the operation this past weekend, where Venezuela’s air defenses were heavily focused on threats emanating from the Caribbean across relatively open terrain. It’s still possible, if not likely, that the 160th made their initial assault in a roundabout way, from the south, sweeping behind the mountains that border Caracas in that direction, but they clearly flew over densely populated areas, at least on their way out.
In other words, the final destination in Caracas was a much tougher and more heavily defended objective in a country on high alert for a possible impending attack, and especially on the facility where Maduro slept.
The unique features found on Stealth Hawks could also add weight, and potentially create aerodynamic inefficiency, all of which could reduce their total payload capacity, too. Even during the Bin Laden raid, the accompanying backup quick reaction force rode in MH-47s.
If the 160th SOAR helicopter force required in-flight refueling, even as a contingency, for the Maduro snatch-and-grab mission, such a capability is likely lacking entirely on the Stealth Hawks, or at least it was on those used during the Bin Laden raid. Many MC-130J Commando II special operations tanker-transports were deployed for the operation, seemingly to refuel 160th SOAR, as well as other helicopters that were part of a contingency force.
Using stealthy types would have required more capability tradeoffs, as well. Night Stalker MH-60s are loaded down with sensors and defensive systems that protrude from their noses and other points along their fuselages. These systems, from electronic warfare capabilities to missile approach warning sensors to terrain following radar, give the helicopters every advantage — but stealth — to accomplish their mission. It is highly unlikely a Stealth Hawk would have anywhere near this same installation of capabilities, relying far more heavily on not being detected for survivability.
Top among these modifications, the 160th SOAR’s MH-60 and MH-47 helicopter fleets have openly received improvements to their already extensive self-protection suites in recent years. This includes new directional infrared countermeasures (DIRCM) systems, which have given the helicopters an important additional layer of defense, particularly against shoulder-fired heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles, also known as man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS). There is evidence that Venezuelan forces unsuccessfully employed MANPADS against the raiding force this weekend. The country was known to have thousands of these weapons, and stealth cannot hide from them.
Then there is the matter of it having been a moon-lit night on Saturday in and around Caracas, albeit one that was also partially overcast. The weather conditions did still make it easier to spot the incoming helicopters visually, as evidenced by the video footage captured by bystanders on the ground. This, in turn, would have drastically reduced the expected utility of stealthy features. As a general point, it should be stressed that stealth does not equal invisibility. Also, all of the unique avionics that the MH-60 and MH-47 have for navigating at very low levels in any weather may not exist on a Stealth Hawk for the aforementioned reasons, resulting in far less flexibility when it comes to operating in any weather in a high-threat area. This is especially important if the mission is heavily dictated by real-time intelligence, which the mission into Venezuela clearly was.
The need to employ the Stealth Hawks in the Bin Laden raid also notably reflects considerations that did not have to be taken into account during Operation Absolute Resolve. The mission to Abbottabad was launched without the cognizance or acquiescence of Pakistani authorities, but it was also not targeting that government directly. Pakistan’s air defenses and other military assets were very explicitly left untouched despite clear risks of a confrontation.
In contrast, the U.S. had prepared for dismantling Venezuela’s air defenses for months prior to the operation, and did just that in order to allow the helicopters to get in and out safely. If stealth helicopters were to have been used, the second the shooting starts at their destination, their risk of being taken down would go up exponentially without a major SEAD/DEAD effort, which would have also included targeted cyber and electronic warfare attacks. And such an effort executed preemptively would also give away the possibility of their presence. Once again, it was just a different type of target, and the circumstances surrounding the mission were very different both politically and tactically.
Altogether, there are far more reasons why Stealth Hawks or similar platforms were absent from Operation Absolute Resolve than not. And once again, this is all predicated on the idea that these kinds of aircraft even exist in relevant numbers at all, which we cannot say is a fact conclusively.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com
