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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).
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.