So it wasn’t just me…I was looking at the Reuters images in the Wall Street Journal of the OBL compound this morning and being a bit of a train spotter wondered about the angle that this image of wreckage from what was allegedly an SO Blackhawk was taken from…had a lot on today and just figured that maybe it was some sort of noise or signature reduction shroud around the rotor and went back to work. But it’s been niggling away all day and I was glad to see this Wired article asking the same questions.

My second guess was that it might be one of the trial RAH-66 Comanches out into SO service but Comanche, from memory, has a fenestrom enclosed tail rotor like Gazelle and Blue Thunder…hmmm, this will be interesting to watch…and maybe it leads towards a better explanation of why the helicopter crashed in the first place (experimental and or prototype) and b. why it was blown during the raid and not simply left for recovery post-raid while Pakistan taps dances around the big question of who knew?

I guess the design engineers at Italeri and Testors will be gearing up to get an extrapolated full version into the market before Christmas, noting their previous experience reverse engineering stealth design…or maybe something in paper…

It would be so great to think that something cool, new and nice was part of this operation…it all just adds to the almost fairy tale feel of the whole story, regardless of how poorly it is being handled by the White House…to paraphrase Princess Leia “When you went in there, did you have a plan for getting the information out?” Some interesting speculation over at Secret Projects