@crankthatskunk
There are two perspectives to consider in this matter (POLITICAL and TECHNOLOGICAL).
POLITICAL
I am not convinced that Pakistan Army, or any Pakistani agency, is
complicit in this operation by Americans (i.e. Operation Neptune Spear). The Americans bear sole responsibility for embarrassing Pakistan in this matter. The one individual who was found to be
complicit in this matter is in jail (i.e. Dr. Shakil Afridi); his punishment would be utterly pointless otherwise.
Pakistani establishment will never accommodate a foreign power to this extent and fashion in any operation. Pakistani establishment never gave permission to US to operate over Pakistani airspace
unchecked, a LINE was/is drawn in this matter and US is supposed to respect Pakistan's sovereignty. Pakistani establishment would not want India (and to a lesser extent, Iran) to feel emboldened by such accommodations and attempt their own transgresses which each have anyways.
But being a 'superpower' makes ONE
arrogant and
bold by virtue of having qualitative and quantitative supremacy over its subjects - Pakistan isn't the first country to have its airspace violated by Americans and won't be the last - Americans have a history of violating airspace of multiple countries including Iran and DPRK. American surveillance capabilities and infiltration techniques almost border science fiction in terms of capabilities - few people understand the breath of these capabilities even on an academic level let alone on an intimate level. I am just being realistic here.
TECHNOLOGICAL
Narrowing down the focus:
Which backup helicopter was that!!
Do you have any evidence to support that another helicopter entered Abbotabad!!
Have you seen the "Destroyed helicopter's pictures in the compound!! The walls and ground all around was black, and the pieces of the helicopter went over a Km radius. Some destruction it was.
Also remember, the backups were "Chinooks". And if you know Chinooks they would wake up the whole neighbourhood, like they did in Kala Dacca. Read and listen to the witnesses testimony if you can find any videos of the interviews still allowed on Youtube.
Refer back to this post:
https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/obl-...ttack-by-paf-f-16.657334/page-5#post-12155081
- to understand that these were not ordinary Chinooks.
[1] Some information about the movements of helicopters inside Pakistan
The third and fourth Chinooks were each outfitted with a pair of M134 Miniguns. They followed the Black Hawks' initial flight path but landed at a predetermined point on a dry riverbed in a wide, unpopulated valley in northwest Pakistan. The nearest house was half a mile away. On the ground, the copters' rotors were kept whirring while operatives monitored the surrounding hills for encroaching Pakistani helicopters or fighter jets. One of the Chinooks was carrying fuel bladders, in case the other aircraft needed to refill their tanks.
Meanwhile, the two Black Hawks were quickly approaching Abbottabad from the northwest, hiding behind the mountains on the northernmost edge of the city. Then the pilots banked right and went south along a ridge that marks Abbottabad's eastern perimeter. When those hills tapered off, the pilots curled right again, toward the city center, and made their final approach.
[2] The crash
During the next four minutes, the interior of the Black Hawks rustled alive with the metallic cough of rounds being chambered. Mark, a master chief petty officer and the ranking noncommissioned officer on the operation, crouched on one knee beside the open door of the lead helicopter. He and the eleven other SEALs on "helo one," who were wearing gloves and had on night-vision goggles, were preparing to fast-rope into bin Laden's yard. They waited for the crew chief to give the signal to throw the rope. But, as the pilot passed over the compound, pulled into a high hover, and began lowering the aircraft, he felt the Black Hawk getting away from him. He sensed that they were going to crash.
When the helicopter began getting away from the pilot, he pulled back on the cyclic, which controls the pitch of the rotor blades, only to find the aircraft unresponsive. The high walls of the compound and the warm temperatures had caused the Black Hawk to descend inside its own rotor wash—a hazardous aerodynamic situation known as "settling with power." In North Carolina, this potential problem had not become apparent, because the chain-link fencing used in rehearsals had allowed air to flow freely. A former helicopter pilot with extensive special-operations experience said of the pilot’s situation, "It's pretty spooky—I've been in it myself. The only way to get out of it is to push the cyclic forward and fly out of this vertical silo you're dropping through. That solution requires altitude. If you're settling with power at two thousand feet, you’ve got plenty of time to recover. If you’re settling with power at fifty feet, you’re going to hit the ground."
The pilot scrapped the plan to fast-rope and focussed on getting the aircraft down. He aimed for an animal pen in the western section of the compound. The SEALs on board braced themselves as the tail rotor swung around, scraping the security wall. The pilot jammed the nose forward to drive it into the dirt and prevent his aircraft from rolling onto its side. Cows, chickens, and rabbits scurried. With the Black Hawk pitched at a forty-five-degree angle astride the wall, the crew sent a distress call to the idling Chinooks.
James and the SEALs in helo two watched all this while hovering over the compound's northeast corner. The second pilot, unsure whether his colleagues were taking fire or experiencing mechanical problems, ditched his plan to hover over the roof. Instead, he landed in a grassy field across the street from the house.
[3] The crashed helicopter is destroyed by Americans moments before departure from Abbottabad
When the rescue Chinook eventually arrived, a medic stepped out and knelt over the corpse. He injected a needle into bin Laden's body and extracted two bone-marrow samples. More DNA was taken with swabs. One of the bone-marrow samples went into the Black Hawk. The other went into the Chinook, along with bin Laden's body. Next, the SEALs needed to destroy the damaged Black Hawk. The pilot, armed with a hammer that he kept for such situations, smashed the instrument panel, the radio, and the other classified fixtures inside the cockpit. Then the demolition unit took over. They placed explosives near the avionics system, the communications gear, the engine, and the rotor head. "You're not going to hide the fact that it's a helicopter,” the special-operations officer said. “But you want to make it unusable.” The SEALs placed extra C-4 charges under the carriage, rolled thermite grenades inside the copter’s body, and then backed up.
Helo one burst into flames while the demolition team boarded the Chinook. The women and children, who were being left behind for the Pakistani authorities, looked puzzled, scared, and shocked as they watched the SEALs board the helicopters. Amal, bin Laden's wife, continued her harangue. Then, as a giant fire burned inside the compound walls, the Americans flew away.
[1][2][3] taken from the following comprehensive account:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/08/08/getting-bin-laden
Secondly, what you are doing is that increasing the humiliation for PA that despite the news outlets knowing that the raid is underway, they allowed this operation to lasted for over an hour without response. And PAF for over two hours if you take in to account the helicopters leaving Pakistan's airspace.
Come on mate, don't accept whatever is given to you.
Open your eyes and look at the evidence rather than toeing a certain narrative.
Sir,
WE are having this conversation with information accessible in the Public domain (for FREE). I am sure that many have studied relevant content by now. Even if this discussion is censored on PDF, can WE fool rest of the world? WE would be creating an echo-chamber for ourselves instead. PDF management have absolute control of this domain; I cannot do anything here without their cooperation.
INTENT behind this discourse is NOT to embarrass any Pakistani institution. I am rather giving Pakistan security forces the benefit of doubt in this saga. My position is very clear: WE should not accuse Kiyani, Pasha, or any other officer for being complicit in this matter in the absence of solid evidence. Hersh's account is actually damaging to Pakistan's image in retrospect. This is a solid case of American excesses inside Pakistan
but WE completely failed to get the memo; many in Pakistan were too busy accusing each other and politicizing this matter as usual. To the credit of Kiyani - South Waziristan was
combed under his watch. Dr. Shakil Afridi is a well-known facilitator in personal capacity. Additional lesser known facilitators are:
Haqqani precisely wrote, "Friends I made from the Obama campaign were able to ask, three years later, as National Security Council officials, for help in stationing U.S. Special Operations and intelligence personnel on the ground in Pakistan. I brought the request directly to Pakistan’s civilian leaders, who approved. Although the United States kept us officially out of the loop about the operation, these locally stationed Americans proved invaluable when Obama decided to send in Navy SEAL Team 6 without notifying Pakistan."
Link:
https://www.geo.tv/latest/140225-Ab...t-made-public-over-national-security-concerns
Coming back to the military operation in question:-
Pakistani news outlets had no clue what was happening at the time.
Aside from one IT consultant who unwittingly live-tweeted the bin Laden raid, reports from Pakistani sources of a crashed helicopter were the first evidence that something was going down in Abbottabad. "According to eyewitnesses, a low-flying helicopter crashed in a populated area, and as a result two houses were engulfed in flames,” a Pakistani news service reported.
One local news agency claimed the downed bird was Pakistani. It wasn't until several hours later that U.S. government sources clarified the initial stories. "We lost one helicopter due to mechanical failure," a senior U.S. official said. "The aircraft was destroyed by the crew, and the assault force and crew members boarded the remaining aircraft to exit the compound."
Link:
https://www.wired.com/2011/05/aviation-geeks-scramble-to-i-d-osama-raids-mystery-copter/
I am giving Pakistani security forces the benefit of doubt in this matter in good faith to say the least. I am not the one who is alleging complicity of the
former COAS Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and
former ISI directorate Ahmad Shuja Pasha in this matter. American journalist Seymour Hersh is responsible for spreading these rumors in his book, and his sources of information are dubious and unreliable. Even Husain Haqqani (Pakistan's ambassador to USA under the tenure of PPP-led GOP) dismissed Hersh's account:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/05/13/what-pakistan-knew-about-the-bin-laden-raid-seymour-hersh/
Solid rebuttal to Hersh's account in this link:
https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bin-laden
Major General Asif Ghafoor also commented on this matter in 2019:
https://fp.brecorder.com/2019/09/20190905515518/
"In search of Osama bin Laden, it was Pakistan which traced the first call and shared a detailed intelligence with the US as the first lead to trace his [OBL] location. Instead of a joint operation, the US resorted to a unilateral operation and ditched Pakistan."
Following is a DECLASSIFIED press briefing of American administration:
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.go...inistration-officials-killing-osama-bin-laden
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We shared our intelligence on this bin Laden compound with no other country, including Pakistan. That was for one reason and one reason alone: We believed it was essential to the security of the operation and our personnel. In fact, only a very small group of people inside our own government knew of this operation in advance.
Shortly after the raid, U.S. officials contacted senior Pakistani leaders to brief them on the intent and the results of the raid. We have also contacted a number of our close allies and partners throughout the world.
Sine 9/11, the United States has made it clear to Pakistan that we would pursue bin Laden wherever he might be. Pakistan has long understood that we are at war with al Qaeda. The United States had a legal and moral obligation to act on the information it had.
And let me emphasize that great care was taken to ensure operational success, minimize the possibility of non-combatant casualties, and to adhere to American and international law in carrying out the mission.
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It does not make sense to consider using radar-evading stealthy articles in a
FACILITATED raid. Why not consider using standard articles in this scenario? If something goes wrong, loss of a standard article is acceptable.
FYI:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...shed-u-s-stealth-copter-idUSTRE77D2BT20110814
I am absolutely sure that the Chinese weren't considered in this
alleged agreement between US and Pakistan. The Chinese are not allowed to inspect F-16s up close let alone these type of articles.
Those radar-evading stealthy articles are
off-limits to much of the world including friendly countries from inspection. You do not understand this.
I am, however, willing to consider the possibility, that if one of the helicopters was indeed spotted and locked upon by one of the PAF F-16s, might not have gotten clearance.
@MastanKhan , if Kiyani and Zardari were not overboard, this mission was as successful as the rescue mission in Iran.
We all know what happened in Iran few decades ago.
Do you always
recall FAILURES in history? What about SUCCESS STORIES?
In Iraq:
https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/obl-...ttack-by-paf-f-16.657334/page-3#post-12154909
In Syria:
https://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/book-reveals-new-details-about-stealth-black-hawks-used-1734205517
Things are in motion and technologies are improving over time. Tactics are also refined over time.
Pakistan have its share of successes and failures in its conflicts much like other countries. Why do WE shy away from having a meaningful discourse on our failures? Do they make us less of a nation? This is an enforced cultural deficiency, and I am not sure how this is helpful to the society at large. WE are being groomed to have unrealistic expectations from our armed forces and other institutions for different ends - I am not sure how this is helpful.
If WE continue to censor our failures, WE will never learn from our mistakes or draw informed conclusions from relevant discourses. Academic/Scientific discourses are invaluable pools of information to draw from and learn.
Nevertheless, this is my last response in this thread. I apologize for hurting sentiments of anybody in this discourse. This wasn't my intention.
