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Citat:Stealth helicopters refuelled in Pakistan
May 15, 2011
By Rameeza Majid Nizami
LAHORE: Sources disclose that the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) investigative commission formed on the orders of Air Chief Rao Qamar Suleman is in the final stages of compiling its report of the investigation of the Abbottabad incident. The report will contain information gathered as a result of the in-house investigation, which has revealed that all PAF radar systems and technical monitoring assets were fully functional on May 2 and no lapses of vigilance occurred that night on the part of the PAF.
The report details the sequence of events on the night of the incident. Starting with a call from the Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who informed the Air Chief of the Abbottabad incident over the phone at seven minutes past two in the morning (2:07 am). At twenty-five minutes past two (2:25 am), ie 18 minutes later, the PAF jets were present over Abbottabad, but by this time the American operation had been completed.
The report states that the latest in stealth technology was used by the choppers employed in the raid. Helicopters equipped with such technology are undetectable by any radar in the world. The most modern radar system in Russian technology, which is the IR13, is also powerless to detect stealth equipment helicopters, it has been revealed. No country in the world, including Pakistan, possesses or has as yet discovered a method of beating this technology by radar.
Besides the use of stealth machines, the Americans also went unobserved because of the hilly passages they chose as their route to Abbottabad. Traversing deliberately through mountainous terrain, the distance travelled by the American stealth helicopters from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, to Abbottabad was almost 250 km, instead of the usual 195 km on a standard flight path, reads the report.
As the engines of these helicopters were intended to remain running even while the Navy Seals carried out their operation in Abbottabad, it was necessary for them to have refuelled at least once, other than the fact that stealth technology helicopters are not capable of flying long distances without refuelling. Although able to refuel mid-flight, the helicopters carrying Seal Team 6 were most probably refuelled after having landed on Pakistani soil, due to the difficulty of refuelling in the air in the mountainous territory they chose to travel through.
Source: The Nation
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