Photo Pryor Field Airport Authority
An American special forces helicopter with distinctive paintwork was spotted at a civilian airport. The equipment in question is an MM60L Black Hawk operated by the wellknown 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers, in Portuguese.
This regiment of the American Army is responsible for transporting the special forces of all American armed forces and is known for its lowaltitude night flights. His most famous operations are the Grenada invasion, the invasion of Panama and, above all, Operation Just Cause (famous in the film “Black Hawk Down”) as well as the capture of Osama BinLaden in Operation Spear of Neptune.
The latter used a Black Hawk with several modifications to reduce the radar signature. One of the highlights of the mission was that one of these aircraft had to be blown up at the end of the mission after a collision while landing.
Since it is the elite rotary wing aircraft in the USA, the “160th” is ultimately a unit that receives new equipment first. In this context, the MM60L appeared in blue color at Pryor Airport in northern Alabama.
The aircraft is equipped with new sensors in the nose, but is particularly notable for its allblue paint job, which has never been used by the US military. According to the portal The rideThe painting may be related to the 160th’s naval operations, primarily in collaboration with the American Navy Seals and the Marine Raiders.
At the same time, theories have emerged that this painting is intended to resemble Chinese helicopters, reinforcing the type of covert operations the regiment has always carried out. On the other hand, flying at a civilian airport with this new livery and equipment was not an oversight or a “leak”, as the unit is quite discreet when it wants to be, as seen with Neptune’s Lance, where the modifications only became known because of the Black Hawk accident.