Night Stalker Research Paper

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The Army’s Special Operations Aviation Regiment’s or SOAR, known as Night Stalkers, “a unit that is even more covert than the SEAL teams. The Night Stalkers have been practicing and perfecting nighttime air assault missions for many years.” SOAR has the main mission of providing quick and reliable aviation support to all SOF units. SOAR is headquartered at Fort Campbell, Kentucky and is made of four different battalions. 1st and 2nd Battalions are based out of Fort Campbell. 3rd Battalion is located at Hunter Army Airfield, Georgia. The 4th Battalion is based out of Fort Lewis, Washington. There are around 3,000 soldiers who are the Army’s best pilots that operate “helicopter units including observation, transportation and attack aircraft. …show more content…

Neptune Spear in 2011 was the operation that killed Osama bin Laden where Navy SEALs were flown by SOAR aviators at nighttime in complete darkness. SOAR has the ability to fly in the dark because “Night Stalker pilots are masters of flying ‘contour’ at night, without lights. This is another way to become invisible to both radar and ground observers.” The pilots in two stealth Black Hawks flew the SEALs from Jalalabad Airfield to Pakistan where bin Laden’s compound was located. Chinooks were on standby with SEALs in two different locations in case something went wrong with the mission. The time it took the Black Hawks to get from Jalalabad to the compound was an hour and a half. While one of the Black Hawks was landing outside the compound the other helicopter hit a wall inside the compound causing it to crash. However, the pilot managed to land the helicopter safely and no one got hurt. The raid was completed quickly and the SEALs blew up the Black Hawk that was down to make sure equipment and information could not be used. A back up Chinook had to come and pick up the remaining unit with bid Laden’s body and all the items gathered for intelligence. SOAR was a part of one of the biggest SOF operations ever conducted that killed the man behind the 9/11 terror

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