Helicopter Anon here with some thoughts. (QRV) submitted 18 hours ago by 3022857? So in the late 90s and early 0's I was actively involved with military helicopters in quite a few ways. Yes, my info is dated and things may have changed but I doubt it. I watched the LA videos and many many things were strange. When I was actively involved with Helo ops nothing like this would have EVER EVER EVER been done for training. ZERO chance and the following is why I feel this so strongly. First, the helos in this video. The vid mentions ARMY helos. This is important. Different services use different configurations of the H-60 helo. Now, a standard army troop transport bird will be a pretty basic machine. It will not have ESSS, it will not have FLIR, it will not have a REFUEL PROBE and the accompanying internal fuel tanks. These machines in their basic config are kinda like a flying heavy-duty pickup truck with a stake bed. Relatively light weight with a big cargo capacity and a moderate range with the given fuel load. The more advanced versions, like were seen in this vid are NOT the normal H-60 army version. Instead they appear to be an HH60-G configuration (i could be wrong on that but it is close). This beast will have the following additional stuff. Refuel probe and extra internal fuel tanks. FLIR (the little bump thing about the size of a basket ball sticking out below the cockpit) etc. They may have one of those rescue winch thingys that they can lift and lower people on as well. You can see this in the video. This is important because it means a few things. First this is NOT normal army. This equipment is almost certainly the purview of Army special forces. It COULD be Air Force CSAR as well but this is unlikely as that is a pretty small group of people and there are only maybe 50 AF CSAR blackhawks ever. Today I think they are mostly replaced with that V22 thing that killed all those pilots in the 80s and 90s. 90% sure this is ARMY SPECIAL FORCES. I never ever saw that description anywhere at all. It is important. It means there was a lot more going on here than meets the eye. Also I think the little guys were OH58s (?not sure) Those are called Killer Eggs. For those to be flown between buildings is kinda not a big deal. They are highly maneuverable and have many small rotors giving them a small profile. That blackhawk pilot though probably was making diamonds with his butthole going into a LZ that small tbh. Hell, there are standing bans for ALL flight ops "between shit" For instance, if there is a canyon... like, for instance, THE GRAND CANYON... there are standing orders that pilots may never ever fly below the top of the canyon. They can fly OVER it but can never descend into the canyon below the rim of it unless it is mission essential (like in a CSAR LIVE MISSION). Same with stuff like mountain canyons. This is for many reasons but wind and debris, birds, and simple human error is much of the reason. So think about the SIZE of the grand canyon and think about the size of the gap between these buildings. See what I mean? Next, on the actual location of the operation. NEVER EVER EVER would this happen for training. never. never ever... get the picture. You want to know a 1 star general's greatest nightmare? It would be a stupid training OP happening where one if his aircraft killed a whole lot of civilians FOR NO REASON. Let that sink in... There was no reason to do a complex and dangerous live training op in the middle of a major city with civilians living and working in the area. Hell some drunk nigger on a balcony tossing an empty bottle over a railing into those rotor blades could cause a disastrous crash and dozens of deaths and bad press for a DECADE. How likely do you think the Generals would be to take such personal risk and career risk when they could simply say "I command you to do this training op at a proper remote facility with building mock-ups out on a training range somewhere..." and have ZERO risk. I guarantee you 101% that this was LIVE MILITARY OPS and not training. There is zero chance this was training. This was live ops.