China's New Stealth Helicopter Exists Thanks To Osama Bin Laden - Here's Why

Military helicopters are fast, noisy machines, so they've never been what you might call "stealthy." Despite this, the United States managed to reconfigure a small number of UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters with stealth capabilities, for use by U.S. Special Operations Command. The choppers were highly secretive until 2011, when the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team Six raided a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama Bin Laden.

This is important because it seems that the People's Republic of China now has its own stealth helicopters, and it appears that the Bin Laden raid is the reason why. When the SEALs raided Bin Laden's compound during Operation Neptune Spear, they weren't able to lift off with one of the two stealth choppers due to a tail rotor mishap and had to leave it behind. Operators had tried to destroy the damaged chopper with plastic explosives — standard operating procedure to eliminate the enemy's ability to acquire American tech — but it didn't work completely.

Some pieces of the helicopter survived, and Pakistan wasn't happy with America having raided its airspace, so whatever was left of the stealth chopper found its way to Chinese scientists, who were allowed to extensively photograph the wreckage. The only remaining part was the tail rotor, and China seemingly used it to design something similar. Now, China has modified its Z-20, a clone of the UH-60, with similar capabilities, resulting in a new stealth Z-20 helicopter.

The U.S. hasn't officially confirmed the existence of modified stealth UH-60s, so not much is known about them, and the same is true of the stealth Z-20. The image above is a mockup of what may be the stealth Z-20, but that's conjecture, as it was displayed at the Chinese Helicopter Research & Development Institute. The picture at the top of this article is an unmodified Z-20, and no clear image exists of the modified stealth aircraft.

The American UH-60s used in Operation Neptune Spear were the result of decades of research going back to the development of the canceled multi-billion-dollar stealth reconnaissance attack helicopter, the RAH-66 Comanche. U.S. scientists and engineers used that research to develop the modifications for the UH-60, and it seems that Chinese scientists and engineers piggybacked on that. Since the Z-20 is essentially a copy of the UH-60, it appears that images of the tail rotor, while damaged, had enough recognizable stealth features to inform Chinese developers of its operation.

It took some time — the raid occurred in 2011 — but as of 2025, it seems China has managed to do what the Americans did over a decade earlier. Of course, no specs exist for the modified Z-20, nor is it clear whether it works as designed. Still, China's interest in stealth helicopters is likely tied to two things: the nation's love of stealing and copying Western tech, and the country's plans to take Taiwan in a future conflict.