American Aircraft Penetrator - Penetrators are made in the USA of heat-treated 356 aluminum, designed for holding or guying both temporary and permanent structures in soil, sand, asphalt, and underwater. Large Penetrators (36” and 46”) can be used as footings.
Technical specs, installation instructions and test reports can be found with each product description. The Penetrator is fitted with a skid undercarriage (or optional retractable tricycle gear), a lower fuselage rear-facing gun turret and two forward-firing cannon.
American Aircraft Penetrator
The "Penetrator" has 360 degrees of perimeter firepower and it's composite construction of Kevlar reinforced by Nomex and the angular shape of its design afford the "Penetrator" ballistic resistance to small arms fire and low observability.
The "Penetrator" offers the feature of a two-seat in tandem cockpit with the pilot positioned in the first seat for unobstructed vision and two forward-firing weapons operator is in the second seat, with the third and fourth weapons operators in seats aft of
the main cabin to control rear-facing weapons. This firepower allows the "Penetrator" to perform as an excellent shock assault troop lift gunship with air-to-air, air-to-ground and ground-to-ground capability. Bell UH-1B "Hueys" were stripped down to engine and transmission mounts, controls modified to tandem arrangement and re-covered with armored composite structure, containing troop-carrier compartment for six soldiers, two aft facing gunner turrets on either side of the engine
and two forward facing turrets. The aircraft, named the "Penetrator", was also outfitted with stub wings, which unloaded the main rotor in high-speed flight, increasing airspeed, and the aircraft's aerodynamic fuselage minimizes profile drag. The basic model is an all-composite compounded helicopter with a gross take-off weight of 4280kg.
To reduce the Penetrator's drag, all the machine guns, cannons and some rocket launchers are carried internally. I don't really understand the purpose of stealth helicopters. The main enemy of choppers are MANPADS yeah? Hard angles and radar absorbent materials do nothing to defend you from IR guided missiles.
And there's not a lot you can do about those 2 (or 1) big heat exchangers on any given chopper. It sits behind the Boeing facility at Long Beach, CA. You can see it while driving on the 405 fwy.
It used to be positioned fairly close to a fence and clearly visible. Sometimes it would be covered up.