Residents of the Tucson, Arizona area were startled earlier this week by a group of helicopters, including at least one Russian-made Mi-17 Hip, making very low nighttime flights as part of what turned out to be a U.S. military exercise. This kind of domestic urban training is not uncommon, especially for U.S. special operations forces, and often comes at least as a surprise to bystanders. However, this instance is notably out of the ordinary in that the helicopters look to belong to a particularly shadowy unit.
Imagery of the helicopters flying over Tucson first began to emerge on social media on the night of June 17-18. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department subsequently confirmed to local media that the helicopters, one of which was an Mi-17 with an overall gray paint scheme, were affiliated with the U.S. military. The grounds of an abandoned school were used as part of the training exercise.
“The only thing I knew was that there was a lot of noise, flash bangs, helicopters, personnel, lights, sirens, that type of stuff,” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos, who was apparently unaware that this week’s exercise was set to occur, told KOLD News 13, a local CBS-affiliated television station yesterday. “From my understanding, we didn’t even train. We were just there to assist the DoD in their training efforts.”
“When he looked into it, he found out his SWAT team facilitated the location with the Department of Defense to use solely for their training weeks ago,” KOLD‘s report added. “I will not blame DoD. I will not blame South Tucson. This was on us. We could easily have said, use our location (elsewhere) at 10 p.m., I don’t understand what the thinking was there.”
Nanos apologized for the lack of communication with the public and pledged not to let a similar incident happen in the future.
TWZ has reached out to the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and the U.S. military for more information.
As it turns out, an additional video, seen below, was posted on Instagram on June 17 showing what looks to be the same gray Mi-17 flying together with a trio of Bell 407 helicopters just outside Tucson. There was also a sighting of an identical-looking Hip at Pinal Airpark northwest of Tucson earlier this month.
Whether or not it may have been a factor in the lack of advance notice to the public or to the sheriff about the exercise, the gray Mi-17 seen during the exercise is a dead ringer for Hips tied to a highly secretive U.S. Army element known as the Aviation Technology Office (ATO). Previously known as the Flight Concepts Division (FCD), ATO is headquartered at Felker Army Airfield, which is part of Fort Eustis in Virginia.
In addition to gray-painted examples, ATO-linked Mi-17s have also been seen painted tan and wearing a tan-and-brown camouflage scheme. These helicopters have a distinctive configuration that includes a nose-mounted weather radar, a sensor ball turret under the right side of the cockpit, supplemental armor panels around the front, a large particle separator in front of their engine intakes, and various antennas on the fuselage and tail boom.
ATO is understood to operate several Bell 407s in a configuration that aligns with what can be seen in the recent video shot outside Tucson. Both types were notably seen together at a farm in North Carolina back in May 2021 after the Mi-17 made an emergency landing there. The Bell 407 brought in additional personnel and repair parts to get the Hip airborne again, as you can read more about here.
In January 2021, Bell 407s likely belonging to ATO had also been spotted flying around Los Angeles and other nearby locales, conducting what appeared to be urban training that included touch-and-goes on helipads on top of a number of buildings. TWZ reported on those sightings at the time.
Gray-painted Mi-17s with the same general configuration were also spotted in North and South Carolina in separate instances last year.
As already noted, U.S. special operations forces, in general, regularly train in and around cities and towns across the United States, including for air assault missions. Doing so offers valuable real-world opportunities to hone important skill sets that cannot otherwise be replicated to the same degree with dedicated urban training facilities. This includes the fact that these are “live” locations full of real hazards and neutral bystanders. At the same time, poor and/or short-notice communication with the public, as well as more serious screwups, have caused controversy around these kinds of training events, which can also involve automatic guns firing blank rounds and simulated explosive devices, on multiple occasions in the past.
When it comes to ATO (and FCD before it), specifically, it remains one of the most secretive aviation units within the U.S. military. From what is known publicly, it specializes in providing discreet aviation support for covert and clandestine operations, and also has a bleeding-edge developmental function. For instance, ATO/FCD is understood to have been involved with the development of the stealthy derivatives of the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter employed during the 2011 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that led to the death of then-Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
It is worth noting here that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also has a long history of operating Mi-17 variants, including through various secretive contractors. CIA-linked Hips were very visibly active as part of evacuation operations in Afghanistan after the fall of the capital Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021.
Other less secretive elements of the U.S. military also make use of contractor-operated Mi-17s, as well as other foreign fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters, for training and evaluation purposes. The Hip is in widespread use globally in a wide variety of configurations, including heavily armed transport types. It is a design American forces regularly encounter in service with allies and partners, and that is also part of the potential threat picture for operations worldwide.
Still, the particular features of the gray Mi-17 seen this week in the Tucson area, together with the Bell 407s, point most strongly to ATO.
Whether or not more details emerge about the recent urban training exercise in Tucson, Arizona, the participants in this case look to have been particularly unusual.
Contact the author: joe@twz.com