Well, this was a surprise...

Followed a link from Rantingly, and found this: 

The Drive: This Is The First Photo Ever Of A Stealthy Black Hawk Helicopter

(Edit to add, plus edits inline...) This prototype/test stealthy Blackhawk was clearly not built on a UH60, but on an EH60A "Quickfix IIB" Electronic Warfare bird.

See those antennae on the tail boom? Those are the port side direction finding dipoles. There are two more on the starboard side. And you can barely see the "stinger" antenna for the ALQ17 jammer. (Which is little different from the far more common TLQ17 ground vehicle version.)

(Follow the link above for more photos, and discussion.)

The original concept was that the jammer -- just the jammer -- was mounted in a UH1 "Huey", which then became an EH1. This would be "launched" when the jeep- or truck- mounted jammers were shifting position, which, doctrinally, they were supposed to do after each jamming mission.

(The TLQ17 was originally mounted in a jeep. The GLQ3 was on a truck. Later, the MSQ138 was on a tracked vehicle, but neither the system itself nor it's power supply, nor the track were reliable enough that you could expect one to be operational...)

Then some genius came up with the idea of adding a direction finding system. Which left the Huey so overloaded it was pretty much worthless. So they put it in a Blackhawk instead. 

It was somewhat revolutionary at the time, the DF system was supposed to be able to link with the ground based systems, so that theoretically you'd have 8 DF systems on the ground (5 Trailblazers, 3 Teampacks) plus one to three Quickfix aircraft in the air. 

The problem was that it was a lot cheaper, and therefore easier to slip in the budget, to upgrade the ground-based systems than to do us. So by the time I got to my first Quickfix unit, Ft. Carson in '92, our data rate was slow enough that establishing the net was... chancy.

(Assuming the ground based systems even rolled, the tracks were epic pieces of shit. Eventually they put them on 5 ton trucks, which were absolutely reliable, but had other issues. But that's another post.)

In my last assignment, Korea in '99-2000, I think we actually established a link once. Allegedly, one of the team leaders had a heart attack from the shock. And allegedly, our data rate was so slow compared to what they were running that we effectively shut the net down. 

Allegedly. 

Also, the aircraft were all "A" models, nearly 20 years old, and pretty worn out. The Electronic Warfare systems in the aircraft put the weight, with crew, right at the max capacity. 

To be quite honest, I have mixed feelings about that last tour. In many ways, it was my dream assignment, I was getting dozens of flight hours a month, was responsible for planning and executing collection missions that were in the daily White House brief (not that I believe that BJ Clinton gave a shit) and, frankly, making full non-rated crew pay, the only SFC on the entire peninsula actually authorized to do so. 

But I had, um, issues with some members of the chain of command, and by that time I was fed up with spending every other year away from Mrs. Drang. 

Then the bastards extended me with seven months to go to retirement...

...Anyway.

I cannot imagine why they chose an EH to try this stealth mod on. To the best  of my knowledge, the platform was retired, I'm not even sure why they would have mothballed them with all the antennae on. I'm sure they pulled all the mission gear when they mothballed them. So, aside from bringing back fond (and not so) memories, this really has me scratching my head.