Let's talk about the 160th SOAR MH-47. The helicopter that looks like "two palm trees trying to hump a dumpster," according to a few Night Stalker pilots. Jokes aside, the MH-47 Chinook is the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment’s (160th SOAR) heavy-lift workhorse, built so Night Stalker crews can put special operations teams into denied terrain at night and bring them back out. After the failed 1980 Iran rescue attempt, the Army created what became the 160th and began turning standard Chinooks into special operations aircraft. The first dedicated variant was the MH-47D in the mid-1980s, followed by the MH-47E and the current MH-47G. Performance is why the regiment still relies on it. Two powerful turboshaft engines give the MH-47G the power to work at high altitude and in hot conditions that beat smaller helicopters. It can haul around 50 troops or a mix of operators and light vehicles, cruise near 120 knots, and push toward 170 knots in a dash. Most people assume it's slow because of its size, when in reality it's one of the fastest military helicopters in the world. Unrefueled mission radius is nearly 400 miles, but mid-air refueling from MC-130s stretches that almost without limit. On the ground it can also act as a “fat cow,” landing with extra fuel bladders and topping off other aircraft at remote sites. That combination of lift and range has put the MH-47 on some of the 160th’s most important jobs. In 1988, two Night Stalker Chinooks flew about 490 miles at night across Chad during Operation Mount Hope III and sling-loaded a captured Soviet Mi-25 Hind out of the desert. In October 2001, two MH-47Es lifted Green Beret teams ODA 555 and 595 (the Horse Soldiers) from Uzbekistan over the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan on an 11 hour flight that required three in-flight refuelings. MH-47s later became the backbone of insertions and extractions in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the 2005 Operation Red Wings rescue attempt in which an MH-47 was shot down. And more recently, they went into Venezuela on the mission to capture Nicolas Maduro in 2026. When a raid needs a large assault force delivered far, fast, and in the dark, the Night Stalkers still send the Chinook. "Night Stalkers Don't Quit"