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Forward-firing Osprey gun not a done deal

The Marine Corps is looking to outfit MV-22 Ospreys headed to Iraq with a forward-firing, all-quadrant gun, a top program official said.

The weaponry milestone could be in use by the third MV-22 squadron deployment into Iraq, said Col. Matt Mulhern, V-22 Program Manager at Naval Air Systems Command, speaking at the annual Navy League Sea-Air-Space Expo in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

A dozen MV-22s are operating in Iraq with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263. The unit is expected to rotate home in the coming month and will be replaced by VMM-162, Mulhern said.

The weapon, a 7.62mm mini-gun, is considered an interim system and will be installed on the U.S. Special Operations Command Osprey variant, the CV-22, by September, Mulhern said. The weapon, called the Remote Guardian System, is made by BAE Systems.

The Marine Corps will be “watching that,” with the goal of eventually outfitting its variant, the MV-22, with the same weapon, Mulhern said.

Marine Corps Times earlier reported that the weapon would be headed to Iraq, but there could be a long lead time before that could happen, Mulhern said in an e-mailed response to questions. The timeline, however, would be dictated by funding decisions made by the Corps, and how long it would take for the manufacturer to put the weapon system together once it is under contract, he said. Then it would need to be tested in order to receive flight clearance.

The 800-pound gun — about the weight of three Marines with full combat loads — will be installed as a removable mission kit and operated by a controller inside the aircraft. Use of the 7.62mm round means the forward-firing gun will have a range of about 1,000 meters.

“The V-22 gets up and goes 1,000 meters pretty quick, so you’re probably not finishing the transition to airplane mode and you’re already down range,” Mulhern said. “It’s that very last end game, coming in and out of the zone, that you’ll have the ability to keep someone’s head down.”

As an add-on weapon, the configuration won’t be seamless, Mulhern explained. It will require cables run across the cargo deck, removal of some seats and could affect cargo space, he said.

However, it is a way to rapidly outfit the Osprey with more firepower.

“Over time, we want to polish that system,” reduce the weight and possibly buy back seats, Mulhern said.

The inclusion of such a weapon has long been a touchy subject for program observers. Osprey critics have blasted the Corps for not including a forward-firing gun in the original design, in order to suppress enemy fire around landing zones. Proponents of leaving the weapon off, however, say hostile fire around landing zones in Iraq and Afghanistan has been tamped down, and that its inclusion could degrade the aircraft’s performance due to extra weight.

“It’s been something that critics have noted about the Osprey from the beginning, that it basically can’t defend itself,” said Philip Coyle, defense analyst with the Center for Defense Information and the Pentagon’s former chief of testing and evaluation, in a phone interview. “A regular helicopter can. We wouldn’t deploy regular helicopters without the ability to defend themselves.”

Marines, however, are currently using the MV-22 “like a truck,” and aren’t taking it into combat, Coyle said. “They have been doing that on purpose. They have not wanted to have another accident.”

The addition of the gun could signify changes to that strategy.

“This would be a step in the direction that they might begin to use it in combat,” Coyle said.

If, however, the Corps continues to keep it clear of combat and continues to use it like a truck, it won’t even need the rear-firing ramp gun, he said. The MV-22s currently deployed in Iraq have a rear-firing 7.62mm ramp gun.

“The more narrowly you define the mission for an aircraft, the less valuable it is. The Marine Corps has wanted to use the Osprey in combat and is trying to equip it so that it can,” Coyle said.

The Corps’ fleet of MV-22s in Iraq has already undergone some modification with the installation of forward-firing flares to counter hand-held threats on the ground, Mulhern said.

By September, the Corps will have three MV-22 squadrons. About the time the third MV-22 squadron deploys to Iraq, VMM-263 will deploy with a Marine expeditionary unit, launching the aircraft’s rotation on MEUs.