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Official: Osprey to get forward-firing gun

MV-22 Ospreys headed to Iraq will soon be outfitted with a forward-firing 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. 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.

U.S. Special Operations Command plans to have the interim weapons system installed on its Osprey variant, the CV-22, by September, Mulhern 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 inaugural rotation on MEUs.