Awesome

I was trying to think of a cool title for this post, but the only word that kept coming to mind was “awesome.”

U.S. SOCOM arming V-22 Osprey aircraft with GAU-2B Gatling guns.

February 25, 2008: The U.S. V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft is being equipped with weapons. U.S. SOCOM (Special Operations Command) has had a GAU-2B machine-gun fitted to the bottom of a V-22.  This is a remote control turret version of this six-barrel 7.62mm machine-gun.

I love Ospreys, I remember when I first started hearing about the tilt-rotor concept in the 80’s and I thought in my 10 year old mind that a helicopter that could be a plane was the closest thing to a Transformer that I would see, and that was awesome.

Hence the title of this post, because putting a remote-controlled mini-gun on the Osprey to lay down fire for troops entering/leaving the aircraft is even more awesome (there’s that word again).

5 Comments

  1. The engines for those were developed in Indianapolis, at Rolls Royce (formerly Allison Engine Co.) My dad was a tool and die maker there and ground parts for the prototypes. I remember first seeing video of it flying in junior high, ~1985. (Yeow, I’m old!)

    I have read complaints of pilots who don’t like the idea of flying Osprey’s into a hot LZ because they aren’t very maneuverable, unlike the helicopters they’re to replace.

  2. 3000 rounds a minute of .308 can go a long way towards suppressing a hot LZ, it’s no wonder they want to arm these things.

  3. I thought they were supposed to take GAU-19s (.50 BMG Gatling). I guess they scrapped that idea.

    The latter-half of your post seems to have been caught in the quote-block.

  4. I have a cousin that was groundcrew/maintenance for those. He said they were overcomplicated and unreliable compared to helicopters.

Comments are closed.