Photo of the Month June 2010

A/T Carl Gustav Barrel 
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Airsoft Precision Barrel

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Ospreys leave new belly gun in the dust

By Dan Lamothe - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Jun 28, 2010

CAMP BASTION, Afghanistan — In answer to criticism calling the Osprey vulnerable to enemy attack and lacking fire power, the Marine Corps shipped a handful of 7.62mm belly guns to Afghanistan last winter.

But the remotely operated turret guns, designed to give the aircraft a more effective way to neutralize enemy threats, has gone widely unused because Marines and their leaders believe its drawbacks frequently outweigh its benefits.

Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 261, out of Marine Corps Air Station New River, N.C., has five belly gun systems with it downrange, but it is seen as heavy and difficult to use. A Marine crew chief, frequently a gunnery sergeant, operates the system from the inside using a controller and can rotate the gun 360 degrees. He acquires targets using a monitor that is fed color images from a forward-looking infrared sensor.

Marines, however, acknowledged that operating the belly gun system can cause nausea for the crew chief using it, since he must stare at the screen while the aircraft maneuvers.

Another major drawback is that the belly gun is heavy, weighing in at 800 pounds. That dramatically affects how much cargo or troops an MV-22 can carry. The Osprey can carry about 12,000 pounds of fuel, personnel and equipment in 70-degree weather, but when the temperature exceeds 107 degrees — as the summer weather in southern Afghanistan does regularly — the Osprey’s capacity drops to between 8,000 and 8,500 pounds, Woods said.

Lt. Col. Ivan Thomas, VMM-261’s commander, has told the media that the rules of engagement pose another challenge. Last summer, Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, then the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, issued new guidelines directing commanders to restrict air-to-ground munitions and direct fire against residences. Thomas has said the risk of civilian casualties often is just too great to use the weapon system.

The belly gun was pushed out quickly based on an urgent need from the field for an all-quadrant defensive weapon system, but the mission-based system was never meant to be a permanent solution, Welding said.

Despite its drawbacks, pilots with VMM-261 say the 7.62mm weapon, formally known as the Interim Defense Weapon System, has impressed them with its accuracy and ability to lock onto targets while Ospreys are in flight. They are more comfortable though, using the Osprey’s tilt-rotor design to zip in and out of combat situations quickly.

“They gave it to us to work with, and it’s a phenomenal weapon,” said Capt. Brandon Woods, who has flown the Osprey since 2006. “But from our standpoint, it’s still easier to transition the aircraft to airplane and use our speed.”

The Ospreys in Afghanistan are also equipped with either a 7.62mm M240 machine gun or a .50-caliber machine gun on the rear door. Marines pick a weapon based on the perceived threat for each mission they undertake.

“The IDWS … is not intended to be carried on every flight,” said Maj. Brian McAvoy, the MV-22 plans and policies officer at the Pentagon. “In most instances during day-to-day assault support operations, the primary mission is to carry troops and cargo from place to place, and in these instances, the ramp gun provides adequate defensive fire suppression. What the IDWS does provide, when the commander needs it or wants it, is a crew-served, all-aspect, enhanced defensive suppressive fire capability that can be used in concert with the ramp gun.”

Navy and Marine Corps officials are working with BAE to monitor data gathered from the field, which will be used to determine what the long-term solution will be, Welding said.

The aircraft has been used frequently to ferry troops around Helmand province. It also has been used to insert troops during combat operations as well as longer missions to near the Pakistani border to the south and the Iranian border to the west.

A 7.62mm belly-mounted turret gun, known as the Interim Defense Weapon System.

U.S. Marine Sgt. Danny L. Herrman, a flight line crew chief with Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron-263, test fires a 240 Gulf heavy machine gun on the back of a MV-22B Osprey while flying on a mission over the Al Anbar Province of Iraq. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Sheila M. Brooks (Released)

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PASGT and ACH Helmets

A How to Wear properly guide for PASGT and ACH military helmets with "correct" and "incorrect" photos.

Gun Statistics

Some interesting statistics. 

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Army begins shipping improved 5.56mm cartridge

PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. (June 23, 2010) - The Army announced today it has begun shipping its new 5.56mm cartridge, the M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round, to support war-fighters in Afghanistan.

The new M855A1 round is sometimes referred to as "green ammo."

The new round replaces the current M855 5.56mm cartridge that has been used by U.S. troops since the early 1980s.

The M855A1 resulted in a number of significant enhancements not found in the current round, officials said. They explained these include improved hard-target capability, more dependable, consistent performance at all distances, improved accuracy, reduced muzzle flash and a higher velocity.

During testing, the M855A1 performed better than current 7.62mm ball ammunition against certain types of targets, blurring the performance differences that previously separated the two rounds.

The projectile incorporates these improvements without adding weight or requiring additional training.

According to Lt. Col. Jeffrey K. Woods, the program's product manager, the projectile is "the best general purpose 5.56mm round ever produced."

Woods said its fielding represents the most significant advancement in general purpose small caliber ammunition in decades.

The Enhanced Performance Round contains an environmentally friendly projectile that eliminates up to 2,000 tons of lead from the manufacturing process each year in direct support of Army commitment to environmental stewardship.

Woods said the effort is a clear example of how "greening" a previously hazardous material can also provide extremely beneficial performance improvements.

Picatinny Arsenal's Project Manager for Maneuver Ammunition Systems manages the M855A1 program.

Project Manager Chris Grassano called the fielding "the culmination of an Army enterprise effort by a number of organizations, particularly the Army Research Laboratory, Armament Research Development and Engineering Center, Program Executive Office for Ammunition and the Joint Munitions Command.

"The Army utilized advanced science, modeling and analysis to produce the best 5.56mm round possible for the war-fighter," he said.

The M855A1 is tailored for use in the M4 weapon system but also improves the performance of the M16 and M249 families of weapons.

A true general purpose round, the M855A1 exceeds the performance of the current M855 against the many different types of targets likely to be encountered in combat.

Prior to initial production, the EPR underwent vigorous testing. Official qualification of the round consisted of a series of side-by-side tests with the current M855.

Overall, the Army fired more than 1 million rounds to ensure the new cartridge met or exceeded all expectations. The M855A1 is without question the most thoroughly tested small caliber round ever fielded, Woods said.

The Army has recently completed the Limited Rate Initial Production phase for the M855A1 and is beginning the follow-on full rate production phase where plans are to procure more than 200 millions rounds over the next 12-15 months.

The M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round is the first environmentally friendly bullet resulting from a larger "greening" effort across the Army's Small Caliber Ammunition programs. Other greening efforts include 5.56mm tracer, 7.62mm ball and green primers.

Soldiers in Afghanistan will begin using the new, improved round this summer.

Army moving back to buttons from Velcro.

The Army is ripping space-age Velcro from its uniforms and replacing it with the humble button, which turns out to be tailor-made for the rigors of Afghanistan.

Hook-and-pile tape — the generic term for Velcro— strains to keep jam-packed cargo pants pockets closed. And when the Taliban attacks, the last thing soldiers need to worry about is spilling their gear.

Soldiers told superiors that Velcro didn’t suit their needs, and the Army began testing alternatives last year, said Debi Dawson, an Army spokeswoman. In August, the Army will begin issuing new pants to soldiers heading to Afghanistan.

“When concerns surfaced in surveys that the hook-and-pile tape was not holding under the weight of full pocket loads, the Army evaluated several solutions,” Dawson said. Velcro has been part of the latest Army combat uniform since it was introduced in 2004.

Dirt and rocks also clog the pile portion of the fastener. That requires soldiers to clean it regularly. An Army website offers this helpful hint: a soldier’s small weapons cleaning brush has been “working very well” in removing dirt and sand.

“This is the latest proof that dust and debris are the biggest enemy for the U.S. military,” said Loren Thompson, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute and a consultant to defense contractors. “Taliban attacks come and go, but dust is constant in Afghanistan. Dust will impede the function of anything.”

Sgt. Kenny Hatten cut to the heart of the matter in this posting on an Army website, urging the military to go back to the future:

“Get rid of the pocket flap Velcro and give us back our buttons,” Hatten wrote. “Buttons are silent, easy to replace in the field, work just fine in the mud, do not clog up with dirt and do not fray and disintegrate with repeated laundering.”

Source: Tom Vanden Brook for USA Today.

The invention  of Velcro

82nd commander returns from Afghanistan tour

The Associated Press
Posted : Tuesday Jun 15, 2010

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — The commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division has returned to his North Carolina base after 14 months in eastern Afghanistan.

Maj. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti and about 20 paratroopers from the 82nd arrived Tuesday morning at Pope Air Force Base. Scaparrotti commanded the coalition task force in charge of 14 provinces near the Afghan border with Pakistan. The task force was made up of 30,000 service members from 13 different countries.

Hundreds of paratroopers from the headquarters returned to Fort Bragg last week. The 82nd deployed to Afghanistan in June 2009. The unit's deployment was extended about 50 days to allow soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division Headquarters a full year at home.

Ground Soldier System renamed for MoH recipient

By Matthew Cox - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Jun 15, 2010

The Army’s Ground Soldier System is no more. In commemoration of the service’s 235th birthday, the computerized command and control ensemble will now be known as Nett Warrior.

The system is named in honor of Col. Robert B. Nett who was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading a major assault in the Philippines in 1944 during World War II.

The high-tech system is designed to connect soldiers with the Army’s tactical network, but program officials say they chose to name the system after Nett because, “We wanted it to be named after a maneuver leader,” said Col. William Riggins, head of Program Manager Soldier Warrior.

“This is a system for leaders, to make them more effective than they have ever been before,” he said at a ceremony at the Pentagon on June 14.

Nett, who retired as a colonel in 1973, was a young lieutenant leading E Company, 305th Infantry Regiment on Dec. 14, 1944. While leading an assault on the island of Leyte, he killed seven Japanese soldiers with his rifle and bayonet. He was wounded three separate times but refused to relinquish his command until the unit had captured the objective.

Nett died at the age of 87 on Oct. 14, 2008.

Nett Warrior is the next generation of Land Warrior, a controversial program that made history in the spring of 2007, when 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, decided to take it to combat in Iraq after Army budget officials earlier that year cut $300 million from Land Warrior earlier that year, essentially killing the program.

The system is still not perfect, but its performance in Iraq prompted Army leaders to allow the 5th Stryker Brigade Combat Team to take it Afghanistan. Land Warrior allows combat leaders to track the locations of their men and view maps and other tactical information through a tiny, helmet-mounted computer screen. The system features a microcomputer processor for storing maps, mission-specific imagery and graphics. The navigation system allows a leader to track his subordinate leaders’ positions, which appear as icons on a digital map. The digital voice and text radio lets leaders send e-mails and talk to anyone wearing the system.

Nett Warrior is scheduled to be ready for fielding to an infantry brigade combat team by 2012. The next step will be a limited-user test scheduled for this fall when infantry units will evaluate three separate prototypes made by General Dynamics, Raytheon and Rockwell Collins.

Source

Standardized tourniquet, new bandages for IFAK

By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Jun 14, 2010

The Marine Corps is following the Army’s example by including two new items in the individual first aid kit carried by every Marine downrange: A CAT II tourniquet and a blood-clotting bandage.

“In the battlefield where we are with the Army constantly and we’re also with NATO, it helps us be able to use one standard piece of gear everyone’s comfortable with, everyone’s familiar with,” said Navy Lt. Kathleen Dagher, health services requirements and capabilities officer for the Marine Corps.

The CAT II — combat application tourniquet — is a one-handed tourniquet that uses the cylindrical crank handle that provides pressure and locks into place. It replaces the TK-4 tourniquet, an elastic latex band with a steel S hook at each end. Each tourniquet is equally effective, Dagher said, but Marines showed a preference for the CAT II and started buying it on their own.

New gauze is also part of the updated package. The IFAK now has QuickClot Combat Gauze instead of the powder which sometimes burns surrounding skin and can make the removal of dead, damaged or infected tissue difficult.

Combat Gauze comes in a small package that contains four yards of 3-inch flexible, roll-up gauze infused with kaolin, an inorganic mineral that triggers blood clotting. The gauze is easier to pack into different types of wounds.

To help Marines adapt to the new items, the first aid field manual, Marine Corps Reference Publication 3-02G, has been updated with new training and usage guidelines. It will be distributed to units through the S-1 shop.

But despite the additions, the other items in the IFAK — water purification, iodine tablets, antibiotic ointment, adhesive strips, triangular bandages, gauze rolls, duct tape and pressure bandages — will remain unchanged for now.

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