V-22 Osprey Weapons ?

That part of Florida is pretty nice, Shaker. Visited Navarre/Ft. Walton Beach a couple of times, as my brother in law was in the air force (he finally retired this year after 26 years).

There was nothing greater than seeing those AC-130's during live exercises!!

V-22 weapon proposal.

"V-22 Osprey: A Flying Shame?" detailed a number of very detailed and specific allegations concerning the V-22 Osprey's performance, testing flaws, and survivability issues in anything beyond low-threat situations like the present Anbar deployment in Iraq. Despite direct offers, US NAVAIR chose not to respond or address any of those allegations. One of the flaws that appeared headed for correction, however, was the issue of 360 degree covering fire. This capability is useful for fire support generally, and is especially helpful when entering or covering landing zones, where rotary aircraft are most vulnerable. The Osprey's huge propellers and the positioning of its engines had created obstruction issues with normal machine gun mounting locations, but AUSA 2007 saw BAE Systems promoting a retractable belly turret solution based on a 3-barrel 7.62mm GAU-17 minigun.



Finally after 2 years a weapons platform has been looked at
for the V-22.

Personally i would of liked weapons hanging off the wings but you couldnt
use them in plane mode and only in hover mode.

www.defenseindustrydaily.com...

It will be interesting how the trial ends up in the long run.
You would hope they address the other issues involved
in the above article.

wasnt it planned to make an asw version of the osprey?

Originally posted by Shaker
The Osprey is supposed to replace the MH-53 Pave Low Helicopters in the next few years. Hurlburt Field is the test bed starting in 06-07.

Actually, Kirtland AFB received the first active duty CV-22's about a year and a half ago. I'm not sure when Hurlburt was scheduled to get theirs. If you saw the movie Transformers, the CV-22's they used were the Edwards test vehicles.

reply to post by simtek 22


Wow I haven't been on this site logged on in a long time I think... Been lurking around lately.

As for my previous comment on Hurlburt being the test bed three years ago, I distinctly remember seeing plenty of signs and our commander talking about how we're all going to have to prepare to receive the Osprey for testing.

As of that post I was on my way out of the Air Force due to my time being up and unable to re-enlist. I suppose people figured that the squadron I was in already had enough on their plate at the time. Ah well.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
The only things I've read about so far were miniguns in the doors. I heard something awhile ago about the chin turret, but nothing ever came of it as far as I know.

That's exactly what my first thought was. One or two mounted more like the guns on the C-130 Gunship or whatever. All aircraft that have cannons or guns near the nose or cockpit use gatling guns. 20mm for F-16's (and F-15's?). 30mm GAU-8 gatling gun in the A-10. All have air to air capability and the guns are there for that reason for the smaller, more agile fighters. However the A-10's gatling gun is obviously meant for air to ground strike runs (6500+ rnds per minute of shells over a pound each). Recoil of this magnitude will stop the plane in mid-air unless it is in a dive of 30 degrees or more.

I used to process 30 mil for the A-10's at Eielson AFB (355th Fighter Squadron). Since the A-10's have been cut back and I don't think they are really even flying them there anymore. I left there in 2004.

The Osprey would not likely have such a weapon. Small caliber weapons are not exactly sensible on the nose of an aircraft. It seems more likely to me that they would be mounted on the sides much like Huey's of the vietnam era were (sometimes). I don't expect to see all Ospreys with weapons on the side for ground support either.

-ChriS



[edit on 16-2-2008 by BlasteR]

reply to post by Shaker


Interesting trade study by Sikorsky/NASA on the feasibility of an attack configuration tilt rotor aircraft:

ntrs.nasa.gov...