Patuxent River, MD — From operations in Afghanistan to training exercises around the world, crew-served weapons are employed from almost every Navy and Marine Corps platform in service today.
In the past year, Sailors and Marines fired more than eight million rounds of small arms ammunition using over 2,600 different crew-served weapons.
“There are a lot of weapon systems that are important, but these weapons are used every day…someone is firing a machine gun right now in training or contingency operations,” said John Leckemby, Direct and Time Sensitive Strike Program Office’s (PMA-242) crew-serve weapons lead at Patuxent River. “These weapons never sit idle.”
The growing arsenal of crew-served weapons
Crew served weapons, which require more than one person to operate efficiently, are employed from 10 different types of tilt rotor and rotary-wing aircraft.
“When I began my service, crew-served gunnery was basically Marine only, but in recent years the Navy has been playing a much larger role with crew served weapons on their MH-60S and MH-60R helicopters,” said Maj. Scott Roland, PMA-242’s aircraft gun systems deputy program manager.
Over time, as the demand for these weapons has increased, the Navy and Marine Corps have realized deficiencies in reporting structure, supply support and maintenance, Roland said. To mitigate these challenges, Marine Corps Headquarters and Commander, Naval Air Forces requested PMA-242 set up mobile training to address maintenance practices, inspection and administrative reports, and overall safety and handling of the weapons.
The ‘guns roadshow’
Covering both U.S. coasts, Hawaii and Japan, Gregg Edwards, who supports PMA-242 as deputy program manager for logistics for aircraft gun systems, and his colleagues in China Lake, California, visited 10 sites and trained more than 1300 personnel over a three-month period from July to October 2015. They worked closely with the management team at Patuxent River to execute this fleet-wide training.
Edwards has spent his 30 years of Marine and civil service supporting aircraft gun systems. During his tenure, he has seen the use of crew-served weapons increase substantially and has witnessed first-hand some of the challenges.
“We really learned a lot by visiting the squadrons from a program perspective and a fleet perspective,” Edwards said. “Everywhere we went we found new challenges, differences between Navy and Marine Corps procedures, between platforms and squadrons. We realized we needed to better facilitate the fleet’s supply support sustainment and create standard procedures that everyone is on board with.”
The PMA-242 team spent three days at each site. The first day they presented briefs to all levels of squadron personnel on topics ranging from program requirements to implementation of new weapon components. During the second and third day of training, they visited the individual squadrons and provided hands on training to each of their work centers focusing on documentation, supply practices and overall maintenance.
“This training evolution was definitely needed and as a result will directly impact the proper usage and maintenance of our crew served weapons and associated equipment,” said Maj. Jermaine Cadogan, an aviation ordnance officer at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in California.
Implementing change
The team conducted similar training two years ago but this time the Navy had a bigger presence, Leckemby said.
“Training this time was much more successful because the Navy had a larger part in the process,” he said. “The amount of action items that came out of this training shadowed what had been discovered before. The Navy and Marine Corps do things differently so this training helped to bridge gaps to get the two services closer to doing things the same way using the same instruction.”
The training gave PMA-242 a better understanding of their operational environment and the tools needed to improve their processes. They are reworking references, policy manuals, logs and records management and maintenance requirement cards to increase readiness, reliability and safety of these weapons systems.
“We hope to change the way we do business as a program and as a fleet regarding how we manage these guns, Edwards said. “The end state is these weapons are supported, sustained, standardized, safe and reliable.”