JET SKI PIRATES GUN EXERCISE
December 10th, 2009 | Photography | Posted by Erik Hildebrandt
When it comes to realistic training, the Navy knows just how to keep it real! As I was in Norfolk last fall ramping up production for this project, I was given the chance to ride along with HSC-22 SEA KNIGHTS on a mission to get several crew chiefs qual’ed on the M240 machine gun before the shipped out to Afghanistan. Before any service personnel can be deployed, they must have all their tickets punched for currency and qualification on the weapon systems they are expected to operate.
In this case, the M240 is the standard medium weight machine gun employed around the US services with infantry, ships, and aircraft. It fires a NATO standard 7.62mm round and has a selectable rate of fire between 600 and 1000 rounds per minute. A few miles off the shores of Virginia Beach, a civilian contractor operates several rigid inflatable boats or RIBs. One of these RIBS is radio controlled and is towing a daisy chain of salvaged personal watercraft hulls that have been filled with foam, painted day-glow orange and manned by a silhouette target cutout.
Our training mission consisted of a two-ship of the larger MH-60S Seahawks, similar to the Army UH-60 Blackhawk. Each aircraft was armed with a M-240 on either side and two gunners to be qualified. The entire floor was stacked with 300 round boxes of 7.62 ammo and once on station over the range, the two helicopters initiated a racetrack pattern that presented targets to alternating sides of the aircraft for the gunners to engage.
At first, the distances were about 100 yards and proved pretty difficult to affect accurate fire, but as the pilots worked the pattern closer to the targets, the fun quickly ended for the Jet Skis. It was obvious now why the hulls were filled with foam as round after round ate up the targets and whipped the ocean into a jacuzzi of lead and fiberglass. With very little imagination, it was easy to visualize the targets as an unfortunate band of pirates who happened to mess with the wrong container ship.
There were a few rounds left over after the crew chiefs had fired their required counts, so in order to clear out the remaining unspent ordnance, I was obliged to empty the last few boxes as the sun went down. I’m not sure if it is because shooting with a Nikon actually hones my marksmanship or that P3S Modern Warfare is so realistic, but either way, I managed to get an few “atta-boy”s from the flight deck, and that is what really makes this job so damn cool.
Video to follow!
Erok
