Soldiers in Iraq head out to a live-fire exercise to use of the Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station.
Posted on 07/16/2005 12:24:11 PM PDT by TADSLOS
Ping to article, new weapons station.
Wish we'd had some in my old artillery unit, but we wern't authorised .50's at all.
:(
Oh well, hope it works well.
Guy who managed it took personal pride in the project.
Pinged to: Field Artillery/Mortar List, Stryker list, and Treadhead list.
Guess I should have edited the caption at the source link, before posting it.
This rocks!
Better than yer coffee........!
We had 2 50s, 1 60, 1 79, our M-14s and anything else we could “acquire”. Sure wish we could have acquired one of these systems!
LOL, my coffee is banned under the Geneva convention.
;-)
Anytime we 'acquired' stuff, we were forced by our Cap to give it back, regardless of whether or not we'd acquired it to replace something he'd lent to another unit that never returned the items..
BTW the V loved it.
Never got to play with one myself.
Got told that the answer was "not only no but H--L NO."
Was the same answer I got when I looked into getting our hands on some MP5's and some Steyr AUG's.
Damn I am getting old.
Isn't this similar to what they have on the Stryker ? A 50 cal controlled from inside ?
As a reservist, Lowe requested to extend his tour of duty in Iraq to work any remaining kinks out of the CROWS.
“He didn’t have to go to Iraq, and he didn’t have to go to my operational test,” Stoddard said. “We are fortunate to have that type of dedication. I think he took ownership of CROWS as a Soldier. He always wanted everything to be right. When we did demos he was out there early, making sure the rehearsals were done, that everything performed correctly. He took a lot of ownership and pride in this product.”
HERO !
I'm told that miniguns still exist, but only authorised for special purpose use.
*???*
The Steyr was already illegal when I signed up, so we didn't get to play with those, which was insane but made sense to someone somewhere.
And the MP5 was only authorised for everyone but us it seemed.
We ALMOST didn't get the M-249 SAWs we WERE authorised.
Someone said "You have the M-60, whaddya need the other MG's for?"
Catch was, most of our 60's didn't work due to broken or missing parts, and when we requested replacement parts we were told 'no dice'.
We had 8 M-60's, and only three worked.
Never got to check out the M-240 either.
My unit wasn't authorised those.
That reminds me of our Mk19s going to the French in Chad :(
OUCH.
My old unit was a light towed artillery unit, and every time I suggested some weapon that would improve our perimeter defense, I got shot down spectacularly.
One suggestion was a Mk-19A3.
*wistful sigh*
Would have loved to have had a mere four Mk19's, six M-249's, and all 8 of our M-60's up and working.
THAT would be quite a show to see lighting off.
Man.. Mk19's to the French.. UNGH!
(The CROWS weapon station.. would have loved one of those on our M1097's..)
Liobyans, huh?
Hmm, how badly did they wack the Libyans?
(This I gotta hear)
Our skipper ( a WO1) was good at locating stuff for us to acquire. He was the one who decided we needed at least one more M-60 and several spare barrels. He located a supply point for 500 round belts for the 50s and 1000 round belts for the 60s. He also decided we should start every mission with a case of LAAWs.
Now, if he could have figured out how to keep the sandbags from melting flat before we hit the objectives we would have been doing OK.
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