Check Out The New Twin M240 Door Guns For HH-60 Rescue Helicopters
The increased firepower would provide combat search and rescue teams with more organic fire support when operating in contested environments.
BY
EMMA HELFRICH
PUBLISHED NOV 23, 2022 6:15 PM
While exploring new ways to provide combat search and rescue teams with more firepower, the U.S. Air Force developed a doorway gun mount to arm its HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopters with four additional M240 machine guns. Built using repurposed armament parts, the solution would supplement the HH-60’s dedicated gunner aperture and offer a cheap way to increase the amount of lead that combat search and rescue helicopters could pump out by using equipment that is already in the inventory.
According to the Air Force, the concept was designed by the 943rd Rescue Group out of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona as a way to better arm the 920th Rescue Wing’s Personnel Recovery Task Force (PRTF). With the guidance of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown’s Accelerate Change or Lose philosophy, which essentially seeks to ensure that the service rapidly evolves, airmen from the 943rd were able to engineer the new mount with readily available resources while utilizing minimal manpower and as many existing Air Force manuals and technical orders as possible.
With the HH-60G slated to be retired in Fiscal Year 2023, a key aspect of this mount concept was also making sure that it could be easily transferred to the new and similarly structured HH-60W Jolly Green II, which reached initial operational capability this October. Most HH-60s currently fly with any two of the three primary guns that are compatible with the aircraft, which include the GAU-2C 7.62mm minigun, GAU 18/A .50 caliber machine gun, or M240 machine gun. Since the ultimate goal was to add four additional weapons to the aircraft, airmen were then tasked with examining which of the three guns the HH-60 could be up-armed with.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/twin-machine-gun-configuration-developed-for-hh-60-helicopter-doors
