Hmm, I bet that in a year or two they’d be polished up and ready for the next mission.
101st Airborne Redeployment: Largest Wartime Movement Of Troops Ever ~ Bump!
Necessity is the mother of invention by Spc. Joshua Hutcheson
Fort Campbell COURIER
MOSUL, Iraq - How do soldiers deal with equipment problems? What do they do when they need to accomplish a mission and don't have the right tools for the job?
Simple. They build what they need.
In this case, mechanics from the 101st Airborne Division Corps Support Group worked with mechanics from 3rd Corps Support Command, 584th Maintenance Company and the 602nd Maintenance Co., to build a piece of equipment used by soldiers deployed to Iraq: a vehicle gun mount.
The beginning
The origins of the new M6L gun mount began after the end of combat operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom when there was an Army wide shortage of gun mounts.
``The Army was having real problems delivering the M6 mount it currently has in production,'' said Sgt. 1st Class Samuel Greer, maintenance noncommissioned officer, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 101st CSG. ``The availability just wasn't there. We couldn't get enough in theater.''
The 101st was not the only unit having problems trying to fill their gun mount quota. In Baghdad, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Wayne Glass, 602nd Maintenance Co., needed gun mounts for the vehicles that convoyed and patrolled between the capital of Iraq and the western city of Fallujah.
When the Army-wide supply system was unable to meet his needs he decided to design and build his own vehicle gun mount.
Glass faced challenges trying to build the mounts in Baghdad.
``When they tried to work in Baghdad, they'd get shot at. It was just impossible to do anything there,'' Greer said.
During a meeting with the leadership of 3rd COSCOM, Glass made the proposal for his new gun mount. He requested to go to safe environment to mass-produce the mount and for people to help him work.
Col. Gerald Dolinish, commander, 101st CSG, attended the meeting. Dolinish volunteered the services of his soldiers and the coalition-friendly, Kurdish-populated area in northern Iraq, above the city of Mosul, Greer said.
Giving the creation life
Glass arrived in Mosul with his designs and met with Greer and the other senior mechanics of 101st CSG. The team went through the designs, ripping out what they did not want, and adding what they felt would make the mount easier to use, generally reshaping the plans, Greer said.
``We looked at it, figured out what we liked and disliked about it, then we'd chop stuff off and look at it again. Basically what we did was chopping, looking, chopping, looking, until we got exactly what we wanted,'' Greer said. ``We tried to come up with something that's more of a soldier-friendly mount.''
The design team went through their revision and redesign process six times until they were satisfied with their prototype. But the process didn't end there; even after the original prototype was built there were more changes made to the mount, Greer said.
With a prototype built, the team was able to see what worked and what did not. They were able to readjust parts until everything worked the way they wanted.
Before the team was completely satisfied, the mount was tested at a weapons range.
Using a previously made contact from an earlier mass-production project, the inventors took their prototype and designs to a trade company in Dohuk that was able to handle cranking out the large number of mounts required to satisfy the needs of the 101st and 3rd COSCOM.
``We knew we had a reliable [company] that could handle it, who could make the [mounts] in a short period of time. Our biggest concern was time,'' Greer said.
The agreement between the mechanics and the trade company was to produce 200 gun mounts a week. Production began Aug. 5.
``The first week we wound up producing around 100 [mounts]. The second week we produced about 150, and then we got full scale with 200 in the third week,' Greer said.
For the production of the 1,392 mounts needed by coalition forces needed, the trade company opened up an entirely new factory to produce the mounts.
Setting up the factory and hiring new workers ``poured almost three quarters of a million dollars into the local economy,'' Glass said.
For a third of the price
By using local materials and workers, the Kurdish company was able to build each gun mount for $500, and delivered them to the soldiers for another five dollars, Greer said.
The military-produced M6 gun mount costs $1,460 per unit. Purchasing the M197 adaptor, necessary if a soldier wants to mount the M249 machine gun, is an extra $480. The total cost can be rounded out to a little less then $2,000 for each mount.
``We're able to save about $1,500 a shot on these things,'' Greer said.
With the 1,392 mounts built locally, the design team of the mount has succeeded in saving the Army approximately $2.1 million, he said.
The Tank and Automotive Command approved production of and named the mount M6L.
The design
``The beauty of the mount is that it comes with a SAW adaptor,'' Greer said. ``The mount comes as a complete package. There's no need for special adaptors.''
The M6L is capable of supporting the M2HB .50 machine gun, as well as the M249 and M240 machine guns.
The base plate to the gun mount is larger then the plate for the M6. A layer of steel covers the entire floor of the vehicle, and bolts to the existing holes in the truck, Greer said.
``The biggest reason we pushed for the large plate is for blast protection,'' Greer said. ``The soldier is now standing on 8 mm-thick steel.''
A problem many soldiers found with the M6 gun mount is that the constant stress on holes they had to drill to secure the mount caused damage to the body of the vehicles. Using the existing holes makes the mount more secure and stable.
The larger base also has a series of holes in it to allow mobility. The gun mount is attached to a smaller plate that sits on the larger base plate and can be positioned in the middle of the rear portion of the vehicle or moved all the way to the back for command-style Humvees, Greer said.
The M6L mount is mobile in other ways as well. It can be raised or lowered for the comfort of the gunner, or removed entirely if it's not required for a mission.
``You can remove the seven bolts, in about three or four minutes. The base plate stays on the truck because you can mount any kind of a load right on top of it no problem and your blast protection's still there,'' Greer said.
An added safety feature is the depression adjustment. It keeps the weapon muzzle from dipping too low so ``a gunner can't accidentally shoot the guys in the front of the vehicle,'' Glass said.
A gun mount by soldiers, for soldiers
Soldiers' needs were the first consideration for the designers of the M6L. During every step of the creating process they were primarily concerned with safety and making the gun mount user-friendly.
``Everything we had to do, we had to really think about soldiers getting up and using [the M6L]'' Greer said. ``Soldiers can tell you best what works for soldiers, I honestly believe that.''
Production of the 1,392 gun mounts was completed the first week of October. The blueprints were then taken to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait for future production
``The mount has demonstrated its versatility in combat operations,'' Dolinish said. ``It's a suitable if not superior mount, through the efforts of a number of units.''
Maybe if the AWB sunsets, and you can get those mags without coughing up your firstborn. ;-)
BTW - have you spent any time with one of those? I looked at one pretty closely at a gun shop, probably a year or a year-and-a-half ago. I was very impressed. The main reason I discarded the thought of perhaps getting one was that I didn't think they'd ever be very common, and I like stuff that's fairly ubiquitous, for parts and such.
Watch out Clarksville, TN.! :)
