Normal day to day tasks include ensuring all weapons systems are functioning properly and prepared for such evolutions as surface and air combat and exercises, as well as ensuring that the weapons are available for any law enforcement need. Gunnery Division is also responsible for providing small arms training to all Boarding Team Members.
Within Gunnery Division there are two different rates...Gunner's Mates (GM) and Fire Control Technicians (FT). Gunner's Mates primarily deal with the actual firing weapons and their associated ordnance while FT's primarily work with radar systems specifically designed for targeting and firing long range weapons.
Chief Gunner's Mate (SW) Virgil Kilpatrick, an instructor at Fleet Combat Training Center (FCTCLANT) Atlantic, has spent the last three years providing Sailors with skills he hoped they would never truly need -- operating and maintaining shipboard weapons systems in war.
Gunner's mates work in almost every kind of Navy environment: ship, shore, in the United States or overseas. Their work and specialties may involve indoor or outdoor situations, clean or dirty work, deck or shop, and any kind of climate or temperature. They work alone or with others, independently or closely supervised. Their work can be both mental and physical.
Veteran Sailors like Kilpatrick are in classrooms, laboratories and simulators, arming their students with the tools to fight terror.
According to GM1(SW) George Cumings, careless safety procedure can be a gunner's mate's deadliest enemy.
"It is important to take your time and go through all your steps, whether you're operating the gun or performing maintenance," Cumings said. "If you don't, you can get yourself -- and your shipmates -- killed."
Technology has changed the face of naval training during the past two decades. For gunner's mates, computer literacy has become nearly as important as skill with a weapon.
"Gunner's mates do a lot more than just fire guns," said Kilpatrick, a 17-year Navy veteran. "It may not seem like a technical rating, but it is."
operating and maintaining guided missile launching systems, rocket launchers, gun mounts and other ordnance systems and equipment;
training and supervising crews in the use of all types of ordnance equipment, from large caliber guns and missile systems to small arms;
stowing, securing, requisitioning and reclassifying explosives:
operating and maintaining magazine flooding and sprinkling systems;
making mechanical, electrical and electronic casualty analysis using technical publications, circuit diagrams and blueprints;
repairing, maintaining, testing and calibrating ordnance equipment;
servicing hydraulic and pneumatic systems;
repairing, maintaining, testing and calibrating microprocessing equipment;
repairing damaged hydraulic sealing surfaces, mating areas and threads;
performing mechanical wire connections including soldering; operating and maintaining night optical devices;
operating optical scanning and marking devices to label, identify and report explosives' utilization/expenditure.
And this big ship has all the latest in weapons technology: Using the MK 41 Vertical Launching System, the ship's crew can launch up to 96 missiles, including Standard surface-to-air missiles, Tomahawk surface-to-surface missiles and VLA antisubmarine missiles--64 from the back of the ship or 32 from the front. USS Bulkeley is also equipped with two MK 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapons Systems and a 5"/62 caliber deck-mounted gun, which uses Extended Range Guided Munitions projectiles and looks like a machine gun on steroids. According to one crewman, the 5"/62 is so powerful that once when it was fired from the front of the ship, he could feel his pant legs shaking, even though he was standing at the stern.
