Avengers 'gun up' for Iraq duty
By Skip Vaughn
April 25, 2005
REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. (Army News Service, April 25, 2005) -- An Army unit preparing to deploy knew its Avenger air defense vehicles weren’t built for ground combat in Iraq, so the Soldiers asked for help.
The Cruise Missile Defense Systems Project Office and prime contractor Boeing delivered.
A six-man team went to Kuwait and modified eight Avenger vehicles for the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment’s Air Defense Artillery Battery which had deployed from Fort Carson, Colo. A modification job expected to take two weeks only took two days, thanks to the team members’ long hours and diligence.
“There was a lot of behind-the-scenes effort going on both here in the project office and at Boeing to make this happen in such a short period of time,” test engineer Harry Lockwood of the CMDS Project Office said. He was on the team along with Boeing workers Jerry Wilson, Steve Milly, Harry Chandler and John Lose; and Jeff King of CAS Inc.
King was already in Kuwait supporting an Integrated Materiel Management Center mission and Lockwood asked him to stay for this Avenger gun-up effort. Wilson and Lockwood arrived at Camp Buehring in Kuwait on March 9 and the others got there March 15.
An M3P 50-caliber machine gun is mounted on an Avenger vehicle, but normally Soldiers can’t fire it toward the vehicle’s front at an elevation less than 10 degrees. The team members changed that for the unit.
“We removed the right missile pod and we moved the M3P gun system up to the missile pod’s position,” Lockwood said. “This now allows 360 degrees firing at any angle or elevation. We also increased the magazine capacity from 250 rounds to 600 rounds.
“The biggest reason why this was important to them is their mission over there is not an air defense mission. Their mission is for ground support and convoy escort.”
Boeing had developed the modification concept. The project office received an urgent needs statement from the unit because its ground defense mission required additional ammunition capacity and the ability to engage targets at 360 degrees at any elevation angle.
The team modified the unit’s eight Avenger vehicles and furnished one complete spare kit. The six worked two 18-hour days to get the job done. On the third day, they trained 34 Soldiers on the equipment with Wilson serving as the training leader. They did a live-fire exercise with the Soldiers on March 25. The Boeing workers returned to the states March 24, and Lockwood and King came back March 27.
The Soldiers provided positive feedback on their anonymous written critique sheets.
“Thank you all so much,” wrote one. “You’ve given all of us the confidence in our weaponry to go home to our loved ones. You’re all great Americans. God bless.”
“Training was excellent,” wrote another Soldier.
“They pushed forward into Iraq on April 1,” said Lockwood, who served in the Marines from 1984-96. “That was why we had such limited time.”
Modifying the unit’s Avenger air defense vehicles “greatly enhances their capability at defeating ground targets in their current role,” he said. “Compared to other Humvee-mounted machine guns, our system is gyro-stabilized with a man in the rotating turret which makes it much more adept at engaging targets while on the move.”
Support for the Avenger gun-up effort also came from the Logistics Assistance Office in country and from the Camp Buehring command staff.
“This is but an example of how CMDS is contributing to what all the project offices are doing to fulfill additional warfighting capability,” said Lt. Col. Walt Jones, product manager for CMDS missiles and platforms.
(Editor’s note: Skip Vaughn is editor of the Redstone Rocket newspaper.)
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