Hey guys,
I've been with an HH-60G/HC-130 rescue squadron for the past 14 years. Here's the deal. If your doing an MH-60G then go right ahead with installing the .50 cals. If you're doing an HH-60G, leave them off. The HH-60G is simply a rescue version of an MH-60G. When the 55th SOS went away a few years ago, so did the only MH-60G's. Their helo's went to various rescue squadrons. This shows a simple fact, and that is that the MH-60G and HH-60G are basically the same with the same systems. Especially since all HH-60G's now have FLIR etc... Truth be known, the SOS birds and rescue birds both did the same missions...Special Ops support and Rescue, the only difference was which one was the primary mission, and which one was secondary mission. It was a 50-50 deal anyway you look at it.
As far as the .50 cal's go, the only time I ever seen them installed was at the tactics center down at Nellis AFB Nevada, with the 422 TES. They were the ones that came up with the idea for the high bird to have the .50's along with the GAU-2B miniguns, to act as a heavy cover ship for the low bird (pick-up bird). The idea was that the .50 cals would extend the range that the GAU-2's didn't have (especially in the sand box), and to add a semi-hard target capability.
Truth be known, I've never seen this done operationally in any MH-60G and I can tell you that we don't currently employ the .50 cal's in our HH-60G's.
In fact, the only .50 cal's we have in our armory are the .50 cal Barrett sniper rifles we have in our PJ section.
Just tryin to help,
I'll see if I have any shots from Afghanistan showing our GAU-2B's and the associated feed trays. If so I'll e-mail em to ya.