Pavehawk internal hoist

Sorry for taking this long to chime in guys, but things went dwonhill with my dad. Bloodclots in each lung meant I speant 12 hours on Easter Sunday in the ER.

Anyway, Grant and Gino are spot on!
Space has always been a premium on the Pavehawk, basically since it was never really designed to be a Rescue bird. Any type of weapon system in the rear door area makes my job (operating in and out of the bird) pretty tough to downright impossible. Speed is the key to any CSAR or SOF Infil/Exfil. Not to mention the weight and aforementioned space constraints. She is a powerful bird, fast and built like a brick (rather concrete) Sh@t House but when we load all the necessary mission gear she just doesn't have a lot of room inside. Hell, that's the main reason for the most current Phase III of the Block 152 upgrades...namely the external gun mounts and ammo bins. There are three weapons systems I have seen operationally deployed on the Pavehawk. Namely the M-140, the GAU-2B (USAF for minigun), and the .50 cal. We operated for a little while in Afghanistan with the M-240, but primarily used the GAU-2B in each window. Sometimes you'll see a 50 in one window and a GAU-2B in the other. The 50 is added to give more of a hard target penetration weapon and to add a little more stand off range to supress threats. The problem is that now you have two types of ammo to store, and two very drastically different cyclic rates. What if one runs out before the other? Now you've got one side of the bird undefended. Anyway, you balance all of that with the needs of the mission...environment (high altitude, desert, etc..), customers, objective and you come up with a loadout. Sometimes it becomes an AOR specific thing. Sometimes it's a mission specific thing.

Hope that helps.

Oh yeah...The 50's in the doors was a 442 TES deal out of Nellis, where they evaluated and approved the concept for operations. However, that is the only place that I've ever seen them mounted (for CAPEX's) and I've NEVER seen them like that operationally in the fleet. The 442nd is also the only place you'll see the center nose mounted radar (like the MH-60L), but I'll tell ya this...that's a hell of a lot better place to mount them than they are now...especially here in Alaska. It's pretty easy to ding that thing...and we won't even get into the FLIR location!

thanks Heavy and Trigger. Yes, i hope to see Salbando around here and explain us something about pavehawk weapons config. I would like to see that web when it will be finished, sound really interesting. If you think i can help, just let me know.


thanks a lot for the replies

Chop

Lately a few Pave Hawks have replaced the miniguns in the windows with .50 cals (but still nothing in the doors, so leave the door gun mounts off). It's not common but it has happened.

Davis-Monthan AFB
16 Aug 2004

I'll mention this for Sal to verify, but I think that they may at times mount a .50 on one side and a mini on the other

Over the course of my Pave Hawk build I've learned just how vauge and sometimes downright inaccurate some of these kits are. With depot maint, block upgrades and mission configurations, Pave Hawks change quite often and it's not uncommon to have two even within the same unit look different. Gino's building a late model Pave Hawk as am I, yet they will be very different as we're modeling different aircraft. For an accurate HH-60G your best bet would be to model a specific airframe. The good news is Sal and I are (slowly) developing a website for all things Pave Hawk, PJ and Hercules that'll be a reference and resource for modelers.

I have been told by our resident Pavehawk expert, SalBando, who is a Pavehawk crewman in the AK ANG, that the internal hoist is still carried on occasion and was more common on older Pavehawks before the external hoist was installed (as in your picture above). They are still required to train with it annually as well, and that is about the only time they mount it. The external hoist is just easier to use, and internal space is at a premium already without taking a big chunk of it up with the internal hoist.

As to the Miniguns, they are usually only mounted in the gunners positions. The setup in the Academy Pavehawk with .50 cals in the doors is not a common setup, due to a few reasons. First is again space, with all the guns mounted and ammo boxes and ammo for them, there is not much room for anything else inside. Also, the birds with all guns mounted are only good in a gunship role and not great for pilot extraction. This limits its role and makes it hard if another bird is downed or has to pull off the mission and the gunship now has to be the pickup bird. If you need that much firepower for cover, usually fast movers will provide cover for the mission. Hope that make sense.

I'm sure Sal will come up and answer better than I can.