Roughly a 20-minute drive on Kirtland Air Force Base leads to a small, two-story storage unit tucked within the mountains. It’s the first-ever aerial gunnery live-fire training facility, overseen by the 58th Special Operation Wing.
Developed in collaboration with BeaverFit USA, Gulfstream Steel & Supply and Dragonfly Energy, the $615,000 solar-powered gunnery is a full replica of aircraft electrical systems, enabling comprehensive live-fire weapons training.
The gunnery is part of a building block plan to get airmen into helicopters with as much training as possible, said Master Sgt. Garrett Clark.
“This training is all in preparation to get in the helicopter and do it,” Clark said. “Students have a ground and air phase. When you’re in a helicopter, you have a bunch of people talking to you, you’re battling the wind and you have to fire the weapon so this is not as much of a sensation overload.”
Having trainees practice at the gunnery instead of in the sky saves the base an average of $2 million annually and reduces failure rates of trainees by 10 to 20%, Clark said.
He said 20 to 30 trainees graduate each year, and two members go through the training at a time.
Aerospace and defense company Lockheed Martin owns the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk production company and also produces variations of the GAU machine gun. Lockheed instructors provide training on the machine guns.
“A lot of the training is repetition on arming and rearming the…
