ISTEC Services Limited, the British company with 35 years of operationally proven experience in the design, manufacture and supply of complex weapon integration solutions for military platforms, is delivering the first production shipsets (a shipset is a left and right gun mount pair) for the new United States Air Force (USAF) Grey Wolf Helicopter. The USAF Grey Wolf helicopter is a Boeing led programme for the replacement of the famous, but aging, UH-1N Huey helicopter and is built on a Leonardo MH-139A platform. ISTEC has recently delivered the first shipsets to Leonardo and the USAF took delivery of the first low-rate production Grey Wolf helicopter in August 2024.
The Grey Wolf offers significant improvements in terms of speed, range, and payload capacity compared to the Huey. It also features modern avionics, defensive systems, and a more robust airframe, making it suitable for a wide range of missions. The ISTEC weapons mount contract was originally awarded in 2018 and following prototype design and customer testing, to ensure the maximum arcs, ease of use and air safety compliance, final design approval was granted in 2020. Full production started in 2023, and following the delivery of the first shipsets, the remainder of the contract will be aligned with the wider programme delivery schedule.
ISTEC has extensive experience in providing weapons integration solutions for the Land, Sea and Air domains. However, there were many additional elements to the Grey Wolf project such as an external mounting frame that required significant additional design input from the ISTEC team. All the Grey Wolf components are manufactured with a ‘cradle to grave’ traceability process to ensure all raw materials sourced are to aerospace release, with full audit back to the mill, regular composition testing to ensure material alloying elements are above specification and thereby ensuring that the gun mounts meet the rigorous manufacturing standards required to be classed as airworthy and type certified.
Mick Coulson, Manager Director at ISTEC said, “This has been a significant project for ISTEC, supporting a major helicopter replacement programme for the USAF, that we have been privileged to have been involved with from the very start. ISTEC is well known for our universal gun mount systems, especially on vehicles and ships, but I am extremely proud of the design and engineering expertise that has gone into producing this aviation specific system for the Grey Wolf, clearly demonstrating the universal benefits of using our weapon integration systems across all domains.”