:: Community Forums ›

While we were training up for our deployment there was a lot of news about a lack of armored vehicles in Iraq. Because of this someone came up with the "brilliant" idea to modify the OSTs with a real .50 cal. machine gun in the place of the sewar pipe for us to use in Iraq.

However, in the end there were several factors that doomed the program. Apparently, it came out in tests that the elevation motor was insuficient to raise the .50 cal. Also, there were questions about the effectiveness of the armor on the turret. After all, the hull may have been a regular '113, but the "armor" on the turret was purely to protect the crew in the turret from rollovers and not designed to take a blast. Furthermore, most of us had a big issue with the fact that the ammo for the .50 cal. could only be re-loaded from the outside of the vehicle, exposing the crew in a firefight. With a growing laundry list of problems that kept pushing back it's development schedule, coupled with its redundancy due to the rapidly increasing number of up-armored humvees in Iraq, the program was canceled with only a single prototype produced.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the one and only prototype of a "combat capable" OST:

This is a close-up of the .50 cal. mount. The two pins that would hold the machine gun in place are visible, with the ammo can on the far side of the mount. The .50 cal. was aimed via a fire-controll system adopted from a Bradley Armored Fighting Vehicle.

One of my favorite comments about the concept came from Chapell, one of the guys in my platoon: "They do realise that these are toy tanks, don't they?"

Thank God we didn't have to use these things in Iraq.

The driver's hatch looks like the type used on the M-901 Improved TOW and the FIST-V.

The existence of the modified OSV was somewhat of a shock to me because up to that point the combat OSV was nothing more than a rumor and I was beginning to wonder if it even existed.

Since that day I have been looking all over the Internet for more pictures of it and maybe some additional information on it because, for some reason, the vehicle fascinates me. Until today, however, I was convinced that the pictures I had took were the only ones to be had. This was until you gave me the link to your message board. I was browsing through the forum and found a thread titled "Abrams and strange 50cal mount". I clicked on it and instantly recognized the CSAMM mount as the same kind of mount on the modified OSV. I clicked on the link to the manufacturers web site, found their photo gallery and sure enough there were two very high resolution photos of the OSV with an M2 in the mount on the Tank and AFV gunnery range at Ft. Irwin. I am including these photos as an attachment.

The manufacturer's web site is: www.gunmasters.com

In hindsight I doubt that if the rumor that the elevation motor couldn't handle the .50 cal. were true that this is the reason the program was canceled. Most likely it was the fact that while the modification was being tested, armor kits as well as purpose built up-armor humvees were rapidly being fielded to Iraq. In the end, the need for the modification was outpaced by other outside events.