The Mk-38 25mm Chain Gun known as "Bushmaster," is a navalized version of the "Chain Gun".
It is an externally-powered weapon developed by Hughes for the US Army as the Mk-242. The
Mk-38 replaced the obsolete 20mm Mk-67 guns, which had high maintenance requirements.
The Army's Mk-242 gun entered service in the 1970th followed by the Navy's Mk-38 in 1988.
Since then, the Mk-38 has served aboard a variety of combatant and auxiliary ships in escort mission
for the Middle East Force operations as well as during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm.
The Mk-38 25mm Machine Gun is an automatic gun system that provides ships with a defensive and
offensive gunfire capability for the engagement of a variety of surface targets. This gun is
designed to provide close range defence against patrol boats, swimmers, floating mines, and
various targets ashore including enemy personnel, lightly armored vehicles and terrorist threats.
It took a long time for this gun to be accepted into USN ships.
The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) authorised their usage in 1977 to replace old 20 mm Mark
16 guns that were difficult to maintain and used non-standard NATO ammunition.
However, it was not until the summer of 1987 that the gun was operationally examined for
naval usage. Then, because of the pressing need for such weapons in the Persian Gulf,
the weapon's manufacture was substantially increased. The Naval Weapons Support Center Crane,
which designed the Mark 88 mounting, was responsible for most of the essential work.
The weapons are kept in a rotatable pool, available for temporary installation on various
deploying ships and permanent installation on certain amphibious and auxiliary ships
and Coast Guard cutters. In the event of a major malfunction, the gun can be removed
from the mount and another one installed in its place in five minutes by two personnel.
As the Mark 88 is manually trained and lacks stabilization, target tracking is difficult when
the MGS is used on a small combatant ship. As a result, the Navy started a program to develop a
low-cost, remotely controlled and stabilized version designated as the Mark 38 Mod 2.
Several improvements compared to the Mark 38 include an on-mount electro-optical sight,
improved ammunition loading, improved man/machine interface, an embedded trainer and ship roll
compensation. The new system has the capability to have two different ammunition types loaded
and selecting between them from the remote console. The remote operator console is a
12-inch color LCD equipped with 12 soft keys. The picture on the computer screen is extremely clear,
displaying a real-time, 360-degree, 6,400 - 7,300 m picture.
In 2003, the Chief of Naval Operations documented the requirement and directed the development and
fielding of the MK 38 Mod 2. Installed aboard CG, DDG, FFG, LSD, LPD, LHD, LHA,
LCC, PC, OSV, and USCG FRC class ships and planned for installation aboard CVN,
AS, and MK VI class ships, the MK 38 Mod 2 MGS is a low cost, stabilized
self defense weapon system that dramatically improves ships' self-defense capabilities.
As the last update, the United Defense was granted a $395.5 million contract to
manufacture the Mark 38 Mod 2 missile system in 2004. The contract lasted until 2010,
with the first eight units and spares arriving in 2004, 13 in 2005, and 67 in 2006.
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