"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
In message , Hog Driver
writes
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul J. Adam"

snip


I think we both know that the possibility of air-to-air gun fighting
today
is highly unlikely. Lessons learned from the past would behoove us to
have
them on our jets, or in the case of the A-10, use them to really screw up
the bad guys on the ground.

I hate to be contrarian... all right, I don't. I _like_ being
contrarian. Lessons from the past suggest that getting missiles working
and crews trained is a better path to dead enemies for air-to-air work.
Air-to-ground, guns pull you into IR-SAM range and even for A-10s that
isn't healthy.

Paul, doing away with a tool from your kit without a compelling reason to do
so, along with having a danged foolproof method of handling the situations
that said tool could handle, is unwise. As to air-to-ground use, I believe
the resident Strike Eagle driver has already provided a reason for retaining
a strafe capability, i.e., recent operations in Afghanistan. During Anaconda
the need for up-close-and-personal support (read that as well within the
danger-close margin) was reported. You can't *always* use your LGB's or
JDAM's, which is why the grunts liked the cannon armed aircraft during that
fight. Yes, it brings the air in within MANPADS range--but that is a risk
those guys are willing to accept when the fight on the ground gets hairy
(and thank goodness for that). Arguing that they can't (or never should)
face such a risk is a bit illogical--if all services followed that thought
process, we'd stop issuing rifles to infantrymen because in order to use one
you have to close to within the effective range of the other guy's weapons.


The initial question asked was how multi-barrel and single barrel cannons
stack up, and the subject is best dogfight guns. Just because the A-10
is
built around the GAU-8 doesn't mean it is any less of an effective
dogfight
gun, especially with the high rates of turn the A-10 is capable of, small
bullet dispersion over the tac effective range, and relatively high rate
of
fire.

Sure, just as a modern bayonet is a miserable weapon compared to a Light
Infantry sword (a proper sword that just happened to have fittings to
mount onto a Baker rifle... beat _that_ for close quarters combat! Other
than by eschewing melee and throwing in a grenade, or shooting the
enemy, or otherwise cheating...)

One 2Lt Patton wrote the US Army's last swordsmanship manual... doesn't
make swords a useful weapon, whatever the advantages his technique had
over the enemy's _code duello_, if you find yourself trying to use a
sabre against an enemy with a pistol (or, worse, an enemy luring you
into the beaten zone of a machinegun)

But there are tasks for which that bayonet is oh-so-much better than say, an
M16A2 with state-of-the-art night optics. I saw a fair amount of peanut
butter spread with bayonets; had we had to use our M16's for that it would
have been rather messy. Now that is I admit a rather extreme example, but
again it points out the wisdom of retaining those tools we have even in the
face of longer ranged/more lethal options.

Brooks

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