"Chad Irby" wrote
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

If "lack of guns" is the real problem, surely gun-armed fighters are
a complete and satisfactory answer?

It's not a simple question of "lack of guns."

It's "relying on missiles 100% and not having guns when they're really
bloody useful."

We learned that lesson over 30 years ago, and a whole new generation of
bean counters are trying to resurrect the kind of silliness that the
McNamara school brought us in Vietnam...

Now, here's a question: for the 200Kg or so weight budget (I have no idea
about volume) of an internal gun and ammo tank, would you rather have 1, 2
or 3 more AIM-9Xs/ASRAAMs?

There's always a lip-curl reflex about "bean counters" but every time you
make a choice, you've rejected an alternative. There's money, weight, volume
and time budgets because all of those are fungible, exchangeable among the
possible choices.

Remove a gun and save money? Sure, but you spend that money, space, power
and weight for something else, possibly more ordnance of a different kind.
Or maybe not. Maybe more volume for better ESM or countermeasures or a lower
crap-out rate for your RADAR.

The guy who straps on the airplane (which I will never do) has to live with
those choices and he may curse the "bean counters" who made them but every
single characteristic (not just gun/no gun) within a weapons system competes
with some other alternative. The payoff for some of these trades isn't
always as obvious as a tank full of cannon rounds but it's there.