In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

Chad Irby writes

But since several people have pointed out other good reasons to have
guns on fighters, and since you haven't come up with a good reason to
*not* have one (one more missile or a minute's worth of fuel aren't very
good reasons at all),

Shame that you give up a lot more than that even for a 20mm
installation.

Not really. Fuel is heavy as hell, and missiles (plus the hardpoints,
plus the fire controls for them) aren't as light as you'd think for a
useful one. Then there's the external drag and area issues. As long as
you're not hauling around GAU-8 installs, the weight isn't that extreme.
And especially when you consider the weight per shot (a half-dozen 20mm
bursts versus even one or two missiles) is pretty darned reasonable.

the only thing left is to think about cost, and
since guns for planes are a very small amount of the final sticker price
of a modern plane...

If you think that's the case, _you_ pay for integration, installation,
maintenance and training.

It adds up to a pretty decent chunk of change.

Not compared to keeping even *more* missiles in the inventory, and the
increased inventory of very expensive hardware to keep checking them and
making them work. Even something as simple as an AIM-9 takes a boatload
of work to keep functional, whether you fire them or not. And when you
*do* fire them in practice, you're burning off, in one shot, most of the
lifetime cost of a small gun system...

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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Slam on brakes accordingly.