In message , Chad Irby
writes
In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:
Chad Irby writes
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.

So you can shovel a thousand pounds of ballast into a F-16 without any
concerns?

Here's a hint - modern aircraft are more limited by fuel and payload,
than by numbers of pylons.

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.

A thousand pounds is a thousand pounds.

And especially when you consider the weight per shot (a half-dozen 20mm
bursts versus even one or two missiles) is pretty darned reasonable.

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,

Which weapons actually get the kills?

and the
increased inventory of very expensive hardware to keep checking them and
making them work.

And you don't think there's a significant overhead in keeping aircraft
guns maintained, reliable, boresighted, and (crucially) their crews
trained in their use?

Even something as simple as an AIM-9 takes a boatload
of work to keep functional, whether you fire them or not.

So does a M61.

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...

Does the "lifetime cost" of a gun system include training? Or are the
pilots supposed to just pick it up as they go?





--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk