Best dogfight gun?

In message , Hog Driver
writes
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul J. Adam"
That's an extremely large "if", given the extensive air-to-air sensor
suite fitted to the A-10...

Well, using AWACS and mutual support tactics, the A-10 pilots are going to
have an idea where to pick up the tally.

Again, AWACS is situation-dependent, and there's that oft-quoted
statistic about 80% of surviving pilots wondering who shot them down
(tracking that statistic to a source is probably good for a PhD thesis -
anyone up for funding it? )

Once that happens, it isn't the
best 'suite' that is going to win the fight, it's the best BFM to get to the
WEZ.

Depends what weapons the assorted combatants brought to the fight: for
many engagements, the A-10 is totally defensive and manoevering against
RWR indications. (Does it have any IRWR gear? It's a natural platform to
get some sort of missile-warning gear over RWR)

Again, for real life this isn't much of a problem because the A-10
operates in total air supremacy and has never had an enemy aircraft ever
get a chance to shoot at it (rendering the preparations of the A-10
crews to fight back untested).

Are you keeping your ordnance for this turn? How long does it take to
get the nose pointed at the target while still having time to get that
shot off? (driving your required detection range). How much airspeed do
you have left at the end of it, which has a serious effect on your
ability to escape the wingman? And what happens when you discover the
attacking aircraft was firing a missile, rather than making a gun pass?

It all depends upon the situation. Hopefully the A-10 pilot(s) pick up the
tally at least 3 or 4 miles out near 3 or 9 o'clock, coming out of a good
RMD. Then they only have slightly more than 90 degrees to get the nose to
bear. Even with all the ordnance still on the jet, at the most a six to
seven second turn in the A-10 not including reaction lag time. Again,
depending on lots of factors, they may get nose-on in time to hose off a
sidewinder and open up with the gun around or slightly inside 9,000' (no
peacetime TRs to worry about). Most likely it will be a beak-to-beak pass
with the A-10s not getting a shot off, which they will try to drive to a
one-circle if the idiot(s) hang around. If bad guy decides to go vertical,
the engaged A-10 may go with him energy dependant and hose off a sidewinder
to give him sometime to think about, even with an opening Vc. Smart A-10
driver won't continue uphill, instead try to keep tally and get a circle of
hogs going.

Good to hear some of my WAGs confirmed

I guess you could describe my position thusly... A-10s engaged by modern
fighters are in bad trouble, but have a few cards to play (low altitude,
high turn rate and large countermeasure magazines come to mind) while
they can give over-aggressive enemy fighters some very nasty problems to
solve.

If the A-10s get any ordnance off prior to the merge, it might coax the bad
guy into thinking twice about keeping his fangs out. Since the primary A-10
role is to kill them by the bushels instead of one at a time, most A-10
pilots won't hit the emer jett until they get wrapped up with the guy for
180 degrees of turn.

Do you have options short of "full jettison"? I freely confess that my
flying experience is limited to civil propjobs and computer games, but
does the A-10 have (for instance) any option to jettison A/G ordnance
while keeping outboard pylons (Sidewinders and jammer pods)?

Again, situation dependent, lots of 'what ifs' that
you can't know about until you are there.

This is too true, sadly, and imposes all sorts of limits on open debate.

In answer to your airspeed question, the A-10 will be headed downhill the
entire time to maintain corner velocity, and if he's coming out of RMD, he
should know what's coming so he'll probably be carrying extra knots for the
initial turn at the merge.

Trouble with that is, how do you get that energy back, especially if you
started out low? Bear in mind that if there are enemy fighters up and
flying, their IADS is probably still operational complete with
radar-guided SAMs.

(And, given recent experience, what if the Bad Guys have orders that
"anything you can shoot at is hostile" while their fighters have stern
orders to stay high and fast no matter how tempting the diving target?)

But then, this keeps coming back to Bad Guys who can mount a credible
air threat. Not sure where to find a likely enemy that can seriously
sustain any sort of counter-air operations against the US...

The smart A-10 pilot will be flaring and chaffing early and often in
anticipation of that missile shot you are talking about...and keeping the
jet moving.

Again, that's keeping the A-10 defensive rather than having it turn and
fight an attacking Su-27 or similar... just because

If this analysis was accurate, the F-15 and F-22 would be screaming for
27mm or 30mm guns...

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.

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)

I'd hazard that where a credible air-to-air threat might exist then the
A-10's Sidewinder and countermeasure fit becomes of more importance than
its gun loadout, however reassuring the gun is as a weapon of last
extremity.

--
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