Future military fighters and guns - yes or no ?

In message , Tony
Williams writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
"Economical" is extremely dependent on assumptions: while a burst of
cannon shells is cheaper than a missile, keeping your entire fighter
force trained and ready to be proficient in gun use is not cost-free.

No it isn't - but UAVs/UCAVs are likely to proliferate rapidly, and
dealing with them is likely to shift up the scale of importance.

I'm still unconvinced that a gun (in its current incarnation) is the
best option, if that's a key driver.

550 rounds is more than many fighters carry, even when using less potent
Gatling guns. Is the problem "only guns can kill low-flying
helicopters", or "there's a need to improve capability against
low-flying helicopters"?

The A-10 was not equipped (nor are the pilots trained, AFAIK) for
air-to-air gunnery.

So? Helicopters are closer to air-to-ground strafing than air-to-air,
looking at the velocity and altitude differentials.

How many cannon rounds were fired, out of interest?

Irrelevant - the point I am making is that missiles run out very fast.

A few examples where this has befallen Western pilots would be handy. It
was a problem in Vietnam for the USAF, for example, where they were
plagued by poor reliability of the weapons and by doctrinal guidance to
volley every selected weapon at a target (so a F-4 Phantom effectively
had one Sidewinder shot and one Sparrow shot); the USN used different
doctrine based on single firings and got much better results.


A strong example for your case should be the Falklands, where the SHars
only had two AIM-9Ls apiece, yet it's an interesting commentary on
relative envelopes that there were very few (three IIRC) guns kills, one
a C-130 finished off with gunfire after Sidewinder hits and one Pucara:
though on several occasions the SHars emptied their guns at Argentine
aircraft without results (LCdrs Mike Blissett and 'Fred' Frederiksen,
and Lt. Clive Morell, all had this experience on the 21st May, for
instance: Sharkey Ward recalls firing on and missing a Turbo-Mentor, as
well as three SHars taking five firing passes to down a single Pucara;
Flight Lieutenant Dave Morgan scored two kills with two Sidewinders on
8th June, and shot his guns dry to no effect before his wingman got a
third kill with another Sidewinder...)

Having the guns along when the missiles were exhausted was no guarantee
of being able to get into range, let alone score disabling damage: with
hindsight, trading the gun pods for more fuel and twin-rail Sidewinder
launchers (giving four rather than two shots) would have been much more
effective.

Trouble is, just because _you_ are out of missiles doesn't mean the
enemy will chivalrously cease fi and it's much easier for the enemy
to get you into missile parameters, than for you to lure an enemy into a
guns shot. (Especially when you're having to break off your approaches
to evade enemy AAMs)

The Iranian F-14s made good use of their Phoenix missiles, and
Sparrows, but still ended up in gunfights on occasions and even scored
kills with the gun.

The Iranians also used human wave attacks against prepared defensive
positions, using unarmed schoolboys carrying plastic "keys to heaven" in
the first wave (they were expendable, available, and revealed the
locations of minefields and concealed bunkers for the armed fighters
following). I would be somewhat wary of taking a cue from Iranian
tactics without much more detail of the encounters involved.

Nice theories about how engagements ought to go
tend to break down in real life.

True: like the notion that any gunless fighter is doomed

If you can do all this and compute a gunnery solution, why can you not
fly a much larger guided warhead into the target from greater range than
a cannon will allow?

Because an aircraft has far more space for sensors and computing
capacity than a missile does.

But the gun is still a fixed installation and you have to point it at
where the target will be one time-of-flight after firing: and you have
to fly through the enemy's weapons envelope(s) to do so.

Given the lack of air opposition, why not use Sea Harriers with their
reliable, proven 30mm ADENs for the role? It seems more is being made of
the story than might actually exist.

The Sea Harriers have, what - two or three more years?

They were available, why weren't they used? Did nobody consider the
chances of a 'danger close'?

Then what? Do
guns suddenly stop being useful for such purposes?

They were available then - the story seems to have more agenda behind it
than it would like to admit.


--
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