Best dogfight gun?

In message , Alan Minyard
writes
Much better to go with an M-61 variant that actually works, is combat proven,
and has a useful rate of fire.

Trouble is, this gets you back where the US was in 1950; the M3 .50" was
a superb gun in terms of reliability, ballistics and rate of fire and
was a thoroughly proven weapon. Trouble is, nobody convinced the MiG-15s
of that fact, so they soaked up a _lot_ of hits where a larger-calibre
weapon would have made the F-86 versus MiG-15 kill ratio even _more_
impressive.


--
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

On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 00:29:04 +0000, "Paul J. Adam" wrote:

In message , Alan Minyard
writes
Much better to go with an M-61 variant that actually works, is combat proven,
and has a useful rate of fire.

Trouble is, this gets you back where the US was in 1950; the M3 .50" was
a superb gun in terms of reliability, ballistics and rate of fire and
was a thoroughly proven weapon. Trouble is, nobody convinced the MiG-15s
of that fact, so they soaked up a _lot_ of hits where a larger-calibre
weapon would have made the F-86 versus MiG-15 kill ratio even _more_
impressive.

And who out there is going to use significant numbers of unreliable, heavy, slow
cannon to oppose a US Force? The rate of fire of the .50 was not enough to
make up for the somewhat smaller calibre, that is not the case with the M-61.

Al Minyard

Alan Minyard wrote in message . ..
On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 00:29:04 +0000, "Paul J. Adam" wrote:

In message , Alan Minyard
writes
Much better to go with an M-61 variant that actually works, is combat proven,
and has a useful rate of fire.

Trouble is, this gets you back where the US was in 1950; the M3 .50" was
a superb gun in terms of reliability, ballistics and rate of fire and
was a thoroughly proven weapon. Trouble is, nobody convinced the MiG-15s
of that fact, so they soaked up a _lot_ of hits where a larger-calibre
weapon would have made the F-86 versus MiG-15 kill ratio even _more_
impressive.

And who out there is going to use significant numbers of unreliable, heavy, slow
cannon to oppose a US Force? The rate of fire of the .50 was not enough to
make up for the somewhat smaller calibre, that is not the case with the M-61.

Possibly, possibly not. The bigger the target is, the more damage you
have to inflict to down it. A MiG-15 weighed under 3,800 kg empty, a
Su-27 around 18,000 kg - nearly five times as much. A 20mm shell
weighs only just over twice as much as a .50 bullet. You can double
its effectiveness in recognition of the HEI content, but even so you
are still left with a pretty even match between the .5/MiG-15 and
20mm/Su-27 in terms of destructive effect compared with target weight.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Discussion forum at: http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/

On 9 Dec 2003 13:40:45 -0800, (Tony Williams) wrote:

Alan Minyard wrote in message . ..
On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 00:29:04 +0000, "Paul J. Adam" wrote:

In message , Alan Minyard
writes
Much better to go with an M-61 variant that actually works, is combat proven,
and has a useful rate of fire.

Trouble is, this gets you back where the US was in 1950; the M3 .50" was
a superb gun in terms of reliability, ballistics and rate of fire and
was a thoroughly proven weapon. Trouble is, nobody convinced the MiG-15s
of that fact, so they soaked up a _lot_ of hits where a larger-calibre
weapon would have made the F-86 versus MiG-15 kill ratio even _more_
impressive.

And who out there is going to use significant numbers of unreliable, heavy, slow
cannon to oppose a US Force? The rate of fire of the .50 was not enough to
make up for the somewhat smaller calibre, that is not the case with the M-61.

Possibly, possibly not. The bigger the target is, the more damage you
have to inflict to down it. A MiG-15 weighed under 3,800 kg empty, a
Su-27 around 18,000 kg - nearly five times as much. A 20mm shell
weighs only just over twice as much as a .50 bullet. You can double
its effectiveness in recognition of the HEI content, but even so you
are still left with a pretty even match between the .5/MiG-15 and
20mm/Su-27 in terms of destructive effect compared with target weight.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Discussion forum at: http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/

Are you familiar with the concept of guided missiles? If you get into gun range
you have already screwed the pooch. The gun is a last ditch, desperation
weapon in ACM, wasting airframe volume and weight on a honking great,
slow, unreliable gun is not a wise trade off.

Al Minyard

"Alan Minyard" wrote in message
news
On 9 Dec 2003 13:40:45 -0800, (Tony
Williams) wrote:

Alan Minyard wrote in message
. ..
On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 00:29:04 +0000, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:

In message , Alan Minyard
writes
Much better to go with an M-61 variant that actually works, is combat
proven,
and has a useful rate of fire.

Trouble is, this gets you back where the US was in 1950; the M3 .50"
was
a superb gun in terms of reliability, ballistics and rate of fire and
was a thoroughly proven weapon. Trouble is, nobody convinced the
MiG-15s
of that fact, so they soaked up a _lot_ of hits where a larger-calibre
weapon would have made the F-86 versus MiG-15 kill ratio even _more_
impressive.

And who out there is going to use significant numbers of unreliable,
heavy, slow
cannon to oppose a US Force? The rate of fire of the .50 was not enough
to
make up for the somewhat smaller calibre, that is not the case with the
M-61.

Possibly, possibly not. The bigger the target is, the more damage you
have to inflict to down it. A MiG-15 weighed under 3,800 kg empty, a
Su-27 around 18,000 kg - nearly five times as much. A 20mm shell
weighs only just over twice as much as a .50 bullet. You can double
its effectiveness in recognition of the HEI content, but even so you
are still left with a pretty even match between the .5/MiG-15 and
20mm/Su-27 in terms of destructive effect compared with target weight.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Discussion forum at: http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/

Are you familiar with the concept of guided missiles? If you get into gun
range
you have already screwed the pooch. The gun is a last ditch, desperation
weapon in ACM, wasting airframe volume and weight on a honking great,
slow, unreliable gun is not a wise trade off.

Yeah, a terrible tradeoff...right up to the point where you (or, more
accurately those you are supporting below who are locked in a very nasty
"knife" fight that precludes use of JDAM or an LGB) need it, as was found
during Anaconda.

Brooks


Al Minyard

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 14:53:47 GMT, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:


"Alan Minyard" wrote in message
news
Are you familiar with the concept of guided missiles? If you get into gun
range you have already screwed the pooch. The gun is a last ditch, desperation
weapon in ACM, wasting airframe volume and weight on a honking great,
slow, unreliable gun is not a wise trade off.

Yeah, a terrible tradeoff...right up to the point where you (or, more
accurately those you are supporting below who are locked in a very nasty
"knife" fight that precludes use of JDAM or an LGB) need it, as was found
during Anaconda.

Brooks

The more things change, the more they remain the same. I've only
opined once in this long thread, but thought I'd jump in again after
this.

Some points:

1. The M-61, with roughly fifty years of experience is a reliable gun.
It's been modded and carried in a lot of different systems and made a
number of A/A kills.

A.) It doesn't jam. (It is possible, but it definitely isn't
common.)

B.) The the internal gun and several pod variants are linkless
feed. Some pods are link-fed.

C.) Spin-up time is virtually negligible. Consider that in the
F-105, the barrel in which the cartridge was sparked was still
internal, meaning the gun must rotate to the exposed barrel position
before the bullet leaves the barrel. Pass through of unfired rounds
on spin-up/down was usually counted as six. On scored strafe, the
rounds limiter was traditionally set at 150 round. With that, you
could get four or five strafe passes. A good shooter could score 80%
or higher out of rounds fired and every pass counted those six unfired
rounds. That means spin up is virtually instantaneous. Trigger squeeze
to release on strafe was taught to be .5 seconds. Good strafers could
get a shorter burst. Spin up is negligible.

D.) Projectile size/payload is important, but a trade-off.
Yes, a kill with a 37mm hit is more likely than a 20mm hit. But, if I
can't carry enough projectiles to give me a good density or chance to
hit, then the higher Pk is meaningless.

2. Dogfighting, meaning one-v-one maneuvering to a gun kill is a
foolish endeavor. You might wind up there, but you should studiously
avoid it. Once there, shoot and scoot. This isn't an airshow display
and no one but the survivor will recount the aeronautical skill
displayed. Shoot with missiles. Shoot at the maximum range. Get the
kill confirmed by AWACS.

3. The final insert by Brooks is irrelevant to the discussion. The
question has been about guns and air/air. The question of optimum CAS
weapon isn't trivial and my reply shouldn't be taken as one more
evidence of the AF aversion to support of ground troops. There is
NOTHING more important. But:

A.) First, support of ground troops involves keeping enemy
aircraft from being a player. We've done that successfully in every
conflict since WW II.

B.) CAS does not have to be fifty feet overhead with
snake/nape on "enemy in the wire". It can evolve to that scenario but
doesn't happen as often as common perception would think.

C.) Modern stand-off weapons provide equal or greater
accuracy than close-in laydown and without either jeopardizing the
delivery aircraft or warning the target to hunker down.

D.) While no one can put a value on the life of one American
soldier, a cost/benefit analysis of what strafe can do compared to the
risk involved usually mitigates against strafe being a primary tactic.
It's great for SAR and can be effective on close-in CAS, but it's
better done with an A-10 type system than an A/A optimized platform
(which was what the thread has been talking about.)

E.) While the guy on the ground may be firmly (and rightly)
convinced that his battle is the most important, the commanders must
allocate resources based on priorities which often don't have as much
emotion attached. Getting strafe to the troops in Anaconda wasn't a
readily available option.

F.) Good Forward Observers (FACs or AOs) should be calling
early for support. Good FOs should be GPS and Laser equipped and
getting the job done well before the more spectacular troops in the
wire scenario occurs. JDAMs et. al. are a much better choice. Bigger
payload, greater effect, better accuracy than strafe, more economical,
etc.

At least, those are some of my impressions on the argument.

"Ed Rasimus" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 14:53:47 GMT, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:


"Alan Minyard" wrote in message
news
Are you familiar with the concept of guided missiles? If you get into
gun
range you have already screwed the pooch. The gun is a last ditch,
desperation
weapon in ACM, wasting airframe volume and weight on a honking great,
slow, unreliable gun is not a wise trade off.

Yeah, a terrible tradeoff...right up to the point where you (or, more
accurately those you are supporting below who are locked in a very nasty
"knife" fight that precludes use of JDAM or an LGB) need it, as was found
during Anaconda.

Brooks

The more things change, the more they remain the same. I've only
opined once in this long thread, but thought I'd jump in again after
this.

Some points:

snip good info


3. The final insert by Brooks is irrelevant to the discussion.

When the comment is made quite emphatically that no gun should be included
in the newer aircraft, by more than one poster, I disagree with your
conclusion of irrelevance.

The
question has been about guns and air/air. The question of optimum CAS
weapon isn't trivial and my reply shouldn't be taken as one more
evidence of the AF aversion to support of ground troops. There is
NOTHING more important. But:

A.) First, support of ground troops involves keeping enemy
aircraft from being a player. We've done that successfully in every
conflict since WW II.

That is only one aspect of support of ground troops. And if anything an
increasingly *less* important one at that--note that we have not faced a
significant air threat to our ground troops since WWII, Ed.


B.) CAS does not have to be fifty feet overhead with
snake/nape on "enemy in the wire". It can evolve to that scenario but
doesn't happen as often as common perception would think.

But it does happen, period. Did it happen during Anaconda or not? The
reports I read said it did--feel free to correct that representation.


C.) Modern stand-off weapons provide equal or greater
accuracy than close-in laydown and without either jeopardizing the
delivery aircraft or warning the target to hunker down.

And what about when the threat you are engaging is well within the danger
close margin? If it comes down to the gun as the best available support
option versus having the CAS folks say, "Sorry, we can't do anything since
we don't have guns, but we wish you the best of luck and will be thinking
kind thoughts of you...", I'd take the former, thank you. Luckily, the USAF
seems to share that view.


D.) While no one can put a value on the life of one American
soldier, a cost/benefit analysis of what strafe can do compared to the
risk involved usually mitigates against strafe being a primary tactic.

Nobody has said it should be a *primary* tactic.

It's great for SAR and can be effective on close-in CAS, but it's
better done with an A-10 type system than an A/A optimized platform
(which was what the thread has been talking about.)

As to "what this thread has been talking about", this thread has also the
comment, "Air-to-ground, guns pull you into IR-SAM range and even for A-10s
that isn't healthy." And the fact is that the majority of CAS missions are
being flown by F-15E's, F-16's, F/A-18's, and most likely in the future by
platforms like the F-35 and even (gasp!) the F/A-22, not by A-10's. See
below for the types of aircraft flying strafe during Anaconda.


E.) While the guy on the ground may be firmly (and rightly)
convinced that his battle is the most important, the commanders must
allocate resources based on priorities which often don't have as much
emotion attached. Getting strafe to the troops in Anaconda wasn't a
readily available option.

It wasn't?! Reports I read indicated it actually occurred, so I wonder how
you determine it "wasn't a readily available option"?

"I had an aircraft overhead carrying 500-pound bombs, but the 'bad guys'
were too close to our position to drop that much ammo without risking our
lives. I waved the pilot off the bomb run. I had him come around and strafe
the area with guns," said the sergeant.
(www.af.mil/news/May2002/n20020529_0868.shtml )

"Then F-15s were overhead and the combat controller was directing them to
the enemy according to my
instructions. I told the combat controller to have the F-15s to strafe the
bunker and have them come in from our right to our left....I told him to
clear them and the rounds hit right by the bunker. I told him to have them
do that over and over again. I think the gun runs were made by both F-15s
and F-16s." (globalspecops.com/sts.html )

Go to Google and search based upon "Operation Anaconda strafe" and you can
find quite a few specific reports.


F.) Good Forward Observers (FACs or AOs) should be calling
early for support. Good FOs should be GPS and Laser equipped and
getting the job done well before the more spectacular troops in the
wire scenario occurs. JDAMs et. al. are a much better choice. Bigger
payload, greater effect, better accuracy than strafe, more economical,
etc.

That is all great and is what we'd *like* to see happen--but as we saw in
Anaconda, it doesn't always flesh out that way. One of the best qualities of
a first-class military is recognition of the importance of
flexibility--taking the strafe capability away from the aircraft that
perform most of the CAS does little to enhance that quality. I hope you are
not arguing that would be the way to go.

Brooks


At least, those are some of my impressions on the argument.

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 14:53:47 GMT, "Kevin Brooks" wrote:


"Alan Minyard" wrote in message
news
On 9 Dec 2003 13:40:45 -0800, (Tony
Williams) wrote:

Alan Minyard wrote in message
...
On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 00:29:04 +0000, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:

In message , Alan Minyard
writes
Much better to go with an M-61 variant that actually works, is combat
proven,
and has a useful rate of fire.

Trouble is, this gets you back where the US was in 1950; the M3 .50"
was
a superb gun in terms of reliability, ballistics and rate of fire and
was a thoroughly proven weapon. Trouble is, nobody convinced the
MiG-15s
of that fact, so they soaked up a _lot_ of hits where a larger-calibre
weapon would have made the F-86 versus MiG-15 kill ratio even _more_
impressive.

And who out there is going to use significant numbers of unreliable,
heavy, slow
cannon to oppose a US Force? The rate of fire of the .50 was not enough
to
make up for the somewhat smaller calibre, that is not the case with the
M-61.

Possibly, possibly not. The bigger the target is, the more damage you
have to inflict to down it. A MiG-15 weighed under 3,800 kg empty, a
Su-27 around 18,000 kg - nearly five times as much. A 20mm shell
weighs only just over twice as much as a .50 bullet. You can double
its effectiveness in recognition of the HEI content, but even so you
are still left with a pretty even match between the .5/MiG-15 and
20mm/Su-27 in terms of destructive effect compared with target weight.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Discussion forum at: http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/

Are you familiar with the concept of guided missiles? If you get into gun
range
you have already screwed the pooch. The gun is a last ditch, desperation
weapon in ACM, wasting airframe volume and weight on a honking great,
slow, unreliable gun is not a wise trade off.

Yeah, a terrible tradeoff...right up to the point where you (or, more
accurately those you are supporting below who are locked in a very nasty
"knife" fight that precludes use of JDAM or an LGB) need it, as was found
during Anaconda.

Brooks

In which case an M-61 works quite well.

Al Minyard

In article ,
Alan Minyard wrote:

Are you familiar with the concept of guided missiles? If you get into
gun range you have already screwed the pooch. The gun is a last
ditch, desperation weapon in ACM, wasting airframe volume and weight
on a honking great, slow, unreliable gun is not a wise trade off.

Comments nearly identical to the one above were very popular in the
early 1960s. And then we got into a real shooting war, and pilots
suddenly needed guns again.

Yep, McNamara is still influencing military thought. I was sure we'd
gotten over that, but what goes around, comes around.

It's funny to hear someone call a gun "unreliable," since the failure
rate for modern aircraft guns is *miniscule*...

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

In message , Chad Irby
writes
In article ,
Alan Minyard wrote:
Are you familiar with the concept of guided missiles? If you get into
gun range you have already screwed the pooch. The gun is a last
ditch, desperation weapon in ACM, wasting airframe volume and weight
on a honking great, slow, unreliable gun is not a wise trade off.

Comments nearly identical to the one above were very popular in the
early 1960s. And then we got into a real shooting war, and pilots
suddenly needed guns again.

It's an interesting area to actually analyse, particularly when
comparing USAF and USN performance: in Linebacker the USAF shot down
forty-eight MiGs for twenty-four air-to-air losses, while the USN lost
four and scored 24 kills. More interesting yet, the Navy's fighters met
MiGs twenty-six times, for a .92 probability of killing a MiG and a .15
chance of losing one of their own; the USAF had eighty-two engagements,
for .58 kills per engagement but .29 losses.[1]

Sounds abstract? The services were using the same aircraft,
near-identical missiles (Sparrows and different models of Sidewinder),
but the USAF's F-4Ds and F-4Es had guns (pods for the Ds, internal for
the Es) supposedly as a solution to the problems encountered during
Rolling Thunder. Yet they were twice as likely to be shot down and
barely half as likely to kill, as the gunless Navy fighters. (Only seven
of the forty-eight USAF Linebacker kills were achieved with guns,
despite the efforts made to fit them)

Yep, McNamara is still influencing military thought. I was sure we'd
gotten over that, but what goes around, comes around.

"We're not training our crews properly, aren't using our weapons
correctly, and are employing poor tactics that make us very vulnerable"
is much less palatable than "the only problem is the aircraft imposed on
us doesn't have a gun!"

Note that the missiles have improved very significantly since 1972,
while the M61 - though a fine weapon -has had only incremental
modifications.

[1] Stats from "Clashes" by Marshal Michel III
--
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