Best dogfight gun?

In article ,
"Paul F Austin" wrote:

Now, here's a question: for the 200Kg or so weight budget (I have no idea
about volume) of an internal gun and ammo tank, would you rather have 1, 2
or 3 more AIM-9Xs/ASRAAMs?

It's not a question of "just weight," or we'd just build C-5s with a big
automated missile launcher in them.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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

"Paul F Austin" wrote in message
.. .

"Chad Irby" wrote
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

If "lack of guns" is the real problem, surely gun-armed fighters are
a complete and satisfactory answer?

It's not a simple question of "lack of guns."

It's "relying on missiles 100% and not having guns when they're really
bloody useful."

We learned that lesson over 30 years ago, and a whole new generation of
bean counters are trying to resurrect the kind of silliness that the
McNamara school brought us in Vietnam...

Now, here's a question: for the 200Kg or so weight budget (I have no idea
about volume) of an internal gun and ammo tank, would you rather have 1, 2
or 3 more AIM-9Xs/ASRAAMs?

Given that the lieklihood of us facing a credible air-to air threat is
receding, and advanced fighters alreay have a rather decent basic loadout of
AAM's, I'd think that you are better off with the gun and the additional
versatility/flexibility it accords versus a few more AAM's that don't add
anything to the aircraft's ability to react to unexpected circumstances.

Brooks


There's always a lip-curl reflex about "bean counters" but every time you
make a choice, you've rejected an alternative. There's money, weight,
volume
and time budgets because all of those are fungible, exchangeable among the
possible choices.

Remove a gun and save money? Sure, but you spend that money, space, power
and weight for something else, possibly more ordnance of a different kind.
Or maybe not. Maybe more volume for better ESM or countermeasures or a
lower
crap-out rate for your RADAR.

The guy who straps on the airplane (which I will never do) has to live
with
those choices and he may curse the "bean counters" who made them but every
single characteristic (not just gun/no gun) within a weapons system
competes
with some other alternative. The payoff for some of these trades isn't
always as obvious as a tank full of cannon rounds but it's there.

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 06:30:14 -0500, "Paul F Austin"
wrote:


"Chad Irby" wrote
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

If "lack of guns" is the real problem, surely gun-armed fighters are
a complete and satisfactory answer?

It's not a simple question of "lack of guns."

It's "relying on missiles 100% and not having guns when they're really
bloody useful."

We learned that lesson over 30 years ago, and a whole new generation of
bean counters are trying to resurrect the kind of silliness that the
McNamara school brought us in Vietnam...

Now, here's a question: for the 200Kg or so weight budget (I have no idea
about volume) of an internal gun and ammo tank, would you rather have 1, 2
or 3 more AIM-9Xs/ASRAAMs?

There's always a lip-curl reflex about "bean counters" but every time you
make a choice, you've rejected an alternative. There's money, weight, volume
and time budgets because all of those are fungible, exchangeable among the
possible choices.

Remove a gun and save money? Sure, but you spend that money, space, power
and weight for something else, possibly more ordnance of a different kind.
Or maybe not. Maybe more volume for better ESM or countermeasures or a lower
crap-out rate for your RADAR.

The guy who straps on the airplane (which I will never do) has to live with
those choices and he may curse the "bean counters" who made them but every
single characteristic (not just gun/no gun) within a weapons system competes
with some other alternative. The payoff for some of these trades isn't
always as obvious as a tank full of cannon rounds but it's there.



The thing is you can pretty much use the gun on anything. If you're
the closest aircraft to the troops on the ground and they need someone
taken off their back a strafe or two is always handy. If you've
somehow gotten in too close for an IR shot you've still got the gun.
If you want to warn an aircraft that you're serious you've got the gun
(if there aren't any tracers I don't know how useful that would be
though). It's just a nice thing to have around "just in case".

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

If "lack of guns" is the real problem, surely gun-armed fighters are
a complete and satisfactory answer?

It's not a simple question of "lack of guns."

It's "relying on missiles 100% and not having guns when they're really
bloody useful."

In other words, guns solve the problem? Not according to the facts they
don't: in fact they're pretty damn marginal (and not cheap either).

We learned that lesson over 30 years ago,

And of course, nothing has changed since then. (Well, the M61 hasn't...)

and a whole new generation of
bean counters are trying to resurrect the kind of silliness that the
McNamara school brought us in Vietnam...

Actually, one key mistake McNamara's crowd made was to extrapolate
conclusions without information. Case in point, the "get rid of guns"
idea: made sense for a fleet air defence interceptor, but not for a
general-purpose fighter when its missiles had not even been tested in
trials against manoeuvring fighter-size targets (and when the trial was
belatedly undertaken, the AIM-9B missed every time).

Once the missiles have demonstrated ~80% lethality in actual combat
against real enemies doing their best to survive, then perhaps there's
more evidence to support the analysis. Oh, I forget - they did that
twenty-one years ago.


--
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

In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

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

If "lack of guns" is the real problem, surely gun-armed fighters are
a complete and satisfactory answer?

It's not a simple question of "lack of guns."

It's "relying on missiles 100% and not having guns when they're really
bloody useful."

In other words, guns solve the problem?

They don't "solve the problem," they give you another tool to solve any
of a number of problems. Like shooting down enemy planes, shooting down
enemy UAVs without firing off missiles that you might need later, or
shooting at things on the ground.

Not according to the facts they
don't: in fact they're pretty damn marginal (and not cheap either).

Still a contention not proven. Your "facts" so far have been "guns are
useless, so there."

We learned that lesson over 30 years ago,

And of course, nothing has changed since then. (Well, the M61 hasn't...)

And neither has the Mauser, or any of the other major guns. Or the
problems they can be used to solve.

Once the missiles have demonstrated ~80% lethality in actual combat
against real enemies doing their best to survive, then perhaps there's
more evidence to support the analysis. Oh, I forget - they did that
twenty-one years ago.

What major war did we fight in 1982?

Maybe you're thinking *31* years ago, in which case you yourself noted
that the Sidewinder only manage a bit less than 50%, and the
radar-guided missiles didn't manage near that much.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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

"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
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]

Ugh! That all sounds dangerously like the "operations research", or systems
analysis, kind of numeric mumbo-jumbo so characteristic of the McNamara
era---PLEASSSE don't go there! It took us a generation to rid ourselves of
the most of the "mantle of the number crunchers" (and we were only partially
succesful--witness the continued use of the POM process in budgeting) as it
was...

Brooks

snip

On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 20:39:49 GMT, "Kevin Brooks" wrote:


"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
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]

Ugh! That all sounds dangerously like the "operations research", or systems
analysis, kind of numeric mumbo-jumbo so characteristic of the McNamara
era---PLEASSSE don't go there! It took us a generation to rid ourselves of
the most of the "mantle of the number crunchers" (and we were only partially
succesful--witness the continued use of the POM process in budgeting) as it
was...

Brooks

snip

OR has been in use since WWII, when it was used to determine such things
as the parameters of an "ideal" depth charge attack. It was quite effective
at the time, and still is. I certainly have no love of McN, he did an amazing
amount of damage to the US Military (the term "McNamara's Nightmare"
was applied to *numerous* systems).

Al Minyard

"Alan Minyard" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 20:39:49 GMT, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:


"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
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]

Ugh! That all sounds dangerously like the "operations research", or
systems
analysis, kind of numeric mumbo-jumbo so characteristic of the McNamara
era---PLEASSSE don't go there! It took us a generation to rid ourselves
of
the most of the "mantle of the number crunchers" (and we were only
partially
succesful--witness the continued use of the POM process in budgeting) as
it
was...

Brooks

snip

OR has been in use since WWII, when it was used to determine such things
as the parameters of an "ideal" depth charge attack. It was quite
effective
at the time, and still is.

But it was taken waaay too far by the McNamara crowd, who felt that all
things were quantifiable by numbers, and numbers were more important than
actual results.

I certainly have no love of McN, he did an amazing
amount of damage to the US Military (the term "McNamara's Nightmare"
was applied to *numerous* systems).

Not to mention his micromanagement in Vietnam, and his later published
fandango about his involvement in the decisionmaking that went into that
conflict.

Brooks


Al Minyard

On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 15:35:37 GMT, "Kevin Brooks" wrote:


"Alan Minyard" wrote in message
.. .
On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 20:39:49 GMT, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote:


"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
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]

Ugh! That all sounds dangerously like the "operations research", or
systems
analysis, kind of numeric mumbo-jumbo so characteristic of the McNamara
era---PLEASSSE don't go there! It took us a generation to rid ourselves
of
the most of the "mantle of the number crunchers" (and we were only
partially
succesful--witness the continued use of the POM process in budgeting) as
it
was...

Brooks

snip

OR has been in use since WWII, when it was used to determine such things
as the parameters of an "ideal" depth charge attack. It was quite
effective
at the time, and still is.

But it was taken waaay too far by the McNamara crowd, who felt that all
things were quantifiable by numbers, and numbers were more important than
actual results.

I certainly have no love of McN, he did an amazing
amount of damage to the US Military (the term "McNamara's Nightmare"
was applied to *numerous* systems).

Not to mention his micromanagement in Vietnam, and his later published
fandango about his involvement in the decisionmaking that went into that
conflict.

Brooks

Roger that!!

Al Minyard

In message , Kevin
Brooks writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
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]

Ugh! That all sounds dangerously like the "operations research", or systems
analysis, kind of numeric mumbo-jumbo so characteristic of the McNamara
era---PLEASSSE don't go there!

What do you think my day job is? _Someone_ has to try to work out the
best way to use what we've got, and while the Services take the lead
they also hire some civilian help.


Ed raises some valid criticism of the data as raw numbers, but he agrees
with the main thrust: guns on or off fighters were a trivial factor in
air-to-air combat effectiveness; at least when compared to training,
tactics, doctrine, personnel deployments, maintenance, technology...

Trouble is, the "we did badly because we didn't have guns" mantra is
attractive, seductive... and wrong.


It took us a generation to rid ourselves of
the most of the "mantle of the number crunchers" (and we were only partially
succesful--witness the continued use of the POM process in budgeting) as it
was...

Too little analysis is as bad as too much.

--
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