Best dogfight gun?

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 17:02:23 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

In article et,
"Thomas Schoene" wrote:

Chad Irby wrote:
In article ,
Mary Shafer wrote:

Darkstar wasn't that big. I used to see it out on the ramp all the
time. It was definitely is T-37 size class at the most. That's
pretty small.

http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/darkstar.htm

The Darkstar has a 69 foot wingspan, about twice that of the T-37, and
about 50 percent wider than the F-22. I consider that big.

Sure, the span is twice that of a T-37. But Darkstar was only 15 feet long,
which is quite short for a plane of its span, and about half the length of a
Tweet. Between those two dimensions, I could certainly understand
describing it as "T-37-class."

But that certainly does *not* make it too small to shoot down with
aerial guns, or everyone would be using T-37s as "gunproof planes."

First you have to find it, though. You can't get a guns kill on an
airplane you can't find in the sky. Guns kills are close-up kills.

The T-37 isn't a low-observables airplane and DarkSpot most certainly
was. Actually, it looked like a cross between the B-2 and the U-2;
the project team got tired of hearing it called the UB-2 fairly
quickly. The Tweet shows up on radar just fine; DarkSpot didn't.

You knew, didn't you, that DarkSpot flew out of Dryden? It was housed
in the building I worked in and it spent a fair amount of time out on
the ramp. I saw it fairly often.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

In article ,
Mary Shafer wrote:

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 17:02:23 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

But that certainly does *not* make it too small to shoot down with
aerial guns, or everyone would be using T-37s as "gunproof planes."

First you have to find it, though. You can't get a guns kill on an
airplane you can't find in the sky. Guns kills are close-up kills.

Since the whole point of this thread was on missiles versus guns, how in
the heck does that help the "missiles only" camp?

If you can't find the thing with radar or with your eyes, how are you
going to shoot it with a missile?

If it's findable with either, then shooting it with a cannon is just
gunnery practice... and with that nice big wingspan and slow airspeed,
it's going to be easy as hell to shoot.

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 19:06:28 GMT, Chad Irby wrote:

In article ,
Mary Shafer wrote:

First you have to find it, though. You can't get a guns kill on an
airplane you can't find in the sky. Guns kills are close-up kills.

Since the whole point of this thread was on missiles versus guns, how in
the heck does that help the "missiles only" camp?

If you can't find the thing with radar or with your eyes, how are you
going to shoot it with a missile?

That's the point I was making. Little, LO aircraft are maybe not the
best example to use in such a comparison.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer