Future military fighters and guns - yes or no ?

"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

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.

Now here, Tony raises an interesting point. Talking with a serving IAF pilot
some years back, he mentioned that all their tactical a/c have their guns
loaded on every flight, including training, just so they'll have something to
fire if they get diverted to an interception. He said that an IAF Brigadier
General had shot down a foreign recon drone while on a training flight in his
(IIRR) F-15 . Of course, lasers or cheap missiles may do the job as well, and
high-performance UAVs are never going to be _that_ cheap.

snip

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.

snip

Yup. Of course, the lack of IR decoys in most of the Argentine a/c also played
a part, but we're now in the age of IIR seekers, and decoying _them_ is going
to be very difficult if not impossible. They may require damage or destruction
to make them miss. And if the SHARs had had RH missiles and PD radar (and
AEW), then chances are they would have shot down many of the Argentine aircraft
long before they'd even have closed to visual range, even if they were using
older generation missiles.

Guy

Guy Alcala wrote in message ...
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

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.

Now here, Tony raises an interesting point. Talking with a serving IAF pilot
some years back, he mentioned that all their tactical a/c have their guns
loaded on every flight, including training, just so they'll have something to
fire if they get diverted to an interception. He said that an IAF Brigadier
General had shot down a foreign recon drone while on a training flight in his
(IIRR) F-15 . Of course, lasers or cheap missiles may do the job as well, and
high-performance UAVs are never going to be _that_ cheap.

The reason for the MiG-31 (a specialised, long-range interceptor if
ever there was one) carrying the GSh-6-23 gun is reportedly
specifically to deal with recon drones etc.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Military gun and ammunition discussion forum:
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