F-35 25mm cannon 180 round ammo load too low?

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 11:40:19 +0900, "Ragnar"
wrote:


"John Cook" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 11:44:42 +0900, "Ragnar"
wrote:


Admittedly, you are no expert. Neither am I, but the question I have is:

How often is the gun used to strafe ground targets in the first place?
If
the gun isn't used much, there isn't much point to wasting the
space/weight,
is there?


The same sort of reasoning was applied to the lifeboats on the
Titanic......

Nice try. There were legally enough lifeboats on the Titanic, the designers
very carefully followed existing laws that governed ships over 10,000 tons.

Now, show me the law that says how many rounds a gun should carry on the
F35.

Legally enough is fine... as long as your not the one whos left at the
end.

The point I was trying to make was the gun should not be left out,
because its rarely used, that 'rarely' might come in very handy one
day, its not a question of the number of rounds, 180 rounds seems
quite enough to me.

The same with the Titanic you can have legally enough lifeboats, or in
the extremly unlikely event of it hitting an iceberg a glancing blow
( a full head on impact would have been much better), a sufficent
number of life boats to accomadate the large number of disorganised
untrained people who in the confusion of an actual sinking didn't pack
enough in each lifeboat..

Or the cost of a walkway across the world trade centres was too
expensive, due to it being only needed in very unlikely events.

The point is risks can be forseen, adequate protection comes at a
cost, unfortunatly costs usually win.

By all means remove the gun on an aircraft, but I think you would also
have to remove the title 'Fighter' from its name.

Cheers




John Cook

Any spelling mistakes/grammatic errors are there purely to annoy. All
opinions are mine, not TAFE's however much they beg me for them.

Email Address :-
Spam trap - please remove (trousers) to email me
Eurofighter Website :- http://www.eurofighter-typhoon.co.uk

John Cook wrote:

On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 11:40:19 +0900, "Ragnar"
wrote:


"John Cook" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 11:44:42 +0900, "Ragnar"
wrote:


Admittedly, you are no expert. Neither am I, but the question I have is:

How often is the gun used to strafe ground targets in the first place?
If
the gun isn't used much, there isn't much point to wasting the
space/weight,
is there?


The same sort of reasoning was applied to the lifeboats on the
Titanic......

Nice try. There were legally enough lifeboats on the Titanic, the designers
very carefully followed existing laws that governed ships over 10,000 tons.

Now, show me the law that says how many rounds a gun should carry on the
F35.

Legally enough is fine... as long as your not the one whos left at the
end.

The point I was trying to make was the gun should not be left out,
because its rarely used, that 'rarely' might come in very handy one
day, its not a question of the number of rounds, 180 rounds seems
quite enough to me.

The same with the Titanic you can have legally enough lifeboats, or in
the extremly unlikely event of it hitting an iceberg a glancing blow
( a full head on impact would have been much better), a sufficent
number of life boats to accomadate the large number of disorganised
untrained people who in the confusion of an actual sinking didn't pack
enough in each lifeboat..

Or the cost of a walkway across the world trade centres was too
expensive, due to it being only needed in very unlikely events.

The point is risks can be forseen, adequate protection comes at a
cost, unfortunatly costs usually win.

By all means remove the gun on an aircraft, but I think you would also
have to remove the title 'Fighter' from its name.

Ah, so then the F-4B/C/D/G/J/K/M/N/S should also have the title 'Fighter' removed
from its name. And many MiG-21s as well, along with the F-102, the F-106, most
F-101s, etc. I guess you could at least make the argument that the interceptors
shouldn't have been called fighters, but I'd have to say that the Phantom's a
fighter in anyone's book, with or without internal gun.

Guy

snip


By all means remove the gun on an aircraft, but I think you would also
have to remove the title 'Fighter' from its name.

Ah, so then the F-4B/C/D/G/J/K/M/N/S should also have the title 'Fighter' removed
from its name. And many MiG-21s as well, along with the F-102, the F-106, most
F-101s, etc. I guess you could at least make the argument that the interceptors
shouldn't have been called fighters, but I'd have to say that the Phantom's a
fighter in anyone's book, with or without internal gun.



I think you just proved the point, the biggist drawback to those
Phantoms was the lack of an internal gun, otherwise it was a bloody
good design... I really like the Phantom!.

Funny thing is I was going to mention what you said about
interceptors(strike/attack) but I deleted it at the last moment...


Cheers







Guy

John Cook

Any spelling mistakes/grammatic errors are there purely to annoy. All
opinions are mine, not TAFE's however much they beg me for them.

Email Address :-
Spam trap - please remove (trousers) to email me
Eurofighter Website :- http://www.eurofighter-typhoon.co.uk

John Cook wrote:

snip

By all means remove the gun on an aircraft, but I think you would also
have to remove the title 'Fighter' from its name.

Ah, so then the F-4B/C/D/G/J/K/M/N/S should also have the title 'Fighter' removed
from its name. And many MiG-21s as well, along with the F-102, the F-106, most
F-101s, etc. I guess you could at least make the argument that the interceptors
shouldn't have been called fighters, but I'd have to say that the Phantom's a
fighter in anyone's book, with or without internal gun.


I think you just proved the point, the biggist drawback to those
Phantoms was the lack of an internal gun, otherwise it was a bloody
good design... I really like the Phantom!.

I'd list several other items before the gun as major drawbacks to the Phantom: for
most of its combat career the smoking engines were a major problem, plus poor
visibility from the cockpit, poor switchology, crews that were often less well-trained
in ACM than they could have been, and inadequate A-A dogfight missiles. Given the
missile technology of the time a gun was nice to have for close-in fights but improved
missiles plus better-trained crews could (and did) make more of a difference.
Checking the Israeli total, out of their 116.5 F-4 kill claims, 58 were claimed by
missiles, most of them by AIM-9Ds; 34 by guns (but 14 of those were helos on the first
day of the Yom Kippur war, which the available missiles couldn't lock onto) and the
rest listed as either 'no weapon' kills or unknown. Their F-4s were normally carrying
limited numbers of AAMs on ground attack missions, so an ability to carry more
missiles instead of the gun might have led to an even greater number of kills.

Once the Israelis got decent missiles the gun scored a smaller and smaller percentage
of kills, fading away to almost nothing in Lebanon, and to nothing (of a small sample)
since.

Guy