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In article ,
Scott Ferrin wrote: The would really surprise me as the thing tries to use control surfaces to account for little bumps and gusts on the runway :-) The article in Flight International was quite clear on the matter with a quote that didn't leave room for interpretation. I'm still trying to figure out exactly why it doesn't (if the information is right), apart from the reason it's not told the gun is fired because that's not something which happens often. -- Urban Fredriksson http://www.canit.se/%7Egriffon/ A boundary between the known and the unknown always exists. |
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"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 |
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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. |
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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 |
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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. |
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"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. |
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On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 17:49:17 GMT, "Kevin Brooks"
wrote: "Ed Rasimus" wrote in message .. . 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 thread title is "Best Dogfight Gun". The relevance of the comment is to tactical aircraft employment in support of ground forces, and I freely conceded the importance in follow-on comments. 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. The prosecution should rest with that acknowledgement. It is my point exactly. The historic result should not be attributed to wishing and hoping. It's a result of proper allocation of resources. 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. It happened. But, anecdotal evidence does not necessarily lead to good conclusions. 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. Modern warfare is a mix of sophistication and crudity. Can you say "Claymore"? Seriously, I'm not belittling nor minimizing. There's a mix of weapons. Some you have available, some you don't. Some are better than others. CAS strafe is exhilarating to say the least. But, it isn't the only weapon for danger close situations. Mortars, proper fortifications, Army aviation assets, etc. all can be considered in the right time and the right place. I'm a believer in guns in airplanes. But, I'll freely acknowledge that the gun isn't the best choice in a lot of scenarios. I'm not willing to forego the gun in current or future tactical aircraft. However, I've seen a lot of airplanes lost while shooting trucks. Modern jets cost a lot more than trucks. Going nose to nose with superior weapons with a pea-shooter isn't always prudent. It may be necessary, but not wise. 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. Prosecution rest time again. 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"? It wasn't a readily available option when initially called for. Remember that Afghanistan is a long way from anywhere. At the time of Anaconda, the primary tactical assets were carrier based and flying extremely long duration, multiple refueling sorties. The flexibility for immediate on-call CAS was not available. "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 ) The sergeant has an extremely optimistic view of the strafing accuracy of the average F-15/16/18 operator, and extremely pessimistic one of the reliability of PGMs. Interestingly, the report you cite says the fighters fired til "winchester" but the enemy continued to operate and then...drum roll, please...he targeted the bunker with the 500 pound bombs. Which took out the bunker. Might I suggest that the sergeant's account might be sensationalized for effect and that he was not an experienced forward air controller. I don't know. 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. Not at all, but I argue regularly that strafe is a weapon of last resort in modern aircraft. |
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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 |
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In message , phil hunt
writes On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 04:51:34 GMT, Kevin Brooks wrote: And I suppose designing that feature in and then doing away with it because of its (relatively slight) increase in unit cost, as was done with the RAF Typhoon, is not risky? How much does a Mauser BK 27 cost, I wonder? I bet removing it would save them no more than the cost of one plane, over the entire programme. The official explanation follows... http://www.publications.parliament.u...cmpubacc/136/1 011710.htm#note12 +++++ Select Committee on Public Accounts Minutes of Evidence ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- APPENDIX 2 Supplementary memorandum submitted by the Defence Procurement Agency 00-01/62) QUESTIONS 264 AND 306. BACKGROUND TO THE DECISION NOT TO EQUIP EUROFIGHTER WITH A GUN 7. Since the introduction of air-to-air missiles, a gun has been used in an air-to-air role for very close range engagements where the target was inside a short-range air-to-air missile's minimum range. Notably during the early years of the Vietnam war, the probability of kill in short-range engagements of the air-to-air missiles then available proved so low that the very modest capability of gun systems added significantly to overall effectiveness. The probability of success with guns has advanced little over the years[12]. By contrast, the performance of air-to-air missiles has improved dramatically. Indeed, in short-range engagements, the minimum range capability and agility of the missiles that Eurofighter will carry, together with its planned helmet-mounted sight targeting system, offers the pilot a shot with a very high probability of success in almost every conceivable situation. A gun could be seen as a defence of last resort when all the aircraft's missiles had been fired. However, even then the gun's usefulness would be severely limited because of the possibility of engagement by missile armed aircraft from well outside the gun's range. 8. Firing "warning shots across the bow" with a gun is not an effective means of coercion in modern operations. The cockpit environment of modern aircraft is such that the pilot is extremely unlikely to hear such warning shots and would only see them if they were tracer rounds. The value of such a display against a civilian aircraft is dubious and against a military aircraft it may well be misconstrued. 9. Against some threats, missiles may be susceptible to counter-measures employed by the opposing aircraft. However, ASRAAM has already proven itself against typical current countermeasure doctrines and is designed to overcome extreme levels of countermeasures. Even should an advanced hostile aircraft have decoyed Eurofighter's air-to-air missiles successfully, there is again little benefit in adding a gun to Eurofighter's armament. If the UK pilot were then to close on that hostile target to within the range of the gun, he would be placing the aircraft—and himself—at unnecessarily high risk of being shot down by the hostile aircraft's own missiles. Moreover, gun systems are not completely invulnerable to countermeasures, not least because most depend on accurate radar range 10. As for air-to-ground combat, it is worth noting that the original European Staff Requirement, signed by the Chiefs of Air Staffs from the partner nations in December 1985, specifies the gun only in an air-to-air role. So, even then, experienced airmen in the partner nations did not regard the gun as a valuable weapon for ground attack. It remains the view of experts that it is difficult to justify using the gun in Eurofighter's offensive support role, owing to: — the risk of collateral damage resulting from the relative inefficiency of gun firing from a fixed-wing aircraft, especially in this age of precision-guided munitions, with which Eurofighter will be armed; and — the increased vulnerability of the aircraft because the gun's short range would leave the aircraft very exposed to surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft gunfire. 11. Overall, therefore, it is clear that the utility of a gun on an aircraft such as Eurofighter in modern operations is questionable. To perform its roles effectively, Eurofighter's armament should emphasise not the very short-range capability that a gun would offer, but the long-range capability to be offered initially by the Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM). and later by the Meteor beyond visual range air-to-air missile. 12. The minimal combat value that the gun does provide is more than outweighed by the support, fatigue and training cost penalties of retaining it. Specific disadvantages of the gun include: — the damaging effects of the shock of its recoil on the electronics (approximately 4 tons recoil shock 30 times a second); — the corrosive effects of its exhaust gas; — the strain which it puts on the airframe, reducing the aircraft's useful life. (Even the weight of 80kg of ammunition can add well over half a tonne load at the wing roots of the aircraft when it is subject to high gravitational pull in manoeuvre. Each aircraft has a finite design fatigue life. Using up this life much more rapidly would require us to purchase a greater number of aircraft or to undertake a life extension programme, the cost and operational penalties of which cannot be justified by the minimal operational benefits of the gun.); and — a range of training costs, including the provision of new targets, the increased demands on the Hawk aircraft towing the targets (which must shortly be replaced by new aircraft), and the cost of removing training rounds from the environment. 13. We understand that our partner nations currently intend to retain the gun on Eurofighter. The American F-14, F-15, F/A-18 all have internal guns, though the F-117 does not; and the F-22 is planned to have one. The Russian MiG-29 and the Su-27/31 also have guns as do Gripen and Rafale. Some of these aircraft types entered service many years ago when missile technology was far less advanced. However, it is not currently planned to fit an internal gun to the Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing variant of Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), although it will be able to carry an externally mounted gun which can be put on and removed from the aircraft for particular missions. 14. Our assessment remains that, in the future operational roles for which we require Eurofighter, the minimal value of a gun is more than outweighed by its considerable associated costs and disadvantages. +++++ -- 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 |
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