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#301
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In message , Chad Irby
writes In article , "Paul J. Adam" wrote: Chad Irby writes Shame that you give up a lot more than that even for a 20mm installation. Not really. Fuel is heavy as hell, and missiles (plus the hardpoints, plus the fire controls for them) aren't as light as you'd think for a useful one. So you can shovel a thousand pounds of ballast into a F-16 without any concerns? Here's a hint - modern aircraft are more limited by fuel and payload, than by numbers of pylons. Then there's the external drag and area issues. As long as you're not hauling around GAU-8 installs, the weight isn't that extreme. A thousand pounds is a thousand pounds. And especially when you consider the weight per shot (a half-dozen 20mm bursts versus even one or two missiles) is pretty darned reasonable. If you think that's the case, _you_ pay for integration, installation, maintenance and training. It adds up to a pretty decent chunk of change. Not compared to keeping even *more* missiles in the inventory, Which weapons actually get the kills? and the increased inventory of very expensive hardware to keep checking them and making them work. And you don't think there's a significant overhead in keeping aircraft guns maintained, reliable, boresighted, and (crucially) their crews trained in their use? Even something as simple as an AIM-9 takes a boatload of work to keep functional, whether you fire them or not. So does a M61. And when you *do* fire them in practice, you're burning off, in one shot, most of the lifetime cost of a small gun system... Does the "lifetime cost" of a gun system include training? Or are the pilots supposed to just pick it up as they go? -- 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 |
#303
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In article , Paul J. Adam
wrote: Large dispersion from long slant range by crews who hadn't strafed since the F-15E school house. That isn't the only reason, but it goes a long way towards understanding why the strafe passes didn't work so well. Which is one of the reasons I'm not convinced that "a gun on every aircraft because we might need it for CAS" is a compelling argument. Let's be fair, this was an aircraft that grew out of a program with the slogan "Not a pound for air to ground". If you're building a multirole aircraft from the start (and, let's face it, what isn't these days - stand fast the F-22 as originally intended), you have to give consideration to the face that the pilots might actually have to influence the ground directly. Aetherem Vincere Matt -- To err is human To forgive is not Air Force Policy |
#304
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In article , Chad Irby
wrote: But since several people have pointed out other good reasons to have guns on fighters, and since you haven't come up with a good reason to *not* have one (one more missile or a minute's worth of fuel aren't very good reasons at all), Shame that you give up a lot more than that even for a 20mm installation. Not really. Fuel is heavy as hell, Well, only because you carry an awful lot of it. It's got a specific density less than one, so it's a fair assumption that replacing a gun installation with a fuel tank saves you weight - even if you assume that 50% of the volume of a gun installation is free air. the only thing left is to think about cost, and since guns for planes are a very small amount of the final sticker price of a modern plane... If you think that's the case, _you_ pay for integration, installation, maintenance and training. It adds up to a pretty decent chunk of change. Not compared to keeping even *more* missiles in the inventory, and the increased inventory of very expensive hardware to keep checking them and making them work. Actually, no. It's the fact that a gun adds a completely different support line than "more of the same" missiles which drives the whole life cost up. Aetherem Vincere Matt -- To err is human To forgive is not Air Force Policy |
#305
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In article ,
Matt Clonfero ] wrote: In article , Chad Irby wrote: But since several people have pointed out other good reasons to have guns on fighters, and since you haven't come up with a good reason to *not* have one (one more missile or a minute's worth of fuel aren't very good reasons at all), Shame that you give up a lot more than that even for a 20mm installation. Not really. Fuel is heavy as hell, Well, only because you carry an awful lot of it. It's got a specific density less than one, so it's a fair assumption that replacing a gun installation with a fuel tank saves you weight - even if you assume that 50% of the volume of a gun installation is free air. But compared to the amount of fuel you get, it's not a massive savings by any stretch. You're also forgetting that fuel tanks weigh a *lot*, not to mention their associated piping and pumping systems. It's the fact that a gun adds a completely different support line than "more of the same" missiles which drives the whole life cost up. Not really. Missiles are *bloody* expensive to buy, store, maintain, and use. Guns are cheap in comparison. A gun and a few hundred thousand rounds of ammunition are less than the price of a couple of plane's worth of missiles, and that's before you add in maintenance costs. -- cirby at cfl.rr.com Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations. Slam on brakes accordingly. |
#306
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On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 16:59:45 GMT, Ed Rasimus
wrote: On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 08:15:44 -0800, Mary Shafer wrote: On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 22:36:54 +0000, "Paul J. Adam" wrote: In message , Chad Irby writes Mary adds some info and makes some big errors: They were back at base. Bomber and attack and SEAD F-4Es only have guns to defend themselves. Absolutely incorrect! All, repeat ALL F-4s always carried Sparrows. We didn't always have room for AIM-9s, but I never saw a combat sortie flown by an F-4 when I was there without Sparrows. I have spent the time since you posted this trying to figure out where I got the idea that they left the Sparrows at home when they went out with bombs. I'd have sworn I read it somewhere, but I can't find it now. Either it was a) another airplane, b) a total misunderstanding, or c) a work of fiction I can't find now. Whatever. As you say, it's not true. Fewer than half the USAF F-4 were fighters with AAM. Since the non-fighter F-4s would have been carrying their ordnance during the inbound half of the flight and only been able to get into the fur ball outgoing, I'd say guns were under-represented in kills. This probably proves that the escort F-4s had more chances at MiGs than the home-going non-fighters. The reason that A/A loaded F-4s got more kills is more subtle. It has to do with the politics of "ace-building" between the USN and USAF and the mis-guided over-classification of TEABALL. See Michel's Clashes or Thompson's "To Hanoi and Back". I read both those and remembered the discussion just well enough to know that I couldn't produce a coherent version of it here, so I just skipped it entirely. I remember Chuck de Bellevue (is that right? I have a terrible memory for names) talking about the ace-building competition and one of the USN guys grousing about it. I still think that having bombing a target as one's mission on a sortie will incline the person to press on toward the target, rather than jettisoning the bombs to close on an enemy airplane. After all, that's letting the enemy pilot succeed in keeping you from bombing your target. It's not as spectacular as blowing your airplane out of the sky, but it's just as effective, at least for that one mission. Of course, it wouldn't be just F-4s. The F-105s, for example, would be in the same situation. Escorts didn't even get many shots as they were often used to provide blocking or herding of MiGs to direct them to a kill zone where the 555th was being vectored on a discrete frequency to do the shooting. Since the NVAF used ground controllers heavily, did they monitor all the frequencies? I know it's too much for pilots to manage, but a ground facility should have a little more monitoring capability. Is the 555th now at Nellis flying the A-10 or is that the 5555th? Or should I say "was" instead? The numbers seem to be remarkably unstable considering. Thanks for the corrections, Ed. I dunno where I got the wrong ideas from, but I have, I hope, extirpated them. Mary -- Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer |
#307
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In message , Mary Shafer
writes Since the NVAF used ground controllers heavily, did they monitor all the frequencies? I know it's too much for pilots to manage, but a ground facility should have a little more monitoring capability. Others (Ed particularly but others too) will have better information, but falling back on "Clashes" there was a SIGINT centre called 'Teaball' which did just this: the trouble was getting its messages relayed through often-flaky radio links and acted upon in a timely manner. Having a ground-based centre intercept signals, translate them, correlate them and confirm them, and then get warning to the relevant aircraft is a non-trivial task even when everyone is amply supplied with working radios and free frequencies and you've got a complete and accurate air picture. Uncertainty over exactly who is where increases the problems. Add in "protect the source" constraints to hide the fact that you're successfully eavesdropping from enemy intelligence, and it gets very tricky indeed. And having busy pilots get vague warnings from "who he?" doesn't help when they believe they have more immediate threats to their survival. Eavesdropping isn't trivial but it's doable. Turning that into immediate tactical information and communicating it in a usefully timely manner, is a still a challenge today. -- 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 |
#308
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"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message ... In message , Mary Shafer writes Since the NVAF used ground controllers heavily, did they monitor all the frequencies? I know it's too much for pilots to manage, but a ground facility should have a little more monitoring capability. Others (Ed particularly but others too) will have better information, but falling back on "Clashes" there was a SIGINT centre called 'Teaball' which did just this: the trouble was getting its messages relayed through often-flaky radio links and acted upon in a timely manner. I thought there was an EC-121 usually performing this kind of work? Brooks Having a ground-based centre intercept signals, translate them, correlate them and confirm them, and then get warning to the relevant aircraft is a non-trivial task even when everyone is amply supplied with working radios and free frequencies and you've got a complete and accurate air picture. Uncertainty over exactly who is where increases the problems. Add in "protect the source" constraints to hide the fact that you're successfully eavesdropping from enemy intelligence, and it gets very tricky indeed. And having busy pilots get vague warnings from "who he?" doesn't help when they believe they have more immediate threats to their survival. Eavesdropping isn't trivial but it's doable. Turning that into immediate tactical information and communicating it in a usefully timely manner, is a still a challenge today. -- 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 |
#309
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In message , Kevin Brooks
writes "Paul J. Adam" wrote in message ... Others (Ed particularly but others too) will have better information, but falling back on "Clashes" there was a SIGINT centre called 'Teaball' which did just this: the trouble was getting its messages relayed through often-flaky radio links and acted upon in a timely manner. I thought there was an EC-121 usually performing this kind of work? Teaball's info was radioed to a relay aircraft, codenamed Luzon (usually a KC-135), but the radios on Luzon were flaky and prone to interference and _that_ was the reliability problem. Also, there was a complex structure of "who controlled what units when" which varied by mission and depended on "whose radios were working": Red Crown, Disco, College Eye and Teaball all could be in charge at different times in a mission. Sometimes it seems a miracle any of the pilots involved survived. -- 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 |
#310
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"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message ... In message , Kevin Brooks writes "Paul J. Adam" wrote in message ... Others (Ed particularly but others too) will have better information, but falling back on "Clashes" there was a SIGINT centre called 'Teaball' which did just this: the trouble was getting its messages relayed through often-flaky radio links and acted upon in a timely manner. I thought there was an EC-121 usually performing this kind of work? Teaball's info was radioed to a relay aircraft, codenamed Luzon (usually a KC-135), but the radios on Luzon were flaky and prone to interference and _that_ was the reliability problem. Also, there was a complex structure of "who controlled what units when" which varied by mission and depended on "whose radios were working": Red Crown, Disco, College Eye and Teaball all could be in charge at different times in a mission. Sometimes it seems a miracle any of the pilots involved survived. Based upon a quick perusal, it appears what you are presenting is true, but not the "whole truth", so to speak. The EC-121's apparently were indeed performing at least some of the same kind work in support of the inbound/outbound fighters--FAS mentions that the EC's of the 193rd TEWS (PaANG) apparently did also have some interception gear onboard, and another source indicates linguists were indeed included in the crew loads when the EC's were operating over SEA. Brooks |
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