Best dogfight gun?

In message , Chad Irby
writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:
Trouble is, all the guns you like won't stop #4 of one of the escort
sections getting an unseen Atoll up the tailpipe

And all the missiles won't help much in this case, either.

Why not? An aircraft diving away in afterburner is an excellent missile
target.

Now, AIM-9B lacked the range and clutter rejection for that scenario,
but it was a 1950s design; and the AIM-7D likewise wasn't useful but was
also a 1950s design.

Try that same attack against modern aircraft, and you'll still avoid the
guns shot: but you'll get a late-model Sidewinder for your pains, or an
AIM-120 as you extend.

On the other hand, the M61 cannon isn't effective in either scenario.

and won't help you chase that MiG-21 down and kill him.

Actually, that's *exactly* what it would do, if you're out of missiles.

There seems to be this romantical view that fighter pilots, out of
ordnance and committed to their mission, will drop everything for a
fangs-out pursuit of a fleeing foe.

Do you have the fuel for the prolonged tailchase required to get into
guns range, manoeuvre for the kill, then get home? Remember, the enemy
aircraft is ahead of you, out of range, with a substantial speed
advantage.

Where is he leading you, as you try to accelerate and overtake? Are you
being lured into a SAMtrap, or is his another MiG lining up for a shot
as you fixate on that target? You'll cover a lot of ground before you
get him into 20mm range, and he's most unlikely to be leading you
towards _your_ friends.

Didn't you have somewhere else you needed to be, such as dropping chaff
or dropping bombs?

What happens when some of his friends join the party, you being down to
guns only?

So produce some numbers. Relative SAM losses per sortie, for instance?
I'm open to data, I just get wary about assertion and anecdote.

If you want to find that out, find it yourself. *You're* the one who
wants that data. Let us know how it goes. Until you do, that other
comparison is still pretty useless.

In other words, "don't confuse me with facts, my mind is made up".

This aircraft has Sparrow and Sidewinder, and by the time the F-4E is
flying they're demonstrating performance (the Sidewinder was up to 50%
Pk in its AIM-9G form). Yet it's making a quarter of its kills with
guns? Where did that battery of AAMs go in those engagements?

They got used up. You see, there's no magic formula that makes a
missile magically 100% reliable or accurate. And if the other guy
discovers a weakness in your missile systems, you're screwed.

Especially when your tactic dictates firing "all available weapons" in a
salvo of whatever you had selected.

Even carrying four and four (on the Phantom), that gives you only four
long range shots and four short range shots. In Vietnam, it was a
fairly sharp distinction, since the Sparrow kinda sucked at short range.

Once those are gone, you're done. No more shots, go home or fly around
and hope nobody shows up.

Given that Sidewinder was achieving nearly 50% kills-per-shot by war's
end (AIM-9G, fifty fired for 23 kills) and the actual number of firing
opportunities, that's less of a problem than you'd think: the number of
times an enemy aircraft dances temptingly in front of one's own is much
less than most flight-sim games would have you believe.

And what do you do if something goes wrong with your radar,

Then your gun is in a lot of trouble, since it depends heavily on the
radar to generate its fire-control solution.

or if you're
in the middle of a dogfight with a bunch of your guys and a bunch of
other guys (we still lose fighters to fratricide from radar and IR
missiles, you know)?

When was the last air-to-air combat fratricide (by which I mean a shot
taken at an enemy aircraft diverted and destroyed a friendly)?

--
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

In message , Mary Shafer
writes
On Mon, 8 Dec 2003 23:13:38 +0000, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:
Again, AWACS is situation-dependent, and there's that oft-quoted
statistic about 80% of surviving pilots wondering who shot them down
(tracking that statistic to a source is probably good for a PhD thesis -
anyone up for funding it? )

I got a fair way toward a conference paper on it, with the help of the
guys at Wright-Pat. The conclusion is very limited because it's based
on very limited data, more like randomly-collected anecdote, long
before AWACS or modern RWR. I wouldn't use it to try to support my
arguments about modern air warfare.

Thought so (and I recall you mentioning your studies on it in the past).
It seems to be one of those guesstimates that hang around enough to
become rules of thumb, without ever being really validated.

Again, for real life this isn't much of a problem because the A-10
operates in total air supremacy and has never had an enemy aircraft ever
get a chance to shoot at it (rendering the preparations of the A-10
crews to fight back untested).

I don't think that's right. We know that two A-10s nailed helos in
'91, so the possibility of helo-A-10 combat has to be considered.
If an A-10 can get a helo kill with a gun designed for air-to-ground,
then a helo with such a gun can do the same thing to the A-10.

True to a point, but there are significant differences; a flexible-mount
gun on the helicopter has a lot more dispersion, less muzzle velocity
and a much lower rate of fire than the 30mm in the A-10 (using the M230
on the AH-64 as a comparison - it's one of the bigger helo guns)

The helicopter's gun is at several disadvantages in terms of its hit
probability, worsened because it's got a faster target to try to hit.

Restricting armament to its advertised role is silly. Just ask the
Argentineans in that ship that the Royal Marines pasted with their
Carl Gustavs.

True to a point, but while the Guerrico retreated out of small-arms
range it didn't stop them bombarding Lt. Keith Mills's position with
100mm shellfire, or prevent Mills and his 22 men having to surrender.

Or the F-15 that nailed the helo with the 500-lb dumb
bomb. Having seen those happen, the idea of an A-10 going up against
an enemy aircraft doesn't seem so far-fetched.

True again, which is why you usually see them with a pair of Sidewinders
under one wing

This is too true, sadly, and imposes all sorts of limits on open debate.

I don't think it's that kind of limitation. I think it's more like
there being too many scenarios to really predict accurately. Most of
them are going to be kind of unexpected, which makes it hard to
predict.

Trouble is, someone has to at least try: there simply isn't the budget
to prepare fully for all possible scenarios.

I hate to be contrarian... all right, I don't. I _like_ being
contrarian. Lessons from the past suggest that getting missiles working
and crews trained is a better path to dead enemies for air-to-air work.
Air-to-ground, guns pull you into IR-SAM range and even for A-10s that
isn't healthy.

The fighter world decided this once before, you know. They were wrong.

Correct: but does that mean the situation has not changed since then?

A lot of this discussion is assuming, rightly or
wrongly, that the only scenario is the overwhelming Western military
against some over-classed small country. That may not be a good
assumption.

Actually, quite a bit of my thinking is precisely that the Next
Enemy(TM) may be significantly more capable, and able to exploit any
mistakes, gaps or problems more effectively.

What about India and Pakistan? Are they going to be fighting the same
kind of air war? Probably not. The UK and Argentina fought something
a lot different from either anti-Iraqi action.

And the clear, obvious lessons in the air war there were that the Sea
Harrier's guns were not effective air-to-air weapons: what was needed
was (a) more missiles, (b) longer-ranged missiles.

We design and build most of our aircraft for export as well as
domestic use (for pretty much every current "we"), so it's important
not to get too fixated on one combat scenario. We may have to put
guns into fighters to keep aircraft salable, after all.

I'd suggest that's a very French approach

"Never mind what *our* forces actually need... we've got to make a
profit on export, so we'll build something that will sell overseas and
Our Boys will just have to cope with it"

--
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

In message , Chad Irby
writes
In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

If "lack of guns" is the real problem, surely gun-armed fighters are
a complete and satisfactory answer?

It's not a simple question of "lack of guns."

It's "relying on missiles 100% and not having guns when they're really
bloody useful."

In other words, guns solve the problem? Not according to the facts they
don't: in fact they're pretty damn marginal (and not cheap either).

We learned that lesson over 30 years ago,

And of course, nothing has changed since then. (Well, the M61 hasn't...)

and a whole new generation of
bean counters are trying to resurrect the kind of silliness that the
McNamara school brought us in Vietnam...

Actually, one key mistake McNamara's crowd made was to extrapolate
conclusions without information. Case in point, the "get rid of guns"
idea: made sense for a fleet air defence interceptor, but not for a
general-purpose fighter when its missiles had not even been tested in
trials against manoeuvring fighter-size targets (and when the trial was
belatedly undertaken, the AIM-9B missed every time).

Once the missiles have demonstrated ~80% lethality in actual combat
against real enemies doing their best to survive, then perhaps there's
more evidence to support the analysis. Oh, I forget - they did that
twenty-one years ago.


--
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

Hi!

"Paul J. Adam" writes:
UAVs are going to be really tough gun targets: just look at the size
of them. Aircraft guns aren't a good option, if only because you're
going to need so many rounds per target.

I know to little about the precision to say anything about how small
UAV:s for instance a Gripen can hit reliably with its gun. And it is
undoubtly quite secret.

"a gun", or "a gun system"? Be careful about actually costing
everything you need for a gun system, including the total cost of
the training sorties needed for pilots to reliably hit Predator-size
or smaller targets.

Definately gun system since a gun on an aeroplane is not especially
usefull withouth a good radar for aiming and fly-by-wire to aim the
gun(aeroplane). Why would hitting UAV:s require extensive training?
The pilots job is as usual to keep situational awareness. It is the
aeroplanes job to do the flying/aiming required to hit small and slow
targets. You still need the radar, fly by wire system and general
pilot training. What is added besides the gun is the software cost for
the autopilot and the testing. And the research work is also useful
for autonomous UAV:s.

What would be realy expensive is to develop and deploy a special slow
flying UAV-hunter. You get a lot more flexibility for your investment
if you buy additional Gripens, F18-E/F:s, F-35:s etc. And since you
anyway carry the gun and ammunition you can hunt UAV:s as targets of
opportunity on your way to and from other missions.

Best regards,

"Tony Williams" wrote:
| "Brett" wrote in message
...
| "Tony Williams" wrote:
| | Chad Irby wrote in message
| m...
| | (Tony Williams) wrote:
| |
| | Chad Irby wrote:
|
| | Part of that "cost effectiveness" appeared to be a lowball
| pricing
| | structure that fell through on closer examination.
| |
| | Do you have a source to support that? You may be right, but I
like
| to
| | work on hard info rather than forum gossip.
| |
| | This talks about the cost issue:
| |
| | http://stage.defensedaily.com/VIP/ddi/previous/ddi0927.htm#A1
| |
| | "We had a cost-growth problem that forced a recompetition," he
said.
| | "Affordability is a prime concern of the program. Based on that
we
| were
| | forced to recompete the gun system integration. We selected our
| | supplier on a best-value case."
| |
| | Thanks for that link. I had to smile at: "GD had initially offered
its
| | GAU-12 25mm gatling cannon for the JSF in July 1999, but withdrew
its
| | proposal in February 2000." since that was only after L-M had
selected
| | the BK 27 - in the UK, we call that 'spin'
|
| The comment in the article was "Lockheed Martin originally selected
the
| BK 27 27mm cannon offered by Boeing [BA] and Mauser in July 2000"
which
| would have been 5 months after GD had withdrawn its proposal in
February
| of that year. If that comment is true Lockheed Martin, by default,
| selected the only weapon left in the competition.
|
| Sorry, I was mixing it up with Boeing. I have a print-off of an item
| from 'Defence Systems Daily' dated April 29th, 1999, which says: "The
| Boeing Company has selected the Advanced 27mm Aircraft Cannon for its
| next-generation JSF combat aircraft...The gun is also a candidate for
| the Lockheed-Martin version of the JSF."
|
| Presumably GD saw the writing on the wall.

They probably did, they started the process to buy Primex Technologies
before the end of 2000, and if the Government didn't get involved they
would have owned Boeing Ordnance as well before the end of 2001.

| Why else would they
| withdraw their gun, which they seem more than happy to provide now?

The RAF dropped the BK27 cannon from their Typhoon's because it was
supposedly "too expensive". The defense budget may be large it isn't
bottomless.

In article ,
Paul J. Adam wrote:
UAVs are going to be really tough gun targets: just look at the size of
them. Aircraft guns aren't a good option, if only because you're going
to need so many rounds per target.

Against so small targets a proximity fuzed shell, or a timed-fuzed
cannister round would be much more effective. The size means that you
don't need direct impacts of 20mm+ to bring it down, and the increased
probability of getting a hit with preformed fragments/subprojectiles
might[1] compensate for the small size.

[1] Well, I think so at least But you'd need to run tests on it to
be sure.

Paul J. Adam MainBoxatjrwlynch[dot]demon{dot}co(.)uk

-bertil-
--
"It can be shown that for any nutty theory, beyond-the-fringe political view or
strange religion there exists a proponent on the Net. The proof is left as an
exercise for your kill-file."

"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
In message , Kevin
Brooks writes
"Jake McGuire" wrote in message
. com...
It points out the value that the ground troops placed on AC-130
support. Which is naturally much more effective than fighter strafing
support, as the AC-130 has more, larger guns, on trainable mounts,
with dedicated gunners, and a very long loiter capability. This is
not the same as a fighter that can make two or three 20mm strafing
passes before he's out of ammunition.

Well, you kind of snipped away the related bit about the scenario where
you
are well within danger-close and under a significant MANPADS threat
during
daytime, which sort of eliminates the AC-130 from the running. The point
was that the groundpounders found the guns a better starting point for
CAS
during that operation than PGM's. Are you claiming that the 10th LID and
101st AASLT DIV folks did not like getting that 20mm strafe support they
received from the F-15E's and F-16's that day?

It didn't do them much good, compared to the numerous bombs they called
in. Read SSgt Vance's testimony: where the al-Qaeda troops kept firing
despite the strafing, their position was destroyed with bombs, and lack
of bombs (not guns) was cited as a significant delay in their
extraction, which contributed to at least one death (SrA Jason D.
Cunningham, who was badly wounded and died before being evacuated)

More likely they still enjoyed getting that strafe support for suppression
purposes. I note one CCT member's description of the change in situation
that finally required sucking up doing the danger-close bomb work:

"If we couldn't kill the bunker, we were going to be surrounded," said
Brown. "We knew that we had enemy soldiers hiding in the terrain to our
(right). Effectively, they were moving in on us and we had nowhere to go."
www.af.mil/news/May2002/n20020529_0868.shtml

So they only used the bombs when it was a factor of outright
survival--understandable IMO.

And that site indicates the controller's name was SSG Gabe Brown, not
"Vance"--being as it is a USAF source I'd trust it.


Your mistake is to assume
that this is always going to be the case. The Small Diameter Bomb and
the Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System both address this issue,
and address it very well. And if they don't do a good enough job,
then it's always possible to develop something better.

Your mistake is drawing the wrong conclusions based upon different
platform
requirements, for starters. APKWS is a Hydra-based (or Hellfire based)
solution (neither is scheduled for USAF use)

Is it forever impossible for the USAF to use those weapons, or are they
just not in the current plan?

APKWS is currently planned for use only on rotary assets, beginning in 2006
IIRC.


, and just like the option of
using a gun pod, requires specific load out.

You can carry plenty of APKWS with the weight freed up by deleting a
gun: so an aircraft tasked for CAS gains capability without losing
weapons or fuel.

Huh? Not if those weapons are not loaded out prior to departure. You do
realize the difference between preplanned and immediate CAS requests, right?
And what the timing cycle for the ATO is? And that in the end, regardless of
any specific loadout requested by the supported ground element, some gent in
the CAOC is actually going to decided what the external load is going to be
(been there--requested a mixed load including Gator to suppress OPFOR arty
assets (specifically the DAG) and was told, "We'll decide on the munitions
loadout, thank you very much")? So the idea that you can *depend* on the CAS
package to have these mythical USAF APKWS is highly questionable to say the
least.


In other words if your existing
CAS support package does not have it onboard when they show up, or are
routed in based upon urgent need, and the separation between forces
precludes use of larger PGM's, the ground guys are out of luck.

So where CAS is a likely diversion, then standard loadout includes a
seven-round APKWS launcher (just as sorties over parts of the FRY used
to require an anti-radar missile either per aircraft or per flight,
IIRC). When you've freed up a thousand pounds, using a quarter of that
for contingency CAS isn't a large problem.

FYI, that little seven load RL still takes up a hardpoint, which is why no,
you *can't* plan on it being included as standard.


OTOH, if
they have their trusty internal cannon the ground guys will get at least
some form of support.

With very marginal effect, however.

Again, since there were repeated requests for just that level of support
during Anaconda, and given that it is a common sense starting point to use
the safest (to your own force) option before moving up the risk category,
the gun provides that additional level of flexibility. I seriously doubt
were you in the position of calling in that "oh, ****" mission with the bad
guys well within the danger close margin for bombs that you'd have leaped
immediately to that riskiest of options. You seem to forget that the min
separation factor for 20mm is *25 meters*, while for bombs that minimum
jumps to between 145 and 500 meters (depending upon whether you are in a
protected or open position). Big gap between those figures, and elevating
yourself to the higher danger close risk category from the outset seems a
bit ridiculous to me.

Brooks

In message , Kevin Brooks
writes
"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
...
It didn't do them much good, compared to the numerous bombs they called
in. Read SSgt Vance's testimony: where the al-Qaeda troops kept firing
despite the strafing, their position was destroyed with bombs, and lack
of bombs (not guns) was cited as a significant delay in their
extraction, which contributed to at least one death (SrA Jason D.
Cunningham, who was badly wounded and died before being evacuated)

More likely they still enjoyed getting that strafe support for suppression
purposes. I note one CCT member's description of the change in situation
that finally required sucking up doing the danger-close bomb work:

"If we couldn't kill the bunker, we were going to be surrounded," said
Brown. "We knew that we had enemy soldiers hiding in the terrain to our
(right). Effectively, they were moving in on us and we had nowhere to go."
www.af.mil/news/May2002/n20020529_0868.shtml

So they only used the bombs when it was a factor of outright
survival--understandable IMO.

Still hardly a persuasive argument why the guns are indispensible. Why
wasn't 20mm able to adequately suppress, deter or destroy the enemy?

And that site indicates the controller's name was SSG Gabe Brown, not
"Vance"--being as it is a USAF source I'd trust it.

To quote SSGt Vance's account again:-

"There was a combat controller [CCT] with us named Gabe Brown who was
behind me a bit. I turned around and yelled at him to work on getting
communications running, he already was working on it. I decided that I
needed to be on the line fighting, if I had been on the radio, then the
combat controller would have been sitting there doing nothing because he
doesn't have the assault training. I decided that he should call in the
CAS as I directed him."

More than one person has commented on that operation.

Is it forever impossible for the USAF to use those weapons, or are they
just not in the current plan?

APKWS is currently planned for use only on rotary assets, beginning in 2006
IIRC.

Again, is that because it is physically impossible to adapt it or
develop something similar? Has analysis shown that it would be
ineffective? Or is it "not in the plan, we just strafe for danger
close"?

You can carry plenty of APKWS with the weight freed up by deleting a
gun: so an aircraft tasked for CAS gains capability without losing
weapons or fuel.

Huh? Not if those weapons are not loaded out prior to departure. You do
realize the difference between preplanned and immediate CAS requests, right?

See later.

So where CAS is a likely diversion, then standard loadout includes a
seven-round APKWS launcher (just as sorties over parts of the FRY used
to require an anti-radar missile either per aircraft or per flight,
IIRC). When you've freed up a thousand pounds, using a quarter of that
for contingency CAS isn't a large problem.

FYI, that little seven load RL still takes up a hardpoint, which is why no,
you *can't* plan on it being included as standard.

Why not? Again, you keep obsessing about current platforms and systems
as though they were the only possibilities and nothing new will ever
appear.

With very marginal effect, however.

Again, since there were repeated requests for just that level of support
during Anaconda

What else was available? Nothing.

You're then using the circular argument that since nothing else was then
available, there's nothing else that could ever be used.

and given that it is a common sense starting point to use
the safest (to your own force) option before moving up the risk category,

The safest option is to keep your forces tucked up in bed at home.

the gun provides that additional level of flexibility. I seriously doubt
were you in the position of calling in that "oh, ****" mission with the bad
guys well within the danger close margin for bombs that you'd have leaped
immediately to that riskiest of options.

"riskiest of options"? (Bear in mind that the first strafe pass was
waved off because it wasn't clear whether the F-15 was aiming at the
right troops...)

You seem to forget that the min
separation factor for 20mm is *25 meters*

Which tells you much about its lethality, no?

, while for bombs that minimum
jumps to between 145 and 500 meters (depending upon whether you are in a
protected or open position).

And those are the only options that can be considered?


--
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

In article ,
"Paul J. Adam" wrote:

UAVs are going to be really tough gun targets: just look at the size of
them. Aircraft guns aren't a good option, if only because you're going
to need so many rounds per target.

There are a lot of "plane sized" UAVs, and if you think anaircraft the
size of a Predator is a hard gun target, well, you need to compare it to
how hard it is to hit with a cheap missile (low IR signature, low radar
signature).

The "little bitty" UAVs out there are in the "fly past really quick and
turbulence does the job" category...

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

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

On 13 Dec 2003 00:21:53 -0800, (Michael E. Kelly)
wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote in message

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.

Ed,

I take issue with your last statement, unless you're limiting the
scope of your answer to tacair only. My wing flew 300 sorties during
Anaconda and dropped 845 JDAM's and 24 Mk84's providing excellent on
call air power. Granted we're a heavy bomber and could fly 1000 miles
and then loiter for a few hours, which the fighter guys couldn't do.
I'm sure BUFDRVR can chime in with the BUFF's contribution to CAS in
Afghanistan. It only goes to back up what you've been saying, methods
of delivering CAS are changing.

Cheers,
Michael Kelly, Bone Maintainer

Absolutely correct, and a remarkable effort. But, the discussion was
regarding the call for strafe. The image that conjures up of a Bone
rolling in and lining up for a blast of maybe eight internal
wing-mounted 20mm Vulcans delivered at 1800 feet slant range.....

Dale Brown will probably install swiveling M-61s in the swing-wing for
his next fictional foray. "Flight of the Young Pup."