The gun system was taken out as a savings measure in the late 90s, at about the time the Aden 25 for the GR7 was cancelled. At that time, the Air Staffs were definitely assuming that no cannon would be required in the future. The ensuing saga of the Typhoon gun might be funny if the taxpayer hadn't had to pay so much to play 'Mauser hokey-cokey'.
Hi Engines
This is not quite true and a lot of mythology has grown up around the sequence of events. A slip of the pen turned a savings measure called "no gun training" (because bogus mode was available, the savings measure was intended as a means of reducing range costs) into "no gun". This savings measure was a long way down the pipe before the mistake was picked up. The cost of a modification/ballast etc was introduced as a means of shooting the savings measure down ( no pun intended), nobody ever championed getting rid of the gun. I know I drafted the counter measure (again no pun intended) and outside of staffing the various papers, no industrial costs were involved.
Regarding models, Pk was not used in specifications my time as it needed to much information about the target. Air to air gunnery was also described as trying to thread part cooked spaghetti through a keyhole. Thank you for the rest of the history,very informative.
regards
retard