When we first started going to Red Flag the Aggressor Squadrons treated us as a part of the U.S. C130 "Turkey Shoot" which was annoying. this was before we acquired a couple of ex QWIs from the fast jet fleet. Suggestions came in for defensive equipment and the first was to use the ground suppression role and mount a couple of Gimpies in the para doors. The mounting bracket only allowed a small "letter box" to fire through (to save the external tanks, tailplane, etc. from being shot off by over enthusiastic "waist gunners" i.e. 47AD despatchers. The powers wouldn't let us take the GPMGs on detachment anyway.
Salvation came after the Falklands conflict when the Spams asked how we fired the new big nose cannon on the roof. We put a few cooling holes on the probe and also explained that the Orange Crop pods were AIM 9 Ls
Red Air kept a good distance for a while after that.
