Close air support at its finest, from the squaddie's perspective
 

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0b5_1...9&c=1#comments


Incredible video of how A-10s are snuggling up to Royal Marines to fight the obnoxious Taliban.

A-10 = CLOSE Air Support.

More close air support, this time from Apaches. Fireworks for the new year.


http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e46_1199008814

Like the way everything goes from laughs an mickey taking and 'yeah were cool', to PULL BACK, PULL BACK and 'christ I nearly s**t myself' then someone with a stripe or two ordering 'single file and lofty off doubly'.


WOW Like Minded, bet that got your juices flowing didn't it??? Must have reminded you of that horrific action that you witnessed whilst playing the 'Death from above' mission on Call of Duty 4 on xbox. Crikey bet your stare is at least 2000yds long.......

Is there any major difference in the CAS offered by the UK and USA forces in terms of effect (yes the A-10 has a big gun). Would the UK's forces find any greater capability offered by a few A-10s in the inventory for example?

And what will replace it?

In my book this aircraft and the SU25 will always be needed as long as we have troops fighting with rifles,grenades and bayonets. Until we get say a UAV armed with miniguns that can hover with, and close to the troops.

I'd love to find a "guns on aircraft are out of date thread"

Have a look at the early Typhoon threads.:)

Not saying the gun isn't an amazing bit of kit on the A-10, just can't remember if the GR-7/9 ever got the Aden cannons of their predecessors?
I'm making the assumption that the Harrier is the UK's main CAS aircraft used in theatre which in itself could well be wrong
As for the early Typhoon threads, I'm not sure even the UK's procurement system could get the gun taken out of an A-10.

aaaahhhh....guns on UK combat aircraft, and lack thereof....

GR7 was going to get a 25mm version of the Aden 30mm, but the project got canned in late 90s due to problems with getting gun and pod to work together. Would have been a good weapon, high velocity and very high rate of fire, but it got cancelled along with the Typhoon cannon at the same time - Air Staffs had decided that guns were 'not a viable weapon' (thsi analysis was built around air to air scenarios). Doesn't look so good a decision now, but at the time, it was made in good faith.

IMHO, we will see a comeback for guns as long as we are in the sort of war Afghanistan presents. The debate over guns on the JSF in the States was effectively closed the day the USAF used F-16 guns again in anger against ground targets in Iraq. JSF CTOL variant has a 25mm gatling built in, STOVL has a centreline podded version of the same gun.

Guns
 

Don't know about the gun on the Typhoon, but I can say from first hand observation the 25mm Aden for the Harrier 2 GR5 was binned simply because it didn't work !

I had an irritated reply from one of the 25mm's designers when I mentioned this a while ago, quoting all sorts of record breaking rates of fire etc; well personally I was convinced otherwise by the damage I photographed after test firings, when the thing fired it's own innards at least as far as the shells !

To a simpleton trained in some engineering like me, it seemed they were trying to bypass the simple laws of barrel cooling v. rate of fire & metallurgy.

The GR7/9's - and their colleagues on the ground - deserve to be supplied with the GAU-12 gatling the American AV-8B's use; but that's not politically handy, so the very second best bet is rocket pods...

This is an example of a total lack of balls by RAF senior officers; if a built on gunpod is so difficult ( why not Aden 30mm's, the shape of the gunpod for the GR5 etc is already designed - ? ) or failing that a pylon mounted gunpod off the shelf, which would only require a short trials programme & suitable aiming software.

If aiming software is difficult or expensive, how come that's been chosen rather than a real gun on the RAF's Hawk 128's ?!

"There's one, and the other."

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cb4_1199400402

Guns - A reply
 

Double Zero,

Some info on the Aden 25 - I was associated with the project, but not clever enough to be a designer. Just to set the record straight....

The Aden 25 was started as a 'cheap' programme to convert the Aden 30 to use the incoming 'standard' 25mm high velocity round. The Aden 30 round was ineffective in the ground attack role, and rate of fire was too slow to give acceptable probability of hit in air to ground. The programme was constrained to use the existing gun pod as far as possible, and also the existing gun mounting points - this was a serious mistake. They were also constrained to use Mauser 27mm barrel forgings.

The Aden 25 was, as you correctly said, a disaster first time around - guns were failing after about 100 rounds due to poor design and incorrect selection of materials. RO were the guilty party.

The MoD switched contractor and gave the guns to a small outfit (AeI) to sort, which they did to very good effect. Final test firings of the gun showed excellent reliability at 1800 rpm, with very low wear on the gun system components (around one tenth of that experienced by the Mauser 27mm, in itself a very good weapon). This was the best performance ever achievd by a mechanically fired weapon (another MoD requirement).

But, the gun pod design had been left to BAE, and the split between gun and pod design was a bad mistake - when the gun got to trials on the aircraft, ammunition feed problems were very common. The team also experienced problems with spent links striking the composite tailplane - not a problem with the tin versions on the GR3. The link collector designed to solve this issue was not at all elegant.

Barrel wear - the Aden 25 designers weren't trying to bypass any laws of physics - had the weapon gone on to service, a burst limiter would have been fitted, like any almost any other cannon firing at over 1500 rpm.

The total spent on developing, building and rebuilding the Aden 25s was about one quarter of the UK share of developing the Mauser 27mm - as ever, you get what you pay for.

I agree that the best way forward from where we are now would be a GAU-12 fit for the GR7/9 - but I suspect that our aircraft would need quite a bit of work to take it - the system needs external power drives and additional hardpoints. Incidentally, the JSF gun is a development of the GAU-12, using the same 25mm round.

Pylon mounted cannon do not have a good track record - add up the various errors and flexures and the chance of hitting the target goes way down - that's why almost all types are fuselage mounted.

Aiming software for a gun is not difficult, and with new sensors (electro optical and millimetric radars), the performance (accuracy, kill probability) can be really good. Apache is a good example of a really effective gun system. It's a shame that the RAF staffs were slow to realise that technology had moved on from the Aden 30 and Mauser 27mm systems.

Hope this helps - as ever, the truth can be complex. Once upon a time the UK had some very talented gun designers and makers - they deserve a fair hearing.

Regards

Engines

All the Typhoons have got guns...not up to A10 spec though unfortunately!

Just to open a can of worms, are the Typhoon guns actually plugged in these days or are they still filling the role of "something gun sized with the same weight distribution to replace the guns taken out in the first place"

I'd love to see a few A-10s in use by the British forces, I'm sure Harrier is great, but it's always struck me as a strange aircraft to be using when there are runways available. If it was me waiting for CAS I'd love the extra fire power and weapons load of the A-10 to support me. From the pilots view an ugly twin engined over engineered aircraft with an armoured cockpit must be prefferable to a composite aircraft such as Harrier or Typhoon. I'm sure greater minds than mine must have thought the issue through

Interesting video, the following. GLMRS (multiple rocket artillery with laser guidance) is now revealed to be as accurate as air dropped laser bombs.


http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=9e5_1199572862


Nothing stings you awake in the morning than going to find out what happened to your insurgent buddy and getting a fussilade of 30mm in the head.

Nostrinian. Kind'a new here, aren't you son?

Seriously, that is a fair point but nobody planned for scrapping with tribesmen in the middle of bum f**k nowhere. Why should they when they were basking in the euphoria of the Cold War peace dividend?

Gi'z a clue; how much do you reckon it would cost at today's prices to build some Tempests or Mustangs?

Something that strikes me from viewing some of that footage ( http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e46_1199008814 frame 00.54, say, or

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=cb4_1199400402 );

how much effort would have gone into positive ID of the terrs?

GBZ

You may have a point there. Not quite sure what part of ROE can be used to justify using a minigun on an apparently unarmed "hoodie" walking past a row of buildings. Can someone enlighten me ?

So we must now ask to see their Al-Queda membership card before we can decide that the guy who has just dropped off 30 RPG rounds to what the locals call a IED factory is a threat?

Just for example, no specific knowledge of that particular "hoodie" involved.

has it ever occurred to you, that this is only a tiny part of a longer video?

that chav in the hoodie has a rifle tucked under his left arm in his jacket, it was observed earlier, which is why his left arm doesn't move.

he was also observed to have placed an IED earlier.

besides he's a chav, which is the most important thing.

".....what part of ROE can be used to justify using a minigun on an apparently unarmed 'hoodie'"

Surely wearing a 'hoodie' is sufficient ID to waste the little $od?

Mind you, a baseball cap on backwards, inflatable crack-dealers' trainers and jeans at half mast would certainly be sufficient corroborating evidence!