Eval,

Amen to all your suggestions sir. I'd only add 'make sure you get engineers properly involved as early as possible'.

But then, I would.

Engines

Our Hispano Suiza 20mm canon inthe nose turret were very effective against flame-floats and sharks untilthe end of the 60's!

I do understand what you meant there, Engines, but Air Staff do tend to get selected for their "personal operational experience". Not so much now as folk get matched up to a vacant post because they are due a posting. Maybe a few round pegs in square holes? And they could be even worse than people with "personal operational experience" of the systems in question.

I'm not sure if this is a doctrine I subscribe to, but there is also a line of argument that states that we sometimes over-define and over-question our requirements. And then do more thinking and change stuff. There are some good guns available out there and unless the UK decides to put a lot of money into developing new ones, This argument might suggest you just buy the one that suits your needs. The effectiveness of most of them is, after all, quite well known by now. It's debatable.

I'm a gun fan, for many of the reasons already discussed here. Shame we haven't done more with them. I guess it's a shrinking market for expensive R&D these days.

CM, you are right, a fighter without a gun is an expensive one-trick pony. OK after was is declared but pretty useless for modern air policing.

Who was the top airship who was adamant the Typhoon didn't need s gun? Good the hear him stand up and say he was wrong.

Brimstone vs ISIS pick up truck cost £ 105,000.

Gun vs ISIS pick up truck I would guess £ 600.

Typhoon / Tornado using Brimstone near zero risk from truck mounted AAA.

Typhoon / Tornado using gun high risk from truck mounted AAA.

I wonder if those at the front end of the latest mission share the forums enthusiasm for guns ?

Ah, I see. So you have to get closer to the target to employ the gun? So perhaps it could be used inside mx Rmin. Amazed that hasn't been mentioned as a reason to be enthusiastic about it.

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

A and C,

What is your definition of high risk?

I only ask because I consider the lead computing task for a manually aimed 'truck mounted AAA' device to be quite tricky given the range a high angle strafe attack will 'open' at. Given the attack will be made at high speed (due to wanting to align the fuselage with the attack) the aircraft should have a sizeable energy package for jinking post 'close'.

Naturally you can ignore sun, atmospherics and fly a predictable path to the open which does play into enemy hands, and other weapon systems available to them (shoulder launched IR, radar laid AAA etc) will raise the risk.

I will also accept that modern views of risk and the under current of losses of both aircraft and aircrew being unacceptable/ unfathomable do lend weight to your argument. I'd still like to know what metric you were using in the probability versus impact grid to give you a 'high'.

Anybody know why the guns were not fitted to the Lightning F3?

CM, true if you have to fight inside Rmin but not for A-G which really needs deliberation.

orca, true for a single AAA target but, as you said, there are adjacent non-engaged systems to consider.

Even low risk becomes unacceptable if you risk losing 15% of your deployed assets or even 2-3% of your entire force. It is not as if you can churn out another 200 the following month.

Attrition-wise Typhoon is perhaps more expendable.:ooh:

From memory, the additional bits needed to operate Red Top took up the space used for the cannons in the F1/F2

How many seconds of bullets do the various Tornados carry? How many are required to get a 3 sigma hit on an A2G target? Aeons ago, someone who had substantial power over these decisions said he liked stores on the way out, keeping unjammable bullets on the way back. I suspect that was one reason ADV got to keep its remaining gun.

Having watched a lot of strafe and seen the panels beaten I would say the training accuracy was quite good, combat may be less so. However consider CSAR, a gun is a wonderful way of deterring with several passes possible, but best delivered by a 4-ship :)

Brimstone, OTOH, could destroy anyone still in a vehicle. Horses for courses; in o other words a gun is an essential tool in low intensity conflict. What sort of gun is another matter.

Orca
 

The "high" risk designation was for the whole engagement risk, one on one I would put Fast jet vs Truck mounted AAA gun(s) as low risk to the jet and the upper end of the opposite scale for the truck.

The problems come with the remainder of the environment were there are likely to be other AAA assets and may be MANPADs, add to this the danger of any crew who escape from a damaged aircraft are likely to be staring on Utube alongside a well known knife owner from south London and this puts physical/ political risk is at the high end of the scale.

Politicians see the Brimstone in the same way as the Gatwick airport management see forcing me to don a hi-vis vest, it lets them say " I mitigated the risk" and so they can go about their daily business without fear of critics who might damage their carreer.............. Yes the last paragraph is a little tongue in cheek !

A and C,

Thank you for the reply, I think we agree - somewhere in the 'very unlikely however catastrophic or unacceptable impact should it occur' frame. Of course, unacceptable depends on your frame of reference which in the current environment is understandable for the reasons you state....however in a Herrick re-run or even Falklands type scenarios where a bit of air to mud can break a dead lock - and British lives are at stake - as it appeared to at Goose Green - then maybe our aircrew would be viewed as a tiny bit more expendable and returning to Mum with bullets in the jet whilst Tom and Bootneck struggled on valiantly would be viewed dimly.

orca, was it Nick Harrison in Bosnia?

The RAF of tomorrow simply has not got the numbers today.

Richardson!

So, now too small to use anything other than guided weaponry from outside the MEZ? Best we buy some much longer sticks.