Is the RAF "anti-cannon" ?
 

Now hear me out here for a second, this is a half-baked theory I'll admit, but I've been idly mulling it for many years.

In the 1950s British designers outfitted our early jets first with the very handy Hispano Mk V typically in a 4 gun configuration, and then we graduated to the venerable ADEN 30mm in first 2 and then impressive 4 gun installations in a wide variety or aircraft (Swift, Hunter, Jaguar, Lightning etc etc).

But then missiles happened.

The gunless Lightning F.3 appeared, and I seem to recall talk that the only reason the Jaguar had any cannon was because the French insisted, ditto our partners on the Tornado project. The Harrier started life with guns but they gradually seemed to disappear. Then when additional space was required in the Tornado F.3 what was the first appliance to be removed to make way - one of the cannon of course. Then finally there was the Typhoon - there was a proposal on cost grounds in 1999 to limit the 27mm cannon fit to only the first 53 batch-1 aircraft destined for the RAF, on the understanding that the guns would be used as ballast and not used operationally, this decision only being reversed in 2006.

So all this is just a personal impression you understand, but I have always had the impression that from about 1960 onwards the RAF didn't really much care for cannon armed aircraft.

For those of you who were actually at the sharp end and not flying the Mark 1 Sofa as I did during those years - does this impression hold any water in your opinion ?

(Neither a pilot then nor now but.....)

Wasn't the version of the Phantom brought for the RAF (F4M or FGR.2) specifically ordered with a radar for use with the SUU-23A pod, unlike the F4K (FG.1) which was brought without?

Wouldn't this show the RAF had a perceived want/requirement for a cannon-armed version rather than a happy coincidence that someone else wanted it and came as part of the package?

Cost/Benefit Analysis.

The tank was largely invulnerable to 30mm Aden whereas the aircraft was highly vulnerable in the battlefield hence cluster bombs better.

The fast high flying bomber was equipped with a long range radar controlled barbette so a stand off missile was better.

That new threats arise and old ones go is a fact of life but buying everything just in case is a potential waste of money.

Moons ago in an exercise a low flying US Skyraider appeared and came towards our carrier. A ( no guns) Vixen intercepted but couldnt get a missile lock so couldnt shoot it down. The eventual solution was to have fired a whole pod of air-ground rockets.

Guns are also useful in ground attack roles.

4G, useful yes, but against a mass raid, or Shock army, less so.

Their airships made the decision to equip and arm for the primary threat. Bit like their generalities not buying practice rounds for CRV7, probably thought learn otj would do.

During F4 design the thinking was that missiles were the way forward - longer range and guided. But pilots in Vietnam soon found themselves in close combat, inside the range of the missiles or in situations were their shots were very low pk. They needed a gun. The Lightning was a victim of the same thinking and, remember, the original concept was a rapid reaction to the Soviet high level bomber threat - get up there fast, shoot missiles, come home (usually single engine).

Multi role aircraft still had some use for strafe until the ground threat and better weapons moved aircraft higher and away from the threat. But again the brains soon discovered that they had thrown away a great tool.

The debate went on, in fact it still does. In my time at 1 Group and the AWC, there were plenty (mainly mud-movers) who questioned the need for guns on fighters, asking when was the last time anyone was shot down with a gun?

We almost lost it from Typhoon, but that was more politics and the potential damage the gun would do to the airframe due to the use of composites - fortunately some better thinkers came along and CofG came to our aid.

Lots of people would like to overlook the amazing results from the A-10 because it's a hard one to argue against. When they say they don't need it in F-35, they mean it won't fit, it would lose the weight-loss program, it would ruin stealth and, anyway, who would put such an expensive aircraft so close to a ground threat. Of course it's invisible so it would really be OK.

Is the RAF anti-gun? Well, some are and others will gladly sacrifice the gun for other stuff where mass and space are issues.

You can't jam bullets.

back in the late 40's and the '50's designers had a lot of problems with guns in transonic aircraft - the Swift and the Hunter both had problems and they took quite a while to sort out

By eliminating the guns the designers were removing a known issue

The poor old Swift had some nasty handling characteristics for a lot of reasons, among other things the fuselage was designed around and older centrifugal engine making the fuselage rather too wide. When they added the capacity for more ammunition, it made the handling difficulties way worse, including (I hope I recall correctly) a nasty C of G shift, especially when the guns were fired and the ammunition used.

Funny - F-35A has internal 25mm cannon.
F-35B & C have external 25mm in pod integrated in and available from the start.
General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems - Template

Do go on with more of this, though - it is amusing.

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The Aviationist » Never seen before F-35's centerline gun pod unveiled


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GreenKnight. I'm saying that the brains (lots of them) would happily have ditched it for the reasons I mentioned. Read and understand before ridiculing.

First came the Gun.

That just makes one pug-ugly aeroplane even uglier; a thing of grace and beauty it ain't.

As for strafe against ground targets from a Tornada GR (Not the GR1A, though, the cannons gave way to the recce sensors and recording equipment), the profile for target acquisition, aiming and squirting, recovery and running away were better suited to the benign range enviroment. The exposure time and crew focus on shooting and recovering in a hostile scenario would have made the aeroplane quite vulnerable to small arms fire from the hundreds of annoyed troops below.

And you would need the right sort of bullets for the intended target, taking into consideration ricochet and effectiveness (armour/soft skinned); generally more misses than hits (on the range), limited amount of ammunition. Cost/benefit analysis - not really worth the risk and effort.

And Courtney, you can jam bullets:E, in both the Aden and Mauser in my experience - and the plumbers, ATC and most other ground bods at the recovery base wouldn't be pleased to see you returning with a jammed weapon:ok:

Mister B

Indeed, HTB. I guessed someone would pick up on that as I wrote it. :ok:

Wasn't the F-35 intended to have all of its weapons and fuel stored inside the aircraft to minimise the chances of being detected by RADAR? So why do the two aircraft pictured have weapon and/or fuel pylons under the wings and (what looks to be a drop tank) under the fuselage?

Gents,

Perhaps I can help a little.

First, the question - yes, there certainly have been times when the RAF has been 'anti-cannon', as I'll confirm. Perhaps the bigger issues are the lack of understanding of what cannon can do, how they do it, and also what the required target set is.

The first two are basic - if the Air Staffs don't know how cannon work, or how to model their effects, they will usually reach the wrong answer. In my direct experience in the mid 90's there was an almost total lack of understanding in this area, across all staffs, including AWC. This was a long running issue.

This is why we had persisted with the Aden 30 for many years. This cannon (and its shell) was designed specifically (by the Germans in 1944) to knock down highly flammable bombers at close range. Thus a correct choice of a high rate of fire weapon plus a low velocity shell with a large charge to blow structure (and fuel systems) apart and start fires/explosions. However, the basic shell was almost ineffective against ground targets. Much better Aden 30 rounds using 'multipurpose' technology were offered for years by RO, with absolutely no interest shown by the RAF. However, they were successfully exported to many foreign users.

The Mauser 27 was a very good cannon with rounds designed for both air and ground use. The large shell gave good anti aircraft performance, the high velocity helped in ground use by extending range. However, it was eye wateringly expensive (around 15 times the cost of a 25mm round), as the calibre wasn't adopted more widely.

The modelling of gun system effectiveness at Farnborough in the 90s was limited and in some cases plain wrong. Some of the models used to assess the close in use of gun systems on the Typhoon were riddled with basic errors. There were no reliable models for assessing the effectiveness of various types of shells against jet aircraft structures. Most importantly, there was no appreciation of the huge impact that modern raiders and gunsights were having on the ability of gun systems to reliably hit a target. All these led to massively pessimistic estimates of air to air gun system effectiveness. (I'm talking 20, 50 or 100 times out here).

Things weren't helped when projects like the Aden 25mm cannon for the GR5 hit technical problems that were directly due to lack of investment in gun systems - our designers were not really up to scratch, and our biggest shortfalls were in gun/aircraft integration, especially in designing reliable ammunition feeds and link/cartridge disposal systems. And, to be honest, the Air Staff really weren't interested by that stage. The cancellation of the Aden 25 tossed away around £7m of spend when a targeted spend of £250K would have fixed the system. Fact was that the Air Staff were fixated on Brimstone, LGB and Storm Shadow by that stage.

The US have retained much better core knowledge and reliable effectiveness models. Plus, their Vietnam experience still impacts the USAF's approach. For the F-35, that is why the A model comes with an internal cannon, the B and C going for a pod. (Interestingly, the original choice for the cannon was the Mauser 27. This was overturned by very effective lobbying by the US gun firms, and a 25mm Gatling was adopted, which is heavier, bigger, and gets less bullets on target per firing pass - go figure). The external pod is a well designed and well engineered system, mainly due to the fact that GD have been doing it for years now.

The A-10's long cartridge 30mm gun system is simply huge and totally designed for air to ground use. To a large extent, the aircraft is designed around it. However, the Swedes and the French have shown what you can do to put a highly effective high rate of fire 30mm cannon into a strike aircraft.

Balancing all this for the RAF, however, was the basic (and correct) fact that for high end, hardened ground targets, guns don't deliver enough effect and present too much risk to the aircraft. In the end, scarce pounds (in my experience) tend to go to the highest end solutions that offer the most 'bang per buck' against the hardest target in the assessment models. (By the way, I never saw a model that used the cost balance between the missile and the target as a selecting parameter). That's why unguided rockets fell so far out of favour, although they offer very good 'bang per buck' in many situations. (Oh, and 'Their Generalities' did order TP variants for the CRV7 for the Apache - the RAF originally didn't).

My take on current issues is that the 'limited war' scenarios we now have are testing the 'high end' assumptions to their limits. A well designed high velocity cannon (or possibly a guided ticket solution like APKWS) could engage a wide variety of targets with very good effectiveness, at massively lower costs than we are now incurring. Plus we have increasingly effective DAS systems that can tackle the MANPAD threat (or at least greatly reduce the risk).

Hope this lot helps, sorry if I've gone on for too long

Best Regards

Engines

Also, post 9/11 the USA appreciates the value of a gun compared with a missile for air policing.

Engines, interesting, it was my boss at Strike that told me about CRV7 and the lack of training stores for Apache. We often received full pods from the GR7/9.

I disagree in part, Engines. Yes, the 27mm Mauser is a compromise, but I would say 20mm with a much higher rate of fire is the air-to-air weapon of choice while the 30mm in all its guises is more effective against harder ground targets.

I always thought it was a mistake going with the hard driving band for the Mauser round, but apart from that it is very good at what it does.

Typhoon, yes, what you think is correct. In simple terms, anything you bolt on the outside of F-35 spoils the invisibility and further decreases range. But the brains believe (or convinced the bean counters) that's OK after day one of the war. The weapons bays aren't that big so to carry a decent mix of weapons in decent numbers, we'll have to make it look more like a loaded F-16.

I hope they have programmed in a line to prevent cannon fire with the gear down...

So the reality is then, Courtney... that there has been a ridiculous amount of money invested in to a stealth aircraft that is not so stealthy due to the requirement of carrying additional ordnance and fuel for the mission?

I am beginning to think Pierre Sprey was right - they have done this to give Lockheed Martin something to do that's worth a few quid, at the expense of the taxpayer.

Well it is sporting six wing pylons in that picture too, so the stealth aspect is already compromised on that fit