"The RAF has been forced into an embarrassing U-turn on its policy of not allowing pilots of the new Eurofighter Typhoon to fire their gun"

Telegraph Typhoon wins gun dogfight

So is this a good investment for the RAF or were they right not to gun ammo?

I believe they were wrong in not including a gun at all on a majority of the RAF Typhoons. The planners should have learned from the American experience of not having guns on the early F-4s in VietNam. All the high-tech weaponry in the world can't match the power of the good, old fashioned cannon...there is no countermeasure against it. That British commander in Afghanistan is right, rockets are pretty much worthless for CAS.

quote:

Originally posted by Sir_Zerg:
"The RAF has been forced into an embarrassing U-turn on its policy of not allowing pilots of the new Eurofighter Typhoon to fire their gun"

Telegraph Typhoon wins gun dogfight

So is this a good investment for the RAF or were they right not to gun ammo?

As was said, the use of a gun in CAS is more efficient than in some cases than rockets. Guns chew up alot of terrain (especially 30mm from an A-10) without having to worry about accidentally blowing up people, it just goes for the target, which looks better. So instead of blowing up a village, you may shoot a pig or goat, which anybody can pay off.

The Typhoon was ALWAYS going to have a gun.. there was no way out of it.. the been counters tried to get it taken off the aircraft, but taking it off would have caused CofG problems, and would need a re-write of the FCS software... so it was decided to leave it in. What was going to be done was - not install the software that controlled it, and not purchase any ammo.... luckily, someone has seen sense.. the RAF will now have a working cannon...

though, the arguments of getting rid of it were semi-valid... the ASRAAM has a low minimum range, and has some tricks up its sleeve when fully intergrated to the Typhoon i.e. Pilot see it, Pilot shoot it.. even over the shoulder. And todays IR missiles are a heck of a lot more advanced than even a few years ago

They wouldn't have needed to re-write the FCS software, they just did something similar to what was done with the Blue Angels' F-18s...added the appropriate amount of ballast at that arm.

Not as easy as that.... its a bit funny when you think about it.. they needed to find something of the same size as the cannon, and weighed exactly the same as the cannon... didnt take long for them to figure out what that was! they decided to leave the cannon in as ballast in the end.. and now, eventualy, its going to be used anyway... all at the cost of a few million quid so someone sitting at the desk thinks they can save money ! lol

Nope, the size is not important, just the weight and arm. Ammunition for the cannon is also a consideration in weight and balance, which is why many gun systems deposit the spent shells in an internal collection vessel, rather than expelling them.

quote:

Originally posted by IguanaKing:
I believe they were wrong in not including a gun at all on a majority of the RAF Typhoons. The planners should have learned from the American experience of not having guns on the early F-4s in VietNam. All the high-tech weaponry in the world can't match the power of the good, old fashioned cannon...there is no countermeasure against it. That British commander in Afghanistan is right, rockets are pretty much worthless for CAS.

Yeah, back in the '60's it took the US Air Force & the US Navy about five years to figure out they'd better put a cannon on the F-4. The thinking in the late '50's/early '60's was that aircraft wouldn't need a gun, all they'd need were missles; that would've been great if the missles had worked as advertised, but they didn't. The old AIM-7D Sparrow had a probability-of-hit of about 10-15%, pretty pathetic. The AIM-9B Sidewinder wasn't much better; so as soon as a Phantom pilot had discharged all of his missles (which probably happened in about 5-10 minutes during a dogfight, if that), he had nothing left to fight with except harsh words.

McDonnell/Douglas finally (belatedly) installed an M-61, but they ended up having to hang it off the bottom of the F-4 in an add-on fairing under the nose; not very pretty. However, as IguanaKing pointed out, there are no known countermeasures against an unguided, ballistic projectile (yet!). I'd trade in two or three of my AAM's for one good ole' reliable M61A1 any day.

How effective will a single barrel 27mm be v/s rockets for CAS?