Thread: Is there a need for internal guns on air superiority fighters anymore?

A gun's a waste of space until...until the pilot finds themselves needing it.

Originally Posted by Gun Grape

Zinja

Standing RoEs are not discussed on an open forum.

You are asking about things that, if someone with hands on knowledge were to answer , would most likely dive into the realm of classified information.

Roger that GG! Your point makes sense and i will submit to that.

Having said that though GG, i have serious problems with people who try and make me look like im intellectually challenged when im asking legitimate questions. I can see that maybe i was asking far too much than is permissible for people to reveal on an open forum, fair enough. But i really do have reservations for people trying to talk down on me from an ivory tower just because i hold a different opinion.

Originally Posted by Jimmy

Question 1: You can read the internet as well as I can. The Python IV generation of IR missiles and newer are classy pieces of equipment. Read up on that, on the AIM-9X, and the AA-11 and see what you can dig up. It's probably pretty accurate, and will answer a bunch of your questions about specifics. I'm not endorsing anything in particular out there, that's a no-no.

I did trawl the internet Jimmy, granted, i was only searching for info on sidewinders. But the info i keep getting is referencing to nozzle heat, nothing about heat friction. Perhaps as GG has pointed out to me, its too classified to be available anywhere, in which case i will forever be ignorant .

Originally Posted by Jimmy

Question 2: It's been hammered why that's not going to be answered in any detail.

Ok, i understand that part.

Originally Posted by Chunder

If you don't know anything about tech development, then do not comment.

You are just shooting off a tangent Chunder. You were not under duress to answer to my post, if it pains you so much to respond to my post you could have simply not replied to my post, but do not insult me. I have been addressing you with respect i expect the same from you, after all that comment was not directed at you. If you cannot follow what im communicating with everyone else that is not my fault. Apparently when Kilo-2 made the same remark he was not told to shut up but when i make the same remark i should shut up? Very strange!

Originally Posted by Chunder

I am not being offensive, but.....

That's a useless statement Chunder, you have already purposed in your mind to offend and indeed you have offended. However, i will restrain myself, i will leave it at that.

Originally Posted by Chunder

You do not know either what is available, or seeker head tech, or level of integration capable, that is not even half the story.

There is such a thing as a 'good' tone and a 'not so good' tone, what do you think that is all about?

Zinja- modern IR missiles use imaging sensors, they do a lot more than just lock on the hottest target. They aren't fooled by flares and the sun, and they don't go for the exhaust nozzles.

They use nitrogen-cooled focal plane arrays that can easily discriminate the airframe and generate a complete image of it, and they fly proportional intercepts that hit the target midway down the fuselage.

They operate on higher wavelengths than the exhaust gases, on frequencies that are diffused less by the atmosphere, which gives them greater ranges. They are very nearly BVR weapons that can be cued by radar and launched at any angle within the gimbal range of the seeker.

And that's the "old" ones. The new ones don't even need a seeker lock to launch.

^^ That shows how far behind I am in hardware. There are nuggets in there I was not aware of, no longer being privvy.

To me, the simplest example of the AIM-9's lethality is the Falklands conflict. The UK Harriers were not even set up for them. A crash hardware retrofit program gave the Lima to the Sea Harrier. No HUD shoot cues, no range cues, nothing but a boresight and a tone patched into the audio system.

The Harrier pilots asked "How do we know when to shoot?" Answer: "If you get the strong growling tone, and the aircraft looks like it's in range, pickle it."

Of 26 shots attempted, there were 23 kills, IIRC. And all this is public, searchable knowledge. Apparently, the three that missed were launched out of range. The AIM-9L was introduced in 1978 - over 30 years ago, a near geologic age in today's fast-paced hardware development.

We can assume that the Soviets, and now Russia, has comparable models. Air to Air combat is becoming far more of a sensor game... who can get the drop, who can fire first, who has a lower RCS, vs "dogfighting" from 1914 to 1972. And this is one of the reasons I am no longer a fan of the gun. It is a manly weapon, and no self-respecting fighter pilot would not want one, but with retrospect comes (I think) a bit more of an objective analysis. And my conclusion is that fuel and/or electronics are more important than 500 to 800 pounds of gun.

For CAS, for ground attack - yes. For F-22's and missions that are counter-air, no.

"...For F-22's and missions that are counter-air, no."

So, uh...acquire, range the target, shoot your load (so to speak)) and gracefully decline a bar-room brawl.

No different than a Friday night out on the town...

Originally Posted by Zinja

You are just shooting off a tangent Chunder. You were not under duress to answer to my post,

Im telling you how it is.

if it pains you so much to respond to my post you could have simply not replied to my post, but do not insult me.

I have already clarified that it is not my intent to be offensive.

I have been addressing you with respect i expect the same from you, after all that comment was not directed at you. If you cannot follow what im communicating with everyone else that is not my fault. Apparently when Kilo-2 made the same remark he was not told to shut up but when i make the same remark i should shut up? Very strange!

There is a difference between guess -and statement.

That's a useless statement Chunder, you have already purposed in your mind to offend and indeed you have offended. However, i will restrain myself, i will leave it at that.

Restrain yourself all you want. If you can't pick the difference between a guess and an unsubstantiated statement your out there to be mauled. Your statements aren't just wrong from a military standpoint - they are glaringly wrong from what has been available in the commercial field for about a decade. Using IR to guage surface temperature to =/- 10 degrees is common especially in industry where assessing the metallurgical properties of material under duress in different temperature environments is old hat. It's so old hat that anyone can buy a laser pen that can tell you surface temps.

There is such a thing as a 'good' tone and a 'not so good' tone, what do you think that is all about?

What annoys me, Zinja - is making statements that are treated as fact when they are far from it. You don't need to be in the military to get that, you need to have lived for a bit in design industry to understand why assertions are treated with contempt. I choose not to disclose my field like many others. I don't have any special security clearances (Although I have just spent a sizeable amount of $$$ to ensure that I can get it if needed) because the nature of my work is mech design - which gives me somewhat polarised views in regards to some things. What you have specifically done is define a parameter which does not exist - and used it for the basis of an argument in favour of a weapons system. Not only is this off track - it's more or less based on the journalistic likes of Early 90's Wings of Fame / Take Off magazines. I have never ever once taken a parameter I could not trust as being truthful.

You don't need serving / ex military to tell you that. But im damned sure it would be offensive having someone tell them something alternative to their knowledge which treats the experience with near frivolity.

If you want to debate - debate but check your assertions. The fanboi attitude is something that WAB seems to battle constantly against - assertions is one facet of that.

Lastly - whether you like my tone or not is completely up to you. You got called about assertion no.1, and you proceeded to post further on with more assertions and got called again. You then got challenged. If you don't understand where you went wrong I suggest re-reading until you do.

Zinja to this end I will qualify the above.

Say you want to design X.
You come to our company with not an idea of how to do X - but how you want X to do it's job.

We must clearly understand how you want X to do it's job.

We will ask you for any idea's of yours.

We will patent search.

We will search an ever growing database of systems that already exist to do X.

But the customer has come to us because he doesn't want those things to do X, he wants us to either do it cheaper/better and/or test the feasibility of another way to do X.

The customer will place parameters - but the truism is that the customers parameters are often faulty when it comes to doing what the equipment is designed to do. The reality is that most of the time, X has already been designed by someone else - all X needs doing to it is updating and modifying in conceptuality to not violate patents.

If customer X places a parameter on something because his experience with X is misplaced faith, that is a design decision that can cost anywhere from 10's of thousands, to 100's of thousands, costing your business and making you look like an idiot.

Often all that needs doing to X is specific modification to specific areas to give the outcome the customer wants.

In this area technology always advances very fast - it's a specialised field where generalities do not fit the equation - and in this field we defer to manufacturers specs. Ours is just to piece it together.

Generalities can be the make or break of a concept. For instance, one of my first every project in the design world was to make an offroad wheelchair. It was for a very poor, hot, humid country, where it would be driven into the ground and die within a year. I did so much modification to that damn wheelchair to make it perform for that specific environment it comes in cheaper and more reliable than the nearest competitor because all I did was work standard probability and percentiles in my favour. Bearings / Hubs / Seat. Let me tell you about the seat. The company I rang to get specs on the seat were blunt to the point of rude, for various unspecified reasons. Ignored them. We put them through so much damned testing it got more action than the red light district. We focused it on what we wanted it to do. We developed everything around that seat & refined it's chassis to meet the requirement. Our concept comes out cheaper than what the UN is giving to poor undeveloped communities. IF we had kept to spec, and standards to the letter the project would have been every bit as costly. Instead, when run through testing it completed everything on spec as the environment was sanitised - precisely the opposite of the environment it was running in. To make the whole wheelchair would cost $450.00 AUD - cheaper than competition coming from China. We could do it, because we knew precisely what it could do.

If we had gone down the normally accepted path, that wheelchair would have cost over 2 grand. Yet the damn thing had fully enclosed bearings, Amerityre solids, Duragal steel, polyutherwhatever front wheel UV protected seat... etc etc.

The point is - if we took others assertions as verbatim we would never be in the running. We knew it wasn't verbatim because the assertion was devoid of the usage specific - let alone legal specific applicable.

So specifically, from my PoV which is not a military one, you can't make assertions in the tech field unless you know your area very well. We design around a specialised system. We can keep roughly up to date on some stuff - but the most important thing is knowing what you don't know - and trying to get a handle on what the customer doesn't know - and often the manufacturer won't tell you and definitely WILL NOT point you in the direction past the head engineer of the company who will often tell you to get effed for the sake of his own liabilities / companies intellectual property being explored in greater depth - etc.

Back to the prior post. Understanding the difference has the potential for you to help others / make money / whatever - it may come across as blunt / rude that is just the way it is.

Originally Posted by Chogy

For CAS, for ground attack - yes. For F-22's and missions that are counter-
air, no.

You're forgetting a few points.
First, many of of those kills were "ambush" kills, ie, the brits got behind their targets and hit them before the argies even knew they were being followed. So, the missile didn't have to manouver. So, in these ocasions at least, even an old B model would have worked.
Second, AFAIK, the argies didn't have any decoys/flares. So, no way to fool the missile away.

Change the fight. Make your opponent manouver like hell, and give him flares/chaff/decoys. Your missiles will miss/get fooled. And you have a limited supply. Then what?

OTHO, if they happen to dodge the 1st burst of gunfire, you still have a few more. And you can't decoy gunfire...

Absolutely, yes.

Wow, very interesting conversation!

I guess guns on a fighter is akin to a handgun on a person.

You never need a gun.....until you need one really badly.

Originally Posted by Chogy

T
I was easily able to lock up motorcycles, lawnmowers, and automobiles from their simple 4-cycle engines and hot exhaust pipes. A fighter's hot metal signature is magnitudes larger.

Um, does that mean you can fire a AIM-9 at my car?