Idk what the rest of the wall of text is really addressing, but yes a gun on the F-35 for self defence is dumb. Well, a gun on any of the heavily upgraded 4th gen or normal 5th gen aircraft is stupid. But at least the 4th gen options has their roots in aircraft that could potentially use it.
To bring it back on track, seems like the last air-air kill for the F-16 when using the gun was against a light attack aircraft in 1992. Marking the third air to air kill with a gun on the F-16. One being a helicopter and one being an Su-22.
Perhaps read again to find out where you went wrong?
In short leaving out some of the more complex roundabout stuff as long as air to air missiles do not guarantee winning the engagement or as long as it can not be ruled out that it will come to WvR situations a gun is a required certainly a desired fall back option.
Leaving out a gun is a compromise ergo a negative.
Additionally whould you say getting rid of short to medium infrared guided air to air missiles would be reasonable?
It would save weight or free up hardpoints for long range radar guided air to air missiles.
They currently serve as the close self defence role that a gun previously did. With potentially some functionality targeting incomming munitions.
If some weapon or usage change made them entirely unnecessary. Sure yeah, get rid of them and use the space for literally anything else.
Actually its a positive, you can use the space for literally anything else, like fuel for loiter time. A thing you will actually use regularly. The gun has a good chance of never being used with occasionally drones/helicopters in low threat enviroments presenting opportunities
Like the F-16 barely has any gun kills on air-targets. The last being 30 years ago in a low threat enviroment against a light attack aircraft.
Designing an aircraft as Multi Role, but doesn’t have a tool for - as example - show of force at Air Policing is just evenly dumb.
And that’s most of the time the main Job, a carrier group overseas is doing. Enforcing a no fly zone and intercepting civilian Aircrafts.
How do you want to manange the rules of engagement and the steps of escalation, if your only option up close is shooting a missile to a not responding craft? A warning shot? How so?
And if you wanted to, you can actually just carry a gun-pod.
The show of force is you intercepting them with the aircraft.
The alternative the gun offers in this instance is shooting them down, or warning shots. Which i suppose is something neat you can just do with the gun-pod if that was deemed necessary.
As a trade-off for having to carry a gun pod for air policing in an environment you expect to shoot warning shots. You get internal space for anything else, like fuel.
Edit: and when you go check what the Marines plan to use the gun pod for it is for show of force in low threat enviroment or warning shots. Damn its almost as if you dont need to jam the gun inside the aircraft to do what is a peacetime mission. As a bonus, the regular gun-pod fucks with radar cross section, which is nice for peacetime missions
The job was to enforce a no fly zone, Show of Force (in some instances) and Air Policing (intercepting civilian Aircrafts and forcing them to land/change directions) while also in a high threat environment due to hostile Radar AA and expected hostile Aircrafts.
That’s exactly the situation, where the new shiny overfunded F-35 starts to miss a tool for it’s job.
That’s a step backwards, not forward?
That’s simply the point.
Getting rid of the internal gun (Wich would cause less drag) and slapping on a gun pod - Wich will increase its drag, while also loosing its stealth argument, is not smart.
The F-22 doesn’t have this problem, nor is the F-22 a single engine fighter.
Sticking to its overall layout and redesigning it, would have made more sense, than developing the F-35 Wich is limiting itself in so many ways.
Last i checked you do not do warning shots in an environment where there are enemy radars looking to shoot you down. F-35 and F-22 can get closer than other aircraft, but it also means thats not a situation where you do that.
You are either in a situation where you can use the gun-pod just fine, or it is a situation where basically no other aircraft can get close enough where for some reason a low visibility aircraft is expected to go in and potentially fire warning shots.
The US navy seems fine with the current arrangement, so unless this is somehow a big deal and nowhere along the years long process they asked for a gun to be added to the C-variant (a larger aircraft than the A-variant carrying a gun) id argue its such a edge case usecase its not really noteworthy.
You know, the carrier version of the F-35, attached to the most “show of force” Force on the world. A US carrier group.
Many compromises. As in most militaries.
That you don’t care much for doctrine or anything else but how a certain aspect of F-35 can be angled to illustrate it as soemthing of a world beating machine stands out a little.
I dont think ive painted the F-35 as world beating. I see where its limited, and the compromizes made.
I will however trust the people issuing requirements and selecting aircraft and what the new aircraft is supposed replace more than people on forums. Because those are the people who looked at the B and C variants of the F-35, and the gun was seen as a “nice to have” but not wanted if it compromized on other requirements.
Had a look through the JSF whitepaper advocating for the inclusion of an integrated gun. And its most convincing points either missrepresents the nature of what options the aircraft has or puts it in some imaginary threat environment where somehow they expect the aircraft not to be manpadded when engaging in an air to air duel. Overall its not perticualry convincing.
Like i openly say that guns can have uses, because i look to industry and implementation and whoa, there are 2 different gun pods for the non-cannon F-35 where they can fit it if the mission asks for it.
Based on that, i’ll recommend you to read a little bit of the Bradley’s as well as the Striker’s development history, and the blackholes around the military industrial complex, who was in charge for those projects and who did support them… 👍
im vaguely familiar with the Bradley development history having read the report which critizises it. Given the tests it suggests would delay procurement and suck up a ton more money in experimental vehicles. Yeah that would be a money pit if they were to follow that report.
im not to say there arent money pits here, but if im gonna trust anyone when it comes to making an aircraft, especially when there was a infinite money glitch behind it like the JSF, I think the ones putting out the requirements here know what they are doing.
Heck, the reasoning they have behind having a cannon on the air force variant of the JSF is probably reasonable enough in that they saw it doing minimally bad about the aircraft and made congress people and people who made the 2007 white paper about integrated cannon in the JSF happy.
i think its a bit silly to have it, and the Navy, marines, and potentially others having input did not mind putting it in the “nice to have” category of requirements
Is there a reason the critical aoa for the f16 is 29 deg in game when it should be 26 deg? Is this an error or just a fm bug? also I’m able to easily pull up to 33 deg of aoa while remaining recoverable and yet the manual states 26 deg as the absolute maximum the fcs will allow you to pull.
Nor have I, but I’ve got a Logitech X-56 and I’ve got most mapped to HOTAS only settings, but I do still use a few on a keyboard for the sake of ease. Though with effort I probably could get them all on the joystick if I wanted.
That being said, not all settings are needed, as several overlap or simply aren’t needed
What I am talking is if you can map the correct functions to the trottle
Gear handle = Up and if you put it down, it goes down. Right now on my Thrustmaster warthog, only one button is allowed, which leads to single click, not dual switch.
Antenna elevation thumbwheel
FCR cursor control
Idle Detent
Afterburner detent
…
Some things I tried on my warthog and does not work like in DCS, either it does not exist or only toggle function exist.