In message , Tony
Williams writes
Greg Hennessy wrote in message
...
It was a silly NiH decision not to fit uk harriers with a GAU-12 in the 1st
place.

Never mind taking the sensible alternative & reusing the BK-27s which were
allegedly removed from RAF GR1s and replaced with ballast.

IMO the really silly (and extremely expensive) decision was to develop
the 25mm Aden in the first place, in a calibre not used by the
British, when the effectively identical 27mm Mauser was already in
service in the Tornado. It would have been a waste of resources even
if the design had worked...

Not seen any particularly convincing rationale myself, other than "How
do we keep the ADEN works busy?"

What I find curious is why, when the ADEN 25 fell over, the Harriers
couldn't just shrug, reprogram the gunsight and put the old pods back
on. Failing to maintain a common interface seems _really_ silly, and I'm
really curious as to why an iteration of a revolver cannon is allowed to
be so incompatible with its predecessor. (After all, if ADEN 25 is so
good, why not go for a common interface and hang it off Sea Harrier and
Hawk too?)

--
When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.
W S Churchill

Paul J. Adam