On Wed, 10 Dec 2003 14:53:47 GMT, "Kevin Brooks" wrote:


"Alan Minyard" wrote in message
news
On 9 Dec 2003 13:40:45 -0800, (Tony
Williams) wrote:

Alan Minyard wrote in message
...
On Tue, 9 Dec 2003 00:29:04 +0000, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:

In message , Alan Minyard
writes
Much better to go with an M-61 variant that actually works, is combat
proven,
and has a useful rate of fire.

Trouble is, this gets you back where the US was in 1950; the M3 .50"
was
a superb gun in terms of reliability, ballistics and rate of fire and
was a thoroughly proven weapon. Trouble is, nobody convinced the
MiG-15s
of that fact, so they soaked up a _lot_ of hits where a larger-calibre
weapon would have made the F-86 versus MiG-15 kill ratio even _more_
impressive.

And who out there is going to use significant numbers of unreliable,
heavy, slow
cannon to oppose a US Force? The rate of fire of the .50 was not enough
to
make up for the somewhat smaller calibre, that is not the case with the
M-61.

Possibly, possibly not. The bigger the target is, the more damage you
have to inflict to down it. A MiG-15 weighed under 3,800 kg empty, a
Su-27 around 18,000 kg - nearly five times as much. A 20mm shell
weighs only just over twice as much as a .50 bullet. You can double
its effectiveness in recognition of the HEI content, but even so you
are still left with a pretty even match between the .5/MiG-15 and
20mm/Su-27 in terms of destructive effect compared with target weight.

Tony Williams
Military gun and ammunition website: http://www.quarry.nildram.co.uk
Discussion forum at: http://forums.delphiforums.com/autogun/messages/

Are you familiar with the concept of guided missiles? If you get into gun
range
you have already screwed the pooch. The gun is a last ditch, desperation
weapon in ACM, wasting airframe volume and weight on a honking great,
slow, unreliable gun is not a wise trade off.

Yeah, a terrible tradeoff...right up to the point where you (or, more
accurately those you are supporting below who are locked in a very nasty
"knife" fight that precludes use of JDAM or an LGB) need it, as was found
during Anaconda.

Brooks

In which case an M-61 works quite well.

Al Minyard