"Eric Moore" wrote in message
om

Have they decided what kind of gun the F-35 will have?

Apparently the GAU-12/U 25mm Gatling, in place of the Bk27 27mm revolver
cannon originally planned. The Air Force gets an internal fitting; the
others have bolt-on versions of some sort or other. I've seen mention of
pods in one of the weapon bays or a conformal gun pack on a centerline
station. I really hope it's the latter.

BTW, the selection of GAU-12 is confirmed in this newsletter (pg 2).

http://www.lmaeronautics.com/product...-35JSFTeam03Su
m.pdf

Also, what's the status of the laser weapon that was to be
fitted in the F-35 weapon bay?
Just curious.

The proposal was for a laser that would fit in the lift-fan bay, not the
weapon bay. It's still pretty much a PowerPoint slide. It depends on
scaling solid-state lasers from their current 1-10kW output to at least
100kW and repackaging them from lab test beds to functional weapons. The
Air Force says first opportunity is sometime in 2012, but that looks pretty
optimistic to me.

http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/new...w=story&id=new
s/masd0926.xml

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