25mm "Shock And Awe" F-35B Fighter GAU-22 Gun Pod Test Firing

[DougGuy]

http://www.youtu.be/watch?v=XUcln7StaEw

[DerekP Houston]

I dunno, didn't give me the same chills as the BRRRRAAAPPPPPPPPP from the A10....

[square butte]

Dandy

[w5pv]

Awsome

[MrWolf]

He flinched on the top two... Impressive.

[tygar]

Sure wish we had some of this stuff in VN.

[Smoke4320]

couple of those mounted on the shop should do the trick :)

[Rick Hodges]

So, I thought they needed to use the "Stealthy F 35" for ground support because the A 10 was too slow and vulnerable to radar? Then they hang a gun pod underneath the damn plane, slow it down and destroy its stealthiness. Hmmmmmm?

[Hardcast416taylor]

So, I thought they needed to use the "Stealthy F 35" for ground support because the A 10 was too slow and vulnerable to radar? Then they hang a gun pod underneath the damn plane, slow it down and destroy its stealthiness. Hmmmmmm?

It is just `higher powered brains` than ours that came up with this version. Wonder what the storage capacity for ammo on the plane is with such a high RPM rate? The high air speed of the plane was the reason they kept the `Hog` in service, ah well `our tax dollars at work`!Robert

[bruce drake]

bit more lateral dispersion than I've seen in the A10 tests. Multiply that by distance and the beaten zone of the cone of fire widens out into danger close for troops on the ground.

4 seconds of gunfire from an F-35 or 30 seconds of gunfire from an A10...

http://www.defensetech.org/2015/01/02/a-tale-of-two-gatling-guns-f-35-vs-a-10/

[Bzcraig]

bit more lateral dispersion than I've seen in the A10 tests. Multiply that by distance and the beaten zone of the cone of fire widens out into danger close for troops on the ground.

4 seconds of gunfire from an F-35 or 30 seconds of gunfire from an A10...

http://www.defensetech.org/2015/01/02/a-tale-of-two-gatling-guns-f-35-vs-a-10/

Exactly what I was thinking! They are doing their best to try to replace the capability of the A10 and it is not going to happen in a plane designed to fly supersonic. They would be miles ahead trying to design a better rotary wing gun ship for that role. The reason for the A10's success is that it was designed to fly low AND slow. I totally understand and appreciate trying to protect the pilots from death and injury. But having said that, we are talking about combat. Heck, turn the A10 into an unmaned aircraft just don't remove it from the battlefield until something is purpose built to up the ante of the A10's capability.

[mcdaniel.mac]

Exactly what I was thinking! They are doing their best to try to replace the capability of the A10 and it is not going to happen in a plane designed to fly supersonic. They would be miles ahead trying to design a better rotary wing gun ship for that role. The reason for the A10's success is that it was designed to fly low AND slow. I totally understand and appreciate trying to protect the pilots from death and injury. But having said that, we are talking about combat. Heck, turn the A10 into an unmaned aircraft just don't remove it from the battlefield until something is purpose built to up the ante of the A10's capability.
Rotor wings eat fuel hard, and have some serious limitations in terms of maintenance and speed to get to an area.

The F35 isn't going to replace the A10 because the A10 is doing too many things badly. We aren't going to be sending planes in to strafe tank columns through AA fire, and the gun isn't even as effective on modern tank armor either.

The F35 is a multirole fighter, though, so as long as whichever branch is currently writing requests is going to ask for things, they're going to keep testing new stuff. Frankly the F35 isn't as bad as everyone wants it to be, but it's not nearly the plane it could be either.

Replacement for the air support role will likely come in the form of something like the OV10-X, or perhaps a modified Osprey, combined with unmanned aircraft. The 30mm gun is so far beyond unecessary that it's a design liability compared to a smaller cannon or guided munitions.

[Blackwater]

You know, I can see both sides of the F-35 issue vs. the A-10. Two very different planes with very different capabilities as a result of those differences. I'd really like to see us have both! If we didn't waste tons and tons of money on all sorts of idiotic and dysfunctional pork barrel projects that benefit a very, very few, and instead, put it to maintaining and building more A-10's in place of phasing it out, I think we'd all benefit, and very possibly significantly so. The old Warthog is a very unique plane, but NO plane of ANY design is the answer to each and every question. It's why we have .222's and .300 mags! The military's thinking that we need one, do-all model for everything has some merit, but it ALSO has some significant drawbacks as well! We need to keep those drawbacks in mind as well as the advantages, IMO. The military DOES have to live within a budget, and with all the high tech stuff that's now needed to retain air superiority and dominance, we STILL have to have the right tools, and that means some significant degree of diversity in those tools. I say keep 'em both. How many of each should be the question we need the answer to, I think?

[Travelor]

Where did the cartridge cases go? And would not the cases be reflective on Radar?

[jonp]

The A-10 was designed for one thing and does it without peer.

"Jack of all trades, master of none"

[mcdaniel.mac]

The A-10 was designed for one thing and does it without peer.

"Jack of all trades, master of none"
I disagree. There are no more Soviet tank battalions lining up T72s along the Iron Curtain for the A10 to raze. Modern armor isn't as vulnerable to the gun, and an F18 is going to be able to do a tankbuster mission more effectively in a modern combat airspace.

You know, I can see both sides of the F-35 issue vs. the A-10. Two very different planes with very different capabilities as a result of those differences. I'd really like to see us have both! If we didn't waste tons and tons of money on all sorts of idiotic and dysfunctional pork barrel projects that benefit a very, very few, and instead, put it to maintaining and building more A-10's in place of phasing it out, I think we'd all benefit, and very possibly significantly so. The old Warthog is a very unique plane, but NO plane of ANY design is the answer to each and every question. It's why we have .222's and .300 mags! The military's thinking that we need one, do-all model for everything has some merit, but it ALSO has some significant drawbacks as well! We need to keep those drawbacks in mind as well as the advantages, IMO. The military DOES have to live within a budget, and with all the high tech stuff that's now needed to retain air superiority and dominance, we STILL have to have the right tools, and that means some significant degree of diversity in those tools. I say keep 'em both. How many of each should be the question we need the answer to, I think?
We currently can't make more A10s. The tooling does not exist. Building more would mean digging out the original blueprints and spending money converting them to CAD, building new tooling, new production facilities, and training a whole new wave of workers. In the end, you still end up with a plane that shears bolts and damages the airframe when it fires.

The F35 is a better comparison craft to the Harrier jets, IMO.


ETA: part of the problem with using helicopters for air support is operational ceiling and airspeed. The mountians in AFG were often high enough to force helos to go around, making it easy for Taliban to shoot down onto the with camouflaged AA. Even in southern AFG away from the mountains, the low max airspeed meant that they were further away and could not cover as wide an area, and would have shorter time windows than other aircraft. One of the big advantages to unmanned aircraft like the Reaper was the ability to stay up high and observe an entire battlespace via optics and delivering fires from the air instead of needing to move in close at 10,000 feet.

[tygar]

I'll tell you, as an old "mud mouse" Marine, any of those zoomies scare the dog poop out of me. I did a tour with tanks (even got to qual as a driver) & I saw what some ordnance could do to them & I'm quite sure that the A10 would cause a big pucker factor in even the dumbest tanker. But since that was over 40 yrs ago, & everything has been upgraded, I ain't got a clue!

Don't know what planes or other platforms are best & I have little faith in them getting the "right" one, with all the crooked stuff that goes on in procurement.

One thing I do know, the guys from the desert war, sure liked the A10.

[Rick Hodges]

So the vaunted F-35 makes it on scene and can give you 2 two second gun runs, 220 total rds of ammo? They really need to take the persons who decided this is a good idea and make him serve a tour with the ground pounders who need that fire support.

For all the talk about surviving in the "Modern Battlefield", how about a weapon system or two optimized by the battle fields we actually fight in?
We couldn't build Thuds as fast as we lost them....you know optimized for the "modern battlefield" to toss tactical nukes, and the F-4 didn't need a gun, not in the "modern battlefield"...and God knows we needed to spend all our research dollars developing Supersonic Bombers to penetrate at 70,000 feet...knowing full well they were absolutely sitting ducks for missiles and high altitude Soviet interceptors.

We are capable of designing and building great aircraft...the first ever US purposely designed air superiority fighter has a perfect record F-15...some 270+/0 kill ratio in the battle fields that we actually fight in.
The A-10 has been doing stellar work as a purpose designed ground support aircraft since the early 70's. This do everything airplane concept saddles us with planes that don't do anything particularly well.

[jonp]

Tanks are not the only thing A-10's are used for. I have many, first hand stories of the reaction from "BRRRRRRRRRP" by door kickers in the sandbox. Moral is very important if nothing else.

More than one story has come back that the only sound the Daesh are afraid of is the low and slow and they run like little girls when they hear it