Do you think there might be a role for shooting down drones? A J-20 is currently limited to 6 kills.
J-20 5th Gen Fighter Thread VIII
- Thread starter Blitzo
- Start date
Really, you don't put a gun pod like this on a stealth fighter and from what we know, the gun was most likely planned as/in an internal installation here.
If there is a shooting war going on, I doubt the PLAAF and PLAN would resort to gun down those enemy drones - Especially if they are:
1. Flying near/towards military/government sites that are critical for national security (command centers, strategic oil reserve depots, ICBM silos etc); and/or
2. Threatening to expose the locations of allied units/groupings to the enemy (through means of visual, radar, infrared, ELINT, SIGINT etc); and/or
3. Acting as target guidance for enemy attacks against allied units/groupings.
Meanwhile, any warplanes capable of launching AAMs can shoot down the enemy drones, not just the J-20. Even the MALE and HALE UCAVs can do so (with networked support by allied fighters and/or AEW&C aircrafts/drones).
Last edited:
plawolf
Lieutenant General
Just how big do you think the actuators are? Also, note that the canards are canted upwards, meaning the actuators are canted downwards inside the fuselage while the cannon will the canted slightly upwards for easier target acquisition during a dogfight. There is ample room there.
Still, the question goes back to why. Gun range for a fighter is also basically manpad range, I couldn't think of many situations where a 3 second round burst fire is going to make much of a difference to warrant the negatives, the additional weight is better off used on fuel or missiles.
F
firing the cannon cause vibration..
(1)factual effectiveness is mixed.
like on words it's 100%, but as a matter of fact we know that IRISes miss often enough even against straight flying targets, and so did the AIM-9X.
(2)there was WVR over Ukraine when Russian strike aircraft were still flying penetration missions. One-sided WVR, but WVR nonetheless.
(3)there haven't been instances of proper (when both sides mean it and come in numbers) a2a combat since 1982. Most modern fighters don't carry many WVR missiles. Most numerous modern fighter doesn't carry them in its stealth configuration, so after amraams it is left with the gun only.
(4)fighters disengage when object behind them(objective, escorted) is less valuable than them. If it is more valuable - they don't.
It adds weight.
A gun would be "better to have and not need than to need and not have" in the context of ground strafing, but the J-20 is strongly specialized into air superiority.
I would say it's just a design tradeoff that had to be done in order to maximize the ability of the plane to dominate in A2A, which is the most important domain given the type of threats that are proliferating globally today.
No. Gun kills against much slower aircraft are dangerous. This is known since the 1950s when jet aircraft engaged older prop aircraft in combat and exercises. A gun doesn't grant much more kills either. We are talking about 150-250 rounds here. That is just 4-5 extra bursts.
I haven't planned any operations, therefore I will not write definite conclusions. But the rationale behind the F-35's gun feels very GWOTy to me. How reasonable it is to have an F-35 dive to strafe a convoy in a conventional war? Some people also mention CAS here. But again, data suggests that guns have horrible dispersion that precludes close support. A guided 125 kg bomb is way better.
Don't get me wrong, I am not against guns on aircraft. But really they can't be the primary tools for anything in 2023, or even secondary. It is really a tool of desperation.