all of what i have read point the F-15 has a Max ITR of 21deg/s and a Max STR os 16deg/s and all of what i have read point the MiG-29 having a Max ITR of 28 deg/s and a STR of 22-23deg/s.

OK…but that isn’t what I asked for.

I found your link for the USAF officer briefing to be interesting and informative. The only problem is that his points seemed to contradict yours.

Ooh I’ve been wanting to weigh in on the whole “Soviet pilots are automatons” propaganda thing for a little while. nastle asks how much of this is fiction and how much is reality, well it is all fiction but has an element of truth for both PVO and US Air National Guard regiments…

…By all accounts Frontal Aviation pilots have always operated with just as much independence and individuality as NATO regular air forces pilots.

I do think it is a mistake to be overly negative in generalizing about cultural norms. It is also probably a mistake to think that operational policy driven by technological limitations is indicative of human nature…while the operational limitations of 60s era interceptors may have had some similarities when comparing US to Soviet air forces, I am unaware of “accounts” that would indicate that Soviet pilot cultural norms were similar to those of US ANG pilots. Having known a few of those folks, I think they would get a huge laugh out of that notion.

In my six years of flying in the 70s and 80s in Europe, I do not recall ever being briefed or seeing intel reports that suggested that WP pilots had the same level of autonomy and freedom of decision making as did NATO pilots when it came to what we did when flying our missions. Maybe way down deep inside Boris was a man yearning to be free and only waiting for that chance…but the only evidence that we had was that he was tightly bound by the state to doing exactly what he was told. Personally, I think most pilots are typically all over-achieving Type A personalities with a certain disdain for authority, so I would enjoy reading accounts that can show that Soviet or WP pilots were no different than us…from what we know of that time from limited reports (Belenko), that isn’t our understanding.

Correct except for that the twin 12.7mm were NOT used for aiming, their ballistics were too different from the cannon to be of any use for that.

I agree. The poster is misinformed. Even the most basic understanding of projectile ballistics and the components of the lead angle solution would keep one from suggesting such a thing.

For a given range, the considerable differences in muzzle velocity of these two rounds makes it difficult to use one as a firing reference for the other…simply put, when the two projectiles get to the target’s range, they are quite far apart due to the significant difference in gravity drop…one gunsight isn’t going to be able to display a firing solution for both guns at the same time.

Each BK-27 round weighs almost 3 times as much however, and in a short burst the Gatling gun will not achieve this tight density either. Dispersion would likely be lower…

Whenever we talk about these guns that fire at such high rates, it’s easy to visualize the result as resembling something like a shotgun pattern.

But it isn’t. Shotgun patterns are pretty much two dimensional with no significant length. Modern gun patterns look more like a three dimensional cylinder with the length representing the burst duration and the pattern width the dispersion.

Let’s take the M61, for example. If we assume an average velocity of about 3000fps and a burst length of about one second, a little simple math will result in an average distance between rounds of about 50′ or so (numbers rounded off for simplicity).

Given the spacing of the rounds in flight, then the time that the target is exposed to the bullet stream becomes important. The greater the crossing angle, in general, the fewer rounds that could hit the target.

As a real life example, we used to teach a high angle, supersonic, gunnery event to the GAF Fighter Weapons School students. The target was a “dart” (roughly 15′ long and about 5′ wide as I remember)…it was towed by another F-104. The crossing angle was planned to be at least 90 degrees, and the sight was caged to the boresight position since the LCOSS was not much use in this type of a pass.

I have to admit I missed the dart when I was a FWS student, but we did have guys who hit it under these conditions. Getting a hit was as much luck as skill, simply because of the limited time the dart was in the bullet stream…the pilot could be dead on with his aim and that little sucker could fly right through without a scratch!!

Much has been made here about how “tight” a gun’s pattern is. This value is a double edged sword. If a gun has an extremely tight dispersion value, then the pilot better be dead on with his aim because a little error one way or the other and the target is missed completely. Sometimes a little dispersion is a good thing…at least it’s always been seen that way all the way back to WW1 when folks began understanding the air-to-gunnery problem.

Gun lethality is another value that can be misunderstood. What is being looked at? The blast effect of the round? Or the likelihood of the aiming system providing a firing cue that is reliable? For example, nobody questioned the lethality of the MiG-15 37mm cannon if it hit something…but the problem was hitting something! The slow firing rate, low muzzle velocity, and poor gunsight system made the gun less than stellar in a maneuvering environment…good against B-29s, not so good against F-86s.

So, be careful when you see promotional literature that claims wonderful results from only a few rounds fired…in the fighter business, we’ve seem claims like this for years…sometimes these highly touted claims don’t measure up in the crucible of actual use…good for selling hardware, maybe not so good when the rubber meets the road.

I don’t like wasting my time in the first place. By wasting time I understand providing proofs or evidence for someone who is not really interested in seeing them, just wanting to troll. I’d break my legs finding data for those who are truly eager to know more – but to me you just ain’t that kind of guy.

One of the difficulties of forums such as this is that there will always be those who want to sound self-important and rely on making claims based on conjecture and Internet surfing rather than actual experience, Your contributions in this manner are duly noted.

If anyone would like info on how guns and gunsights perform in air-to-air gunnery situations, they might check out the three articles here:

http://www.simhq.com/_air/air_028a.html

The differences between disturbed reticle and director systems should clarify most questions you might have.

You were, and so is the A-10 pilot. There is a knob on the console that allows the pilot to select number of rounds.

Its been 25+ years, but I vaguely remember our spec maximum for dispersion for PGU-13/14/15 was 0.75 mils when fired out of a test barrel. The GAU-8 undoubtedly added more dispersion due to its tolerances.

I don’t think you understand the function of that control. It limited the number of rounds that could be fired on a sortie…not the number of rounds that could be fired in a burst. This selection was used in our routine training missions when we wanted to only fire 100 rounds. Other than this and selecting and arming the gun, the only other ‘control’ that we had was the selection of low vs high rate.

Take my best guesstimates of ca 1.5mrad for the GSh and ca 5.5mrad for the GAU, choose the desired range and do your own math.

“Guesstimates’ is a good word for your claims. Don’t you have something better than wild guesses?

The length of burst programmed into the GAU-8 was determined by projectile dispersion and 12000-16000′ slant range to insure an average of 6 hits.

How is burst length programmed into the GAU-8? I always thought I was in control of burst length.

What dispersion value are you using for the GAU-8?