AH-1G Cobra firing 30mm GAU-8 ammunition?

[Dawes]

The US Army did a study in 1979 to determine the feasibility of fitting the GE 430 cannon (apparently the four-barrel GAU-13 used in the rather unsuccessful GPU-5 gun pod) to the AH-1G helicopter. Their conclusion seemed to be that it could be done, but the installation required extensive structural modifications and a limit on burst length. Ammo capacity was only 100 rounds or less.

Probably one of those ideas better left on the drawing board?

https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA081867.pdf

[Mad Mike]

That's too much gun on a bird as small as a single engined snake. If anything Uncle Sugar could have asked GE for a three barrel Gatling chambered in 30mm DEFA/Aden in order to streamline logistics w/the AH-64 which would enter service a couple years down the line- but a gun in 30 x173mm- that is a pretty big fuck off caliber that requires a correspondingly larger platform- IFVs, C-130s, Viggens, etc 

 

Mad Mike

[Dawes]

Bell's abortive YAH-63 was to be armed with the three-barrel XM188 30mm gun. But I don't think that particular gun went anywhere following the YAH-63's loss in the AAH competition.

[EchoFiveMike]

A fixed mount chain gun would probably work fine.  Maybe limited traverse soft mount.  High velocity, high recoil isn't really suited for the role.  If anything, 40mm Supershot with the same sort of HEDP as 30*113 would be pretty useful.  S/F....Ken

[Sardaukar]

25 mm with Mk 19 or relevant would prolly be better. 

[Burncycle360]

It should have been a pod mounted on a wing if they were going to do it, and a revolver cannon makes more sense than a rotary given the burst limits, but this was just GE with a solution looking for a problem.

 

Today's Zulu Cobra is heavier than an Apache, might be time to revisit the 30x113 proposals

 

I would like to see a 30x173 or 40 CT on something like an OV-10X+ NOGS 2.0 though. 

[EchoFiveMike]

Pod mount will have the same issue they always do:  mount flex = low accuracy.  40mm CTA might be a good thing, how's real world feedback been on it so far?  S/F....Ken M

[seahawk]

If you are in a situation you can use the gun, the 20mm is enough. It is also enough to handle soft targets that suddenly pop up and for that you want a solution that can cover a wide arc.

In all other situations any attack helicopter would not come close enough to the enemy to use any gun effectively. If you want to disable fortification in a coin setting, APKWS is better.

The Ukraine conflict showed again that gun run or unguided rocket runs against an enemy with manpads are not working.

[Stuart Galbraith]

The USAF had a fixation for developing an 'A-16', which they planned to replace the A10 in the ground attack role. I seem to recall 2 ANG squadrons actually got them. It was in reality just an F16 with a 30mm gun pod. Fantastic in theory, in reality they found you had to pray and spray ammunition so much to hit the target due to gun vibration on the pylon, they figured you would be better off carrying a couple of cluster bombs on the same rack. So the project was quietly cancelled, and the other ANG squadrons that due to take them were quietly slated to hang onto the A10. The rest is history.

Its worth also reflecting on the airframe/gun mismatch with the Mig27, which was a glorious failure to behold. A shame because the rest of the jet, when they werent firing the gun, was actually pretty good.

 

[seahawk]

A-16 was never fielded. Only 2 Block 15 machines were modified to carry the gunpod. Let's just say the results were not overwhelmingly positive.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Well the guard were, at least according to one wiki entry which may or may not be complete nonsense, taken to calling them F/A-16's. But as you say, it didnt work very well.

[JWB]

I wonder what the intended role was?

[EchoFiveMike]

Providing a fig leaf to kill the A10?  S/F....Ken M

[Ivanhoe]

10 hours ago, seahawk said:

If you are in a situation you can use the gun, the 20mm is enough. It is also enough to handle soft targets that suddenly pop up and for that you want a solution that can cover a wide arc.

Yeah, looking at things from 1970 to 1990, TOWs and Hellfires got so good and affordable for hard targets that helo guns are really better off focusing on soft targets and precise fire for CAS.

 

[Stuart Galbraith]

27 minutes ago, JWB said:

I wonder what the intended role was?

A first effort to replace the A10. It got more desperate  down the years.

[JWB]

1 minute ago, Stuart Galbraith said:

A first effort to replace the A10. It got more desperate  down the years.

That would have been a fail. The GAU only works because of the added velocity from the airplane speed.

[Ivanhoe]

4 hours ago, EchoFiveMike said:

Providing a fig leaf to kill the A10?  S/F....Ken M

Sadly this makes sense in USAFworld. Develop an A-16, kill off the A-10 including paying the manufacturer to cut up the tooling, then cancel the A-16 due to survivability or whatever. Go back to executing ATOs line by line, checking boxes, and generating performance metrics.

 

[Dawes]

I was at Nellis in the mid-1980's when the "F/A-16" program was taking place. Some F-16's went into the paint shop and emerged wearing the "European 1" camo scheme. The program sent a case of rattlecans out to the bomb dump and we repainted some captive 9P's in  a Forest Green color. The TGM-65 Mavericks were in their factory-painted Olive Drab, but serious thought was given to have them repainted in Forest Green. Thankfully that idea fell through. Apparently the program folks wanted everything perfect for the photo ops. Don't recall if the GPU-5 gun pods were on base at that time.

From what we were told at the time, the overall tests went well. The whole project then seemed to die a quiet death, and the test aircraft returned to their normal color schemes. 

[bojan]

42 minutes ago, Dawes said:

...TGM-65 Mavericks were in their factory-painted Olive Drab, but serious thought was given to have them repainted in Forest Green...

There is stupid, and then there is army stupid

[Stuart Galbraith]

I was researching the USAF National Guard the other day, specifically A10 units, and I found this. I cant vouch for its accuracy, though I will say it supports other things ive read elsewhere about the gun pod. This is the NY Air National Guard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/138th_Attack_Squadron

As in past years, continuing NATO deployments to West Germany in the late 1980s saw the 174th TFW personnel training and living side-by-side with their West German Air Force counterparts as they would in a combat situation. The 174th began 1988 on a high note when the Air Force announced the wing would convert from the A-10 to the specialized Block 10 F-16A/B Fighting Falcone, also referred to as the F/A-16 due to its close air support configuration. With the Block 10 F-16, the 174th became the first Air Force organization to fly the Fighting Falcon with a Close Air Support mission.

The first F-16 aircraft started arriving in late 1988. These aircraft were passed down from regular USAF units who were upgrading to the F-16C/D model. During 1989 the 138th TFS was chosen as a test unit for a close air support version of the F-16. The aircraft were the only F-16s ever to be equipped with this weapon, intended for use against a variety of battlefield targets, including armor with the 30 mm gun pod. The unit received the USAF's Outstanding Maintenance Squadron Award that year.

Operation Desert Storm

In 1991, the 138th TFS deployed to the Persian Gulf with 516 members in support of Operation Desert Storm. The 138th was one of only two Air National Guard units to fly combat missions during Operation Desert Storm. The Close Air Support project however proved to be a miserable failure. Precision aiming was impossible for several reasons: the pylon mount wasn't as steady as the A-10's rigid mounting; the F-16 flies much faster than an A-10, giving the pilots too little time approaching the target; firing the gun shook the aircraft harshly and made it impossible to control the targeting; the essential CCIP (constantly computed impact point) software was unavailable. The pilots ended up using the gun as an area effect weapon, spraying multiple targets with ammunition, producing an effect rather like a cluster bomb. It took only a couple of days of this before they gave up, unbolted the gun pods, and went back to dropping real cluster bombs – which did the job more effectively.

 

It also says on the Massachusets ANG page..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/131st_Fighter_Squadron

In 1990 the 131st was programmed to receive the specialized Block 10 F-16A/B Fighting Falcon, also referred to as the F/A-16 due to its close air support configuration. The 1990 Gulf Crisis, however, delayed this transition. During Operation Desert Storm, the F/A-16 was battle tested and it was discovered that the close air support F-16 project was a failure. Subsequently, the conversion of the squadron was cancelled in 1993, and the 131st remained an A-10 Thunderbolt II close air support squadron.

 

 

I guess this should have been pretty obvious. Ive read the 20mm gun pod as used on the Phantom in Vietnam was regarded as poor for air to air work, but adequate for ground attack because the vibration would spill the rounds giving a nice area coverage.

Now imagine scaling the gun up to 30mm, and hanging it on a much smaller jet....

 

 

[Yama]

On 7/25/2023 at 10:29 AM, Stuart Galbraith said:

The USAF had a fixation for developing an 'A-16', which they planned to replace the A10 in the ground attack role. I seem to recall 2 ANG squadrons actually got them. It was in reality just an F16 with a 30mm gun pod. Fantastic in theory, in reality they found you had to pray and spray ammunition so much to hit the target due to gun vibration on the pylon, they figured you would be better off carrying a couple of cluster bombs on the same rack. So the project was quietly cancelled, and the other ANG squadrons that due to take them were quietly slated to hang onto the A10. The rest is history.

Its worth also reflecting on the airframe/gun mismatch with the Mig27, which was a glorious failure to behold. A shame because the rest of the jet, when they werent firing the gun, was actually pretty good.

That is really baffling design choice: I am fairly confident the gun was put on to plane simply to justify its existence as competing Su-17, with very similar characteristics, was already in production. MiG-27 is not even particularly well suited for gun attacks, with fairly bad over-the-nose visibility.

[DB]

On 7/25/2023 at 2:18 AM, EchoFiveMike said:

Pod mount will have the same issue they always do:  mount flex = low accuracy.  40mm CTA might be a good thing, how's real world feedback been on it so far?  S/F....Ken M

For the UK, it's been tied up in the Ajax debacle (of which there has been more than enough discussion) and the Warrior Capability Sustainment Programme disaster (cancelled, I think?)

Lockheed Martin (UK) was responsible for both turrets (they were quite different), because "anyone but BAE" was the call at the time, even though BAE had a working prototype turret already. Apparently it's beyond the wit of the UK military industrial complex to make a beer can handling system that works. That they're not the ones whose feet were held to the fire over both programmes being late is simply because WCSP was buried because the Army decided to cancel Boxer then get back into it, and GD UK royally screwed up Ajax.

I think LM UK is pretty much dead in the water, with just Ajax turrets being produced and probably support services to F35, most of which are probably just a fake "local content" front for LM US, but I could easily be wrong.

[bfng3569]

On 7/25/2023 at 5:10 AM, seahawk said:

A-16 was never fielded. Only 2 Block 15 machines were modified to carry the gunpod. Let's just say the results were not overwhelmingly positive.

During Desert Storm, their 24 F-16A/B aircraft were equipped to carry the General Electric GPU-5/A Pave Claw pod on the centerline station. The pod houses a 30mm GAU-13/A four-barrel derivative of the seven-barrel GAU-8/A cannon used by the A-10A, and 353 rounds of ammunition. The aircraft received the new designation F/A-16, and were the only F-16s ever to be equipped with this weapon, intended for use against a variety of battlefield targets, including armor.

https://www.f-16.net/f-16_versions_article18.html

[Stuart Galbraith]

The Airforce were desperate to not allow the Army to get the CAS mission, werent they?

 

[Dawes]

The AH-56 Cheyenne made the USAF a little uncomfortable.