10/30   Do fighter planes still have guns? Or they ditched them for all
        missile configuration (because dog fights are rare nowadays)?
        \_ if you are talking about F-15/F16/F18/F14, yes. I think they
           got something like 3 seconds worth of machine gun ammo on them.
        \_ Yes.  Even the F-22 has an M61A2:
           http://www.lmaeronautics.com/products/combat_air/f-22/weapons.html
           -geordan
           \_ What I don't understand is how the F22 manages to engage
              close range with its weapons stored internally behind really
              slow doors.
              \_ The gun is mounted internally -- not behind doors.
                 As compared to a chin-gun on an AH64 or something where the
                 actual gun mechanism is mounted externally.  Internally
                 mounted cannons has been standard on fighter aircraft for
                 decades.
                 \_ Not the guns but the missles. The F22 sidewinders are
                    stored internally.
                    \_ "close range" for a missle is differnt than for cannon.
        \_ A friend of mine in the Air Force was telling me that the
           Vietnam Era F-4 was the only fighter plane to try to go w/o
           guns.  It was just supposed to be a missile platform.  They
           found out that was a bad idea.  And put guns on the F-4 as well.
           \_ why is this a bad idea in today's air fighting environment?
              \_ BVR (Beyond visual range) engagement is still a pipe
                 dream.  Sure, missles can engage and kill targets at long
                 distance way beyond BVR, but IFF (ID Friend/Foe (or
                 non-combantant) at those ranges is still lousy.  And once
                 you get inside BVR to Visual Range, missles are not always
                 an option: no more left, too high chance of locking onto
                 friendlies or non-combatants after enemy evasion, enemy
                 target is too close for use of missle which has a minimum
                 time from launch till arming ...
                 With the F-4, pilots fell to relying on long distance
                 kills from missles, losing high-end skill in ACM as well
                 skill in flying as part of a group of fighters.  F4 pilots
                 were exhausting their missles early in engagement, only to
                 picked off by MiG cannon fire.
                 There are also times you don't want to shoot a plane down,
                 but merely disable it or even warn it off.  You can't use
                 a missle for that -- you need cannons.
                 \_ Can guns or cannons on fighters shoot in directions other
                    than straight forward?  In movies like Top Gun, the pilots
                    in dog fights have to try hard to point their jets at the
                    enemy jet before firing the guns.  Why don't they just make
                    guns that can swing?
                    \_ Well, there's two main problems.  With aricraft moving
                       in excess of mach 1, side mounted guns are almost
                       useless.  Rear mounted guns assume that another pilot
                       has moved into the classic kill position, and no pilot
                       would willingly allow this.  You also wouldn't want
                       big protrusions on a plane that is supposed to fly
                       in excess of mach 1.5 -- like a turret mounted gun,
                       for example.  This would disturb the aerodynamics of
                       the aircraft far too much to be controllable.  There's
                       a reason that most weapons are either mounted
                       internally or are aerodynamic themselves (ie,
                       missiles).
                    \_ So that pilots can split their concentration between
                       guiding their high-speed planes at the same time while
                       trying to adjust their heavy swinging guns to point at
                       the rapidly moving target while conserving their 3 sec
                       worth of ammunition?
                       \_ Naturally, intelligent computer systems would auto-
                          track and destroy both planes and incoming missiles,
                          and never shoot down your wingmen.
                          \_ Oh, that's right - using "tried and true"
                             windows XP technology, right?
                             \_ Go OTS Technology!  Oh yeahhhh!
                          \_ uh huh.  yeah, sure
                    \_ Early revisions of the Phantom F4 had wing-mounted
                       cannon pods to make up for the lack of an internal
                       cannon.  These proved to be useless as discussed.
                       It wasn't until the F4E that it got an internal
                       cannon and stopped sucking.
                 kills from missles, losing high-end skill in ACM that
                 were necessary as BVR IFF was even worse then than now.