|
|
|
|
|
|
by SonicScrub
999 days ago
|
|
|
The issue with the F4 wasn't the lack of a gun alone, and focusing on that aspect 50 years after the Vietnam war clouds the current state of things. The issue was that missile technology was in it's infancy and unreliable, coupled with US fighter pilot training focusing on interception of long-range Soviet nuclear bombers. The US never really envisioned a conventional war being possible in a post-nuclear world. Note that despite this, what the US deemed "inadequate" air dominance was still a roughly 4-1 air-to-air kill-ratio in their favour during the beginning-middle of the Vietnam War. Once pilot training changed to focus on fighters, the kill-ratio shot up to 15-1 for the last half-year or so of the war. The number of these kills made by F4s with guns was small compared to F4s with missiles (even given the unreliable state of the technology at the time), as you can see for yourself:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_aerial... (Note that this is the case even in the later years of the war, when F4 mounted gun-pods were more common) The narrative of the Vietnam War that gun > long-range missile wasn't even true then. And certainly isn't so now that missile technology has matured. A quick glance over to modern air campaigns is proof. Beyond visual range missiles and long-range radar systems are king. There's nothing wrong with having a back-up close-range weapon (same reason why soldiers carry knives), but the use-case is niche, and we shouldn't be designing our fighters around this combat situation. The equivalent would be arguing that soldiers should carry broadswords, and using the handful of knife engagements as evidence to why edge-weapons are superior to guns. |
|
|
Naturally, by the time they accomplished that, they had thrown away all their advantages and handed the migs their disadvantages on a silver platter.