[Spktyr]

Well, the Russian designs appear to have been designed to have a manueverability advantage in a gun fight, and they do have that. The problem is that nobody gets into an aerial gun fight any more, and the capability is pretty much useless.

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Not necessarily so. A surprisingly high amount of kills made by the IAF during the '73 contretemps was due to cannon fire.

When poohpooing the viability of close-in combat, we should keep in mind the lesson that Germany learned in Big two when they went on a counteroffensive against the Russians - and were defeated. There was at least one group of tank destroyers which actually did break through the Russian lines, but they had no machine guns as protection against attacks by infantry. The designers of these tank destroyers had never envisioned them having to attack infantry.