Watch The F-35 Fire Its Gun Pod For The Very First Time

THE DRIVE ^ | July 29, 2016 | Tyler Rogoway

[doorgunner69]

So, when they swap pods around, how do you boresight the thing?

With so few rounds, you do not want to "walk" your fire onto the target, wasting ammo.

[diogenes ghost]

"What the heck was wrong with the F-22? It already had everything."

Nothing, except it was expensive as hell. And had no air-to-ground capability.

F-35 is a black hole of stupidity, but the F-22 is overkill for 90% of missions it can perform, which is one.

[Mariner]

"What has been explained to me is that the F-35 is intended to act as a queen bee while multiple drones are able to take orders from it."

Correct. This is the plan.

It's RADAR is unique in that it also acts as a transceiver to control said drones and receive information from them too.

Force multiplication built in.

[Mariner]

"Or are you saying the F-35 acts as an AWACS to true drones, like the Predator? "

More like an armed X-47.

[gaijin]

Thank you for always including photos:

A LOT of people start related threads, and they omit that part.

I freaking HATE that.

[Forgotten Amendments]

Ike warned of this white elephant.

[Chode]

gun pod, with 220 rounds, for ground support... ya gotta be kiddin me.

somewhere, PukinDog is laughing

[sukhoi-30mki]

I guess the USN/USMC are “OKAY” with the compromise of a lower ammo load given the heavier calibre and hitting power of a 25 mm round.

[Chode]

and one engine, over water, feh...

[DesScorp]

Bolt-on guns suck.

[Sequoyah101]

Oh gosh. How very thrilling. Not.

How long and how many billions did that take?

What a hunk of junk.

[Objective Scrutator]

How do the liberal hippies reconcile their Sanders idolization with the fact that he helped fund this piece of junk?

[doorgunner69]

and one engine, over water, feh...

I hear you, but the A-4, F-8, A-7 and others seem to have gotten through that.

[doorgunner69]

I suspect some modern day equivalent of McNamara's (spit) whiz kids did an exhaustive analysis totaling many pages to come up with the finding..................

On the plus side, a gun pod can be swapped out for another caliber gun or weapon yet to be developed. A built in gun stays put.

[Chode]

sure did, and did it very well... they were also the last of their breed

to me this thing is a committee designed camel that will prolly never do any one thing well let alone be known as one of the great planes

and the fan jobs, well, more stuff to go wrong along with less room for fuel and ordnance

all this stuff might look good on paper but they still have to tell men to fly them and some very brave men they will be

just seems like money that could have been better spent elsewhere

but what do i know, i'm just an old greybeard wi 20/20 hindsight

[smokingfrog]

220 rounds
Why bother?

[Lurker]

I noticed that, too.

L

[Yo-Yo]

You would think that in the days of super computers, radars, IRST, and who knows what other sensors the F-35 has, a computer fire solution program would be written so that in air-to-air mode the pilot pulls the trigger and maneuvers to put the pipper on the target, and the gun only actually fires when it predicts the target will be hit, thus saving ammunition.

Further, in air to ground mode a ground target could be designated in the same way that it is designated for any laser guided bomb or missile, and again the pilot pulls the trugger but the gun only fires when the rounds are predicted to hit the designated target.

Since "super ammunition" is being used for effect, you aren't relying on volume of fire to cause damage, so this sort of system could use the lower rate of fire single barrel 25mm Bushmaster cannon or derivative, also saving space and weight over the 25mm GAU-22.