Zim,
I'm unclear on it. Your article says:
"For the F-35A, 180 rounds can be housed in the gun’s linkless ammunition handling system. For the F-35B and F-35C, they both rely on an external gun pod carrying the GAU-22. The gun pod can hold 220 rounds in a helical magazine that wraps around the gun’s barrels within the pod."
So, the F-35A can carry 180 rounds. And the F-35B and F-35C will carry 220 rounds in an external gun pod. The gun shoots 3000 rounds/minute. How long is this plane dog fighting? Best case, 14 seconds and its ammo's gone? Why bother?
Close range, I don't see it. They're relying on shooting down a plane a couple of miles away, it seems. Did they figure they would never be in a real dog fight again? Or do they have short range rockets on it for dogfights?
With Russians flying 5 feet from the wingtips of a us recon plane, how's the F-35 going to take out the Russian fighter and not our plane?
They seem to have made a decision that we don't need interceptors anymore. Was that a sound decision?
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