Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Military British Eurofighter to get a gun that doesn't fire!

Attempts by the Ministry of Defence to save money will leave all 232 of the RAF's new Eurofighter/Typhoon aircraft with a gun they cannot fire.

The MoD decided five years ago that it could save �90 million on the �105 billion project by not having a machine cannon in the British version of the Eurofighter....

To make matters worse, each individual part of the makeweight's shape also had to weigh exactly the same as the real thing. In short, the cheapest option was to fit the cannon. So all 232 of the RAF's Eurofighter/Typhoon aircraft will be fitted with the gun at a cost of �90 million - but in order to save what is now a mere �2.5 million they will have no rounds to fire.

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/08/13/nplane13.xml

So they design a nimble little fighter (canards no less) to be a missile platform??? I thought the brits were smarter than that. The US Airforce declared dogfights a thing of the past and then came Vietnam.

Ya gotta admit, when the Brits go anti-gun they go all the way! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

talk about where is the stupid sign hangin now. you never know about them brits they have always been a bit on the duh side of life lol
makes you wonder about the politics of them and where they want to really be.
scarry dreams
rob k

Well, it looks like they don't think they will ever get into a knife fight. The Airforce learned a hard one with the F-4. Seems to me if you don't want to spend the 90 mill on cannons, you could cut the order for 232 airplanes by one and puf you have the money to cannon ammo for the rest. Like all things done in Europe these days, I would bet some coin that they don't even want the airplane to begin with.

Thats quite an old story and its moved on somewhat from there.

The removal of the cannon was originally a cost saving idea, not so much for the gun itself but the training associated with its use. It seems in certain RAF top brass circles it was considered "obsolete" in this particular type of aircraft and was all part of Service "politics" in that it's presence was seen to threaten certain other projects ie funding for ground attack helicopters.

The makers could not fly the aircraft with out the weapon however as the missing weight affected the handling, so they looked at simply replacing it with ballast. It soon occurred to them that the cheapest way of achieving this was to leave the gun in place but not "live"just as a dead weight.

This was eventually leaked to the Press and I believe that its now gone full circle and the gun is to be fitted and used operationally...The cynic in me thinks that this was the original intention and the whole idea of scrapping it was just a smoke screen to get around the cost cutters at the Treasury...

Regards,

Pete

The dang thing was supposed to be a scratch and bite fighter.
Idiots I say. If the only way to balance the airframe is with a real gun why not arm it? As Homer Simpson would say, "Doh"!

What do you expect from people who built a fighter plane out of plywood?

If you think that is bad, I read an article in one of the avaiation mags st work that the new Joint Strike Fighter was going to be the same way. In fact it was the same story, only the Joint Strike and not the Euro.

Hudge

But it was a bloody marvel though! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

The original "Stealth" technology. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />