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A comment on Dark spot under cockpit of A-10s. Parent comment

Re:Dark spot under cockpit of A-10s by Pxtl on Thursday March 06, 2014 @12:25PM (#7355121)
The Avenger is probably overkill anyways for modern warfare. At this point its advantages over a lighter Gatling-style cannon were probably more psychological than physical - the enemy doesn't have tanks.

I could see the US military fielding a drone built around a 20-mm Gatling gun to fill the void left by the A10, if they really felt that bullets were better than Hellfires for the role.

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Re:Dark spot under cockpit of A-10s by ericd on Thursday March 06, 2014 @12:41PM (#7355239)
Why do with a missile what can be done with a bullet? Hellfires are pretty pricey...
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Re:Dark spot under cockpit of A-10s by masklinn on Thursday March 06, 2014 @04:05PM (#7356585)
> if they really felt that bullets were better than Hellfires for the role.

Well, Drones currently carry a single hellfire (at best), the unit cost is $68000 and the anti-personnel version is pretty nasty (it's a thermobaric warhead). A gatling-type cannon provides better precision, more staying time and much cheaper (even for the A10's 30mm, rounds are ~$750 per hundred for HE to ~$1300 per hundred for DU, 20mm rounds are $300 per hundred for HE to $500 per hundred for SAPHEI, you can literally get a truckload of high-caliber rounds for the price of each Hellfire).

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Re:Dark spot under cockpit of A-10s by blueskin_ on Friday March 07, 2014 @03:46AM (#7359127)
>Well, Drones currently carry a single hellfire (at best)

What?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MQ-9_Reaper - at least 4 missiles.

As it is, drones are only going to get bigger and better performing.

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