Boeing ac 25-k Banshee

[lenny100]

busy building a new RAF gunship ground attack aircraft for service in 2012
and i would like ideas of which weapons systems you would fit onto the aircraft which is the UK version of the replacement of the AC-130U Spooky which is fitted with UK sensor systems and weapons.
There is plenty of room for weapons believe me as will be revealed at a later date.

[deathjester]

Whatever weapons you end up putting on it, why not put them in turrets to allow the aircraft some degree of manuverability during an attack: flying along at a regular speed+altitude, while performing a left hand pylon turn is a receipe for getting shot to sh*t!!
  As for weapons, how about guided CRV-7 rockets?  I heard a rumour that they can now fit guidance to 70mm rockets; that would be perfect for off angle firing!

[lenny100]

i was thinking of the fireing altitude to be up to 25 thousand so the first the target will know is when it blows up

[rickshaw]

Brimstone/Hellfire missiles.  Large quantities of them hung from under the wings.  Two sensor turrets, each with FLIR and Laser designator, so independent targeting can be accomplished.  Perhaps a 105mm L9 light gun, firing out the rear door or the port side and if you're really wedded to using automatic cannon, then some surplus 30mm Aden also firing out of the port side.

[GTX]

Make it uninhabited!  Use weapons such as Brimstone and possibly Mauser BK-27s or General Dynamics GAU-12/U Equalizer and/or Rheinmetall Rh 503 35/50mm dual-calibre cannon.  Agree with the turret idea - make them low drag/stealthy and have the weapons only fire sideways when absolutely necessary.

As to rockets, the guided ones deathjester refers to would be the Direct Attack Guided Rocket (DAGR) - a possible useful, lower cost addition.

Regards,

Greg

PS - what airframe are you considering using?

[lenny100]

well the airframe is large enough to take 3 sensor turrets so i go with that idea, and probably 2 105 light guns. I thought I would also use the surplus 30mm guns from the royal navy goalkeeper systems, as i think 3 of them will do some damage. also. does anybody know if brimstone can be fitted into a tube launch system
remember this is the RAF so costs have to be kept down so stealth is out. and low costs in AS THE MP HAVE TO HAVE THEIR MOAT CLEANED AGAIN

[rickshaw]

I'd much rather have my gunships fly high, real high, above the possible engagement envelope of any MANPADS, hence the preference for the use of guided missiles.  The DAGR is a bit short ranged for my liking.  Another reason why I prefer not to use smaller calibre auto-cannon.  The 105mm, firing out of the rear could be made removable so that you could reconfigure the aircraft for normal transport duties without too much trouble.  The AC-130s, once converted are converted for good.   Also firing it out the bum means that you're flying away from danger.  

[lenny100]

sorry but as you see its a tad had to reconfigure

[Weaver]

Hmmm admirably MAD project, but....


....how are you going to maintain pressurisation at 25,000 ft with all those holes in the side? Even if you can seal the gun barrels to the apertures, you still have to deal with the fact that when the breaches open, it breaks the seal. With the auto-cannons, you might be able to isolate the whole turret and ammo feed in the manner of a B-36, but the 105s are manually loaded - I don't fancy trying to work one in a pressure suit....

The high-altitude approach reminds me of an idea I had: the Vertical Gunship. Basically, you fit two extra pressure bulkheads in the middle of the airframe, and between them mount a high-velocity auto-cannon (Oerlikon 35mm?) and ammo feed pointing straight downwards at the centre-of-gravity with limited traverse. The usual electro-optics in a ventral turret are used for aiming and there's a big ballistics computer to do the maths. The MO is that you fly right over the target, too high to interfere with, and then shoot it downwards. The advantage over free-fall bombing is that the high-velocity rounds are much less affected by windsheer, whilst the advantage over missiles/smart-bombs is that they're MUCH cheaper. They're also much smaller than either, giving precise, proportionate response in limited war situations.

[Sauragnmon]

One theory could be to step down a slight notch to the 76mm RF that the navy had for a heavy AA for a while - that one had a decent autofeed on it and was fed from rotary cylinders, so ostensibly you could set it up with a feed chute or something to keep the rounds reloading into the gun, or a partial enclosure to seal it and use the pressure difference to suck the next round into the feed from the chute.  You'd have ten rounds in stock for a burst rate, reload it between heavy bursts, you've got some level of rapid heavy firepower.  Sure it's not the mighty 105, but if you gave that one even a feed tray system and a sliding breech, you set it up so the next round's sitting right in position above the breech, the gun recoils back, the breech opens and the next round's freed to slide right down into the breech load before it's pulled back into place for firing.  The short exposures with a speed-load like that might necessitate a respirator or similar, but it should in theory be doable if you keep it in a positive-pressure area.

[lenny100]

i was thinking of using the same system the royal navy uses in it turrets which uses a105 mm gun-howitzer of the Abbot self-propelled gun  but is auto reload and has a firing rate up around  25 rounds per minute

[BrittMac]

....how are you going to maintain pressurisation at 25,000 ft with all those holes in the side? Even if you can seal the gun barrels to the apertures, you still have to deal with the fact that when the breaches open, it breaks the seal. With the auto-cannons, you might be able to isolate the whole turret and ammo feed in the manner of a B-36, but the 105s are manually loaded - I don't fancy trying to work one in a pressure suit....

I saw a show on the Military Channel the other week where they highlighted the Spectre.  I want to say that the newest model can pressurize, but I may be thinking of something else.  My mind is nothing, if not full of holes lately.  Maybe it was a cargo plane show.....doh, I can't remember.

edit for putting Spooky instead of Spectre.  Duh.

[Weaver]

All good suggestions. Thing is, the naval mounts are HEAVY: the Oto Melara 76mm weighs 7.5 tons and the 4.5" Mk.8 something like 25 tons (and they both have GRP gunshields). You can lose some of that in an aircraft installation, but some of it comes from the weight of metal needed to make mechanisms robust when they're throwing big, heavy rounds about at a high rate, and you also have to factor for an enclosure if the whole mechanism and ammo supply is unpressurised.

Also, the 105 in the AC-130 is a pretty low velocity one, so it's recoil (for a howitzer) is modest. The 76mm on the other hand, and to a lesser extent the 4.5", have a sky-high muzzle velocity as befits anti-aircraft pieces, so their recoil may well be worse. Of course, you could use them with a shorter barrel and a lower charge, but then you lose muzzle velocity, which, from 25,000 ft, is goingto be rather important. You can deal with all this recoil of course, but it's yet more weight.

Sauragnmon: if you're using positive pressure inside the aircraft to load the rounds, then you also have the same pressure holding the empty case in the breech when you want to extract it.

[Sauragnmon]

I was considering the use of the pressure difference between internal and external in order to help get the round in the breech, though if part of the breech mechanism for reloading extracts the casing and ejects it, it goes easier in principle.

[AeroplaneDriver]

The pressurization at 25,000 is not that dramatic.  An 8,000 foot cabing altitude at 25,000 is only about 5psi...which is nowhere near the 747's limit.  Also, the effect of a gun breech cycling during firing would have no effect on pressurization.  Pressurized aircraft are nowhere near the airtight vessels people sometimes imagine.  A lot of air escapes, and pressurization is maintained by an outflow valve whick modulates depending on the demands of the system, while the environmental system pumps a relatively constant amount or air into the pressure vessel.  

People use the balloon anaology with pressurization a lot, but instead of a normal balloon, think of a ballon with a hole cut in it.  You blow into the balloon and maintain it at a relatively low pressure state by covering the hole with your finger.  There is always some air leaking out, but by coveing more or less of the hole you can maintain the balloon at a certain (low) pressure.

Sort of the same way movies show a bullet hole causing rapid depressurization in an aircraft.  In reality a bullet hole has no noticable effect.  Pressurization is being maintained by the outflow valve, which has a surface area of about a square foot typically...the tiny hole from a bullet would only cause the outflow valve to modulate closed slightly.