Unleashing the Power of Machine Guns: The Surprising Reason Why Fighter Jets Still Need Them in Today’s Missile-Driven Era

why are Obsolete machine guns are still equipped on fighters, after the invention of air-to-air missiles.

Machine guns are heavy, bulk and Obsolete in this era of modern warfare. Where jets fly at 2 times the speed of sound, what is the need of a 1900s era machine gun in a fighter jet?

Sidewinders or air-to-air missiles are much powerful and accurate allowing the pilot to fall back after firing one on an enemy aircraft and give a longer range of attack to the pilot.

Well, all your questions are absolutely valid but here’s the case:

Sidewinder as the very basic version cost around 200K USD, whereas the more accurate and advanced versions cost 450K USD. Additionally, the countermeasures deployed by the target jet can simply confuse the missile making it miss.

Fun Fact, 75 % missiles fail to hit their target in a dogfight.

In this era of super maneuverable jets, hitting your target with a missile just becomes more difficult and challenging.

A Vulcan or Machine gun costs much lesser than a sidewinder. You can equip 3 jets with Vulcan with the cost of a Sidewinder. Also, the pilot is in control of the machine gun therefore even after flares and countermeasures, he shall perish under the volley of lead fired at 600 rounds per minute.

Hence, it doesn’t hurt to equip all the fighter jets with a machine gun so just in case they can go “brrrrrrrrr” and vanish enemy jets from the sky you know.

Now you know.

Love you all!

Awokecitize out!