OwOarchist@OwOarchist@pawb.social

Replying to @⁨Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works⁩

It was actually originally designed to have two different versions, one for each role. But the fighter version was scrapped, and only the recon version went into actual production.

Kind of a shame, really. It would make a really badass fighter. More of an ‘interceptor’ maybe? – because it’s definitely not going to be doing any dogfighting. Then again, maybe ‘interceptor’ isn’t the right word either, because it takes a long time to get one off the ground and you’d never be scrambling them in an emergency to intercept enemy planes. But once in the air and at speed, it would be able to outrun and catch any enemy plane, and it could be practically untouchable because it could simply outrun any missiles or even bullets fired at it.

OwOarchist@OwOarchist@pawb.social
edited

Replying to @⁨postmateDumbass@lemmy.world⁩

Im not sure it flies slow enough for a gun to work properly.

When at top speed, yeah, traditional guns wouldn’t work well. You could still shoot, sure, but the bullets would quickly be slowed down by air resistance, while the aircraft keeps flying … there could be a very real danger of overtaking your own bullets and hitting them from behind. The relative speed wouldn’t be very high, so they probably wouldn’t do much damage on impact, but they could do a lot of damage if one of the engines ingests one, so still a bad idea.

But when at top speed, it’s already traveling faster than most bullets. At that point, you don’t need a ‘gun’ anymore. Just drop some inert projectiles while doing your flyby, and those projectiles will hit your target with the force of bullets.