The F-35 Lightning II was built to dominate the skies with stealth, speed, and cutting-edge technology. But the F-35B and F-35C carry a strange flaw: a massive external gun pod that hurts performance and increases radar visibility. So why did the U.S. military keep it? In this video, we uncover the surprising history behind fighter jet cannons, the lessons of Vietnam, and how this “mistake” became one of the F-35’s greatest hidden advantages.
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00:00The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a miracle of modern engineering.
00:05Combining supersonic speeds, advanced stealth technologies and an unprecedented sensor network,
00:11it's more of a flying supercomputer than a conventional fighter jet.
00:15But two of the three versions of this fighter, the F-35B and C to be precise,
00:20have always had a large and quite obvious flaw, visible from the very first glance.
00:25A bathtub-sized cannon bolted to the aircraft's belly.
00:28That cannon slows down the F-35's acceleration and expands its radar cross-section,
00:34harming both its agility and stealth capabilities.
00:37Yet somehow, the US military has turned what seems to be a massive mistake
00:42into the aircraft's deadliest advantage.
00:45To understand how and why this happened, we must first take a step back.
00:50Several decades back, in fact, to the days of the Vietnam War.
00:54In the mid-1960s, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II was one of the most prominent
01:00and prevalent aircraft in the skies over North Vietnam.
01:04With nine external hardpoints, the F-4 had the ability to carry up to 18,650 pounds,
01:11or 8,500 kilograms, of weapons, including various air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles.
01:17It did not, however, originally come with its own internal gun, though some variants later
01:23carried external gun pods. It didn't need one, according to the engineers who designed it,
01:28because it had radar-guided Sparrow missiles and heat-seeking sidewinders,
01:33and they should be able to eliminate any targets before the enemy could even think about fighting
01:37back. At least, that was the theory. In practice, it didn't quite work out that way.
01:43The A-9B Sidewinder, for example, was a far cry from the highly precise
01:48fire-and-forget air-to-air missiles of the modern era. It had numerous limitations,
01:53like a maximum effective range of just three nautical miles,
01:57or the fact they could only lock onto target's exhaust when directly behind them.
02:02The Sidewinder Seeker head also had a relatively low angular tracking rate of just 11 degrees per second,
02:08so it was almost entirely ineffective at targets performing hard evasive maneuvers.
02:14It also struggled with the sun and clouds, with its seeker sometimes mistaking them for enemy targets.
02:20And all of these issues added up, with the Sidewinders of the 60s having relatively low
02:25kill probabilities of around 16 percent. The AIM-7D Sparrow wasn't any better.
02:30The air-to-air missile had a minimum engagement range of between 3,000 and 5,000 feet, and every
02:37time a shot was fired, it was up to the pilot to keep their radar locked onto their target for
02:42the entire duration of the missile's flight. That wouldn't have mattered much in safe,
02:46uncontested airspace. But with enemy fighters in the air and potential danger lurking behind every
02:52cloud, it was incredibly risky for these pilots to simply fly in straight lines and hope for the
02:58best as their missiles drew nearer to their targets. As a result, the kill probability of
03:03the earliest Sparrow missiles used in Vietnam was less than 10 percent. On top of that, the rules of
03:08engagement meant that US pilots had to visually identify any enemy aircraft before firing on it.
03:14So, they couldn't take advantage of the long-range nature of their weapons. They were compelled to
03:19get in close and put themselves at greater risk before even being authorized to lock on. As a result,
03:25F-4 pilots often found themselves in dogfight situations, but without the guns necessary to
03:31win those battles. On top of that, many of those pilots hadn't undergone any sort of extensive air
03:37combat maneuvering training, so they often had neither the skills nor the equipment needed to survive.
03:43They'd often have to slow down their aircraft to subsonic speeds and do their best to get behind
03:48their enemies, but were often too close to actually fire their missiles with any real hope of a successful
03:53impact. It's no wonder, then, that many pilots complained about the absence of cannons on these
03:59planes. US Navy pilot John Cheshire, for example, said the lack of an internal gun was the biggest
04:06mistake on the F-4, adding,
04:08Bullets are cheap and tend to go where you aim them. I needed a gun, and I really wish I
04:13had one.
04:13Marine Corps General John Daly agreed, noting that everyone in RF-4s wished they had a gun on the
04:20aircraft. Eventually, those calls became too loud to ignore. The Phantom was redesigned, with an external
04:27gun pod initially bolted on the fuselage before the entire airframe was redesigned with an internal
04:32M61 Vulcan cannon. From that moment on, America's military aircraft engineers vowed never to make
04:39the same mistake again. Even though there haven't been any recorded air-to-air gun kills for several decades,
04:45and world-leading defense contractor Lockheed Martin claims that the era of the dogfight is over,
04:51cannons are still listed in every operational requirements document. Whenever a new fighter is being designed,
04:57engineers are always told to make space for some sort of gun, even though it may never actually be
05:02fired. Why? Because it's an invaluable deterrent. The very presence of a cannon effectively denies the
05:08enemy the one option it would have to counteract missiles, getting up close and personal. It's not
05:14about dealing damage or scoring kills, it's about preventing your opponent from even thinking about
05:19getting too close. So, even when the finishing touches were being put on the F-35's design in the early
05:262000s,
05:27the requirements of the Joint Striker-Fighter program dictated that it should carry a gun,
05:32and not just any gun, but one that was capable of achieving a kill probability of 35%
05:37against lightly armored vehicles at 9,000-foot slant range. That gun was the GAU-22A,
05:45a 25mm Gatling gun produced by General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems, and based on the GAU-12-U
05:53design. Weighing in at 240 pounds or 104 kilograms, and capable of firing up to 3,300 rounds a minute,
06:02this is a heavy-duty piece of equipment, and engineers had to find a way to fit it into one
06:07of the most advanced stealth fighter designs the world has ever seen. You don't need to be a military
06:12engineer to realize that the most logical option would be to somehow fit this weapon inside the body
06:17of the plane. That's exactly what designers did with the F-22 Raptor, for example, which conceals
06:23its gun inside its wing root. If and when the cannon needs to fire, a trap door opens up,
06:29and 100 rounds per second are unleashed against any target in view before the door seals shut,
06:34preserving the stealthy and aerodynamic nature of the airframe. For the F-35A, the designers more or
06:40less did the exact same thing, hiding the GAU-22A inside the fuselage. With the other two variants,
06:47however, the F-35B and C, it wasn't quite so easy, for one simple reason, there wasn't enough room.
06:54The F-35B is a short-take-off vertical landing Stovl variant used by the Marines. In order to be
07:01able to
07:02take off from only small strips of land, it has a lift fan inside its body, along the three-bearing
07:07swivel
07:08module, which takes up a large amount of space, leaving little left over, certainly not enough
07:13to house a relatively bulky Gatling gun. The F-35C, meanwhile, is the US Navy's carrier jet and comes
07:20with both reinforced landing gear and close to 20,000 pounds of fuel, all stored internally,
07:27which is more than any other F-35 variant. Again, that means there's no room left for the GAU-22A.
07:34The only option left, therefore, was to position the gun externally, bolting it to the base of the
07:39aircraft's body, not behind a trap door or stealth panel, but right out in the open,
07:45wrapped in a huge carbon fiber pod for protection. Two of those carbon fiber pods exist, and both are
07:51made by a Danish company called Terma. There's the GPU-9A for the F-35B and the GPU-8A for
07:58the F-35C.
07:59On the surface, very little makes sense about this design choice. Not only does it look clumsy and
08:06awkward to have a huge bathtub-sized structure, tucked onto the bottom of the state-of-the-art
08:11stealth aircraft that cost around $110 million per unit, but the external gun pod has also been
08:17proven to negatively affect the fighter's performance. It disrupts the jet's aerodynamic design,
08:22adding air resistance and drag to what was once a smooth, sleek and perfectly sculpted airframe.
08:28Data shows that the F-35A needs an extra eight seconds to accelerate from speeds of Mach 0.8,
08:35break the sound barrier, and reach Mach 1.2, otherwise known as the fighter's transonic acceleration,
08:41compared to the program's original performance estimates. The F-35B, meanwhile, with its external
08:48GAU-22, spent an extra 16 seconds on transonic acceleration, while the F-35C, which has the added
08:56weight of an external Gatling gun, plus the largest wings and most fuel, needs a whopping 40 seconds,
09:02five times more than the F-35A. Yet, despite these obvious issues, the external gun is far more
09:09valuable and beneficial for the US military than it first appears. But before we explore why,
09:14if this is the kind of insight you want more of, make sure you're subscribed to the military show,
09:20we break it down like this every week. To understand why the external gun of the F-35B and C
09:26works better
09:27than the internal cannon of the F-35A, we have to get to know this weapon a little better. The
09:33GAU-22A is
09:34a 4-barrel, 25mm Gatling gun. It's bigger than the 20mm Vulcan cannon seen on the likes of the F
09:42-22
09:42and F-16, but more compact than the 30mm Avengers on A-10 Thunderbolt IIs, also known as Warthogs.
09:50It fires 55 rounds a second at speeds of 3,560 feet per second, which is more than three times
09:58the
09:58speed of sound, and the cannon produces a sizable recoil force of around 3,700 pounds or almost 16,500
10:06Newtons. That's about the same recoil as having a small jet engine pushing the airframe backwards
10:12every single time the pilot pulls the trigger. And this is where the beauty of the external pod
10:17begins to shine. Because the pod is mounted from the centerline station, with the hardpoint situated
10:23right underneath the spine of the fighter. It's directly connected to the F-35's main
10:29longitudinal structural beam, which is the single most stable mount point on the entire airframe.
10:34That means that when the external cannon fires, all 3,700 pounds of its recoil force
10:40is isolated from the rest of the aircraft. That force passes through the hardpoint into the strong
10:46structural beam, rather than impacting the aircraft's composite exterior, stealth coatings,
10:51or internal components. In other words, the gun still kicks with every shot fired, but the pod absorbs
10:57that kick, so the actual airframe barely even feels it. To understand why that's so important,
11:04we have to compare the external pod design to the internal cannon seen on the F-35A. On that variant,
11:10the internal gun sits in a recess in the left side of the fuselage, behind a flush door. That kind
11:16of
11:16design can work. The F-22, for example, has an internal cannon, which is cleverly placed so that the recoil
11:23force is absorbed by the wing route. But that's not the case in the F-35A. There, every time the
11:29weapon fires,
11:30its recoil force passes directly into the composite skin of the aircraft's chine-longuran, the critical
11:36structural beam that runs along the sharp edges of the aircraft's fuselage. That composite skin wasn't
11:42built to cope with such intense forces. So, it starts to crack. The stealth skin of the F-35A, an
11:49integral
11:49part of its design, begins to break. Because of this, the usage of F-35A cannons was tightly scrutinized for
11:56years, as engineers worked through concerns surrounding vibration, accuracy, and potential wear on the
12:02aircraft's stealth coating. Pilots still conduct live-fire training exercises with the guns, but the military has
12:08taken extensive precautions to minimize unnecessary stress and damage to the aircraft's skin. And that's
12:15not the only problem. For years, the gun on the F-35A was also flagged in the Pentagon's annual
12:21evaluations as being inaccurate. From 2019 through to 2023, it failed to meet operational accuracy
12:28requirements. Even from 2024 onward, it's still technically classified as lacking in accuracy,
12:34though it has been deemed operationally effective. The external cannons on the F-35B and C, meanwhile,
12:41have none of these issues. Thanks to their design and placement, the recoil force doesn't impact the
12:46airframe in any negative way. And with no risk of cracking or structural damage, there's no need for
12:51any restrictions regarding how, when, or where these guns are used. On top of that, the external guns have
12:58also been proven to be much more accurate. That's so important, because these fighters don't actually
13:03carry that many rounds. They use the PGU-32U semi-armor-piercing high-explosive incendiary
13:10tracers, or SAP-ATs, capable of blasting through light armor and detonating within their targets,
13:16burning them from the inside out. Each jet is equipped with 220 rounds in total,
13:22and a specialized controller limits the size of each burst to between 30 and 50 rounds. That means that
13:28each time the pilot pulls the trigger, approximately 40 rounds are fired, giving them only 5 or 6 trigger
13:34pulls before they run out of ammo. That's not a large number, so it's vital to ensure that every
13:40round counts and as many shots hit their targets as possible. Thankfully, the F-35 was designed with
13:46next-level accuracy in mind. In this jet, the pilot doesn't aim with their eyes, but with the aid of
13:51a
13:51special helmet-mounted display system, HMDS, that projects targeting data directly onto their visor.
13:58F-35s also use ESA radars to find and track targets, increasing the cannon's accuracy even more.
14:05That matters, because it unlocks any invaluable way for US forces to attack their enemies and achieve
14:11their objectives, the Lightning Carrier concept. This effectively involves transforming amphibious
14:17assault ships like the USS Tripoli into light aircraft carriers by embarking up to 20 F-35B
14:24stealth jets on each one. These rapid-response carriers can then provide almost instant fire
14:29support to Marines as and when required. Imagine troops are on the ground and pushing towards their
14:35objectives, but need fire support to help suppress the enemy and allow them to advance. There are no
14:40early warning aircraft or electronic warfare planes like EA-18G Growlers in the sky around them,
14:46nor can they rely on the likes of A-10 Warthogs, which need huge runways to take off and land.
14:52With a Lightning Carrier positioned nearby, a dozen or more F-35Bs can be in the air in a matter
14:58of
14:58seconds, ready to lend a hand, save lives and accelerate the American advance, using the highly
15:03accurate external cannons to lay down radar-guided precision strikes from above without even needing
15:09to break through the clouds. And we haven't even got to the best and biggest advantage of the external
15:14pods of the F-35B and C. They don't necessarily need to hold cannons at all.
15:19Terma, the Danish company that makes the pods carbon-fibre shells, developed a new variant called
15:25the Multi-Mission Pod, or MMP. Using the same outer mould as the standard gun pod, with the exact
15:32same shape and aerodynamic profile, the MMP introduces a whole host of new opportunities.
15:37Instead of a gun, it can carry an electronic warfare jammer, for example, capable of cutting
15:43enemy communications, imbuing the F-35 with the abilities of the EA-18G Growler.
15:49The MMP can also be equipped with an intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance ISR sensor package,
15:55allowing it to obtain even more intelligence than it already can with its built-in systems.
15:59Alternatively, it could be fitted with a directional data link, turning it into a drone swarm commander,
16:05capable of controlling and guiding an entire formation of collaborative combat aircraft,
16:10CCAs. The MMP could even potentially support future directed energy or laser-based systems,
16:17allowing an F-35B or C fighter to one day counter enemy drones in ways that seem more like science
16:23fiction than modern warfare. This is the true power and almost limitless potential of the external
16:29pod design. It allows the F-35, which is already arguably the most versatile fighter ever created,
16:35to take on even more loadouts and confront even more diverse objectives simply by swapping out one
16:41pod for another. The core of the airframe remains the same, the size of the pod too remains the same.
16:47There's no difference in the aircraft's drag, speed or overall performance, even as it changes from
16:52an EW setup to ISR, direct energy or even the classic Gatling gun. With its gun built into its
16:59body, the F-35A isn't capable of any of these configurations, rendering it far less flexible
17:04and useful from a modern military perspective than its B and C siblings. Because the true value of
17:10the gun pod isn't the weapon it holds, but the space it creates. The F-35A is destined to always
17:16have
17:16this internal cannon, which restricts its viability and constricts its usefulness for missions to come.
17:22The B and C models, meanwhile, offer so much more. They give Marines and the Navy options.
17:27They empower these forces to ask the question, what does this mission need, before every deployment,
17:33and decide on the ideal equipment every time, be it a data link, ISR sensors or something else entirely.
17:40When they first decided to attach an external cannon to the F-35B and C, engineers were simply solving a
17:46problem the only way they could. Initially, it looked like an awkward solution, destined only to
17:51degrade the F-35's aerial performance. Over time, however, that awkward add-on turned out to be one of the
17:57most
17:57valuable pieces of the plane's design. The flaw became the feature and inadvertently made these
18:03fighters more flexible, powerful and future-proof than anyone ever imagined.
18:08Now, you can learn more about how the US military is always evolving, breaking new ground and finding
18:14innovative and exciting ways to project power in this video, which looks at the Trump-class battleships,
18:20which are set to change the face of naval warfare like never before. Alternatively, check out this video
18:26to learn about how the US Navy has been testing laser weapons on aircraft carriers to make them more
18:32survivable and more lethal in the age of drone warfare. And finally, don't forget to subscribe
18:38to The Military Show for more insights and analysis just like this.
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