From The Archives: Big Guns

The cover of Aviation Week & Space Technology’s March 1, 1976, issue featured a U.S. Air Force/Fairchild Industries A-10 armed with a laser- guided Mk. 84 2,000-lb. bomb and an electro-optically guided Mk. 84 turning in for a strafing run at Edwards AFB, California, to test the effects on externally mounted ordnance of firing the General Electric GAU-8/A Gatling-type 30-mm. gun. 

Washington was planning to deploy a wing of 72 of the close-support aircraft to Europe in 1980 to counter the growing Soviet armor threat. 

In tests with the A-10 firing at both U. S. and Soviet tanks, the aircraft demonstrated an accuracy better than 4 milliradians (mils) with the GAU-8/A. In bombing tests, the A-10 demonstrated an accuracy of 13.6 mils against a design requirement of 15 mils. 

Photo by Ken Hackman, Norton AFB, California.

See the cover and read the full issue dated March 1, 1976.

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