The Pentagon spent billions developing stealth fighters that don't carry internal guns, proving the military-industrial complex cares more about over-engineered gadgetry than basic combat survival.
This is the defense procurement racket laid bare: contractors rake in cash for platforms that surrender the fundamental tool of a fighter jet just to accommodate vertical landing tech and sensor suites. No wonder we keep losing to insurgents with Kalashnikovs. The contractors get paid either way.
SlashGear reports that the F-35B and F-35C variants—flown by the Marines and Navy—lack internal guns. The reason: Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) capabilities ate up the internal space. To hover, the jet had to sacrifice the gun to maintain fuel capacity, stealth, and sensors.
Instead, these jets can strap on an external Gun Pod Unit (GPU-9/A) carrying a 25 mm GAU-22/A four-barrel Gatling gun with only 220 rounds. SlashGear notes that because it's an external pod, it is "not uncommon" for the F-35B or F-35C to fly without it. The pod is designed to maintain the jet's stealth profile, but hanging a gun pod on a stealth fighter to give it basic teeth is a mechanical admission of design failure.
The establishment defense is that dogfighting is obsolete. SlashGear points out the last fighter-on-fighter gun kill was in 1992, when a Venezuelan F-16A shot down two aircraft during a coup. We have missiles now, the argument goes, so internal cannons don't matter. But betting billions that an enemy will never get close enough to require a gun is a contractor's gamble, not a warfighter's strategy. When you design a jet that cannot carry a gun because you needed room for vertical landing gimmicks, you aren't preparing for war; you're preparing for a procurement cycle.
The defense lobby got paid to build a jet that trades a cannon for gadgets. The American taxpayer gets the bill, and the pilot gets to pray his missiles never miss.
