From the book “What if?” by Randall Munroe:
> The GAU-8 Avenger fires up to 60 1-pound bullets a *second*. It produces almost 5 tons of recoil force, which is crazy considering that it’s mounted in a type of plane (the A-10 “Warthog”) whose two engines produce only 4 tons of thrust each. If you put two of them in one aircraft, and fired both guns forward while opening up the throttle, the guns would win and you’d accelerate backward.
I guess I never really thought about it until just now, but… do pilots have to compensate for the recoil when they fire their weaponry?
How *does* – or doesn’t – the recoil of their ordnance affect the planes mid-flight?
In: 4
There are currently just wrong answers here.
I can’t do the math, but it’s been done plenty of times and the equation is always the same; the bullets energy VS the aircraft is not enough to visibly effect it.
And there was an A10 pilot who commented on this, he said that there is no change in airspeed when firing the gun.
More info: https://youtu.be/wk6Qr6OO5Xo
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