The aircraft gun installed on the F-15 fighter jet. At the moment of F-15 fighter gun firing. According to foreign media reports, during the 2024 Iran Israel conflict, Israeli F-35I fighter jets publicly used GAU-22/A cannons to shoot down two Iranian Witness-136 drones for the first time. This interception operation triggered a global rethinking of the tactical value of cannons. In modern air combat, the weapon configuration of fighter jets is one of the focuses of military technology research. As the paradigm of air combat shifts from "close combat" to "beyond visual range strikes", the strategic value of aircraft guns, once the main weapon, is undergoing a profound reconstruction. Modern battlefield data shows that the maximum range of the fourth generation medium range air-to-air missile has reached 180 kilometers, while the effective killing radius of typical aircraft guns remains within 2 kilometers. This magnitude gap forces countries to reassess the positioning of aircraft guns in fighter weapon systems: is it a necessary equipment to defend the "last line of defense" or a historical legacy of "technological redundancy"? Since the Wright brothers first installed machine guns on airplanes in 1910, aircraft guns have been the core weapon of close range air combat for a long time. During World War II, the M24 20mm aircraft gun equipped on B-29 bombers shot down 27 Japanese planes in a single day, confirming the important role of aircraft guns as "airborne blades". In the 1967 Vietnam War, the US F-4 Phantom fighter suffered heavy losses in the confrontation with the MiG-17 fighter due to the lack of aircraft guns, forcing the US military to install the M61A1 Vulcan six tube rapid fire aircraft gun on subsequent models of the aircraft. The cannon has a firing rate of about 6000 rounds per minute and a reserve of 480 rounds of ammunition. Data shows that during the Vietnam War, the hit rate of the US military's Sparrow air-to-air missile was only 9.8%, while the effective damage rate of the Vulcan cannon within 5 kilometers reached 61%. Since then, aircraft guns have become the "standard configuration" of US fighter jets, confirming the tactical logic of "missile led attack and defense, and aircraft guns surviving from the bottom". All models of the Soviet MiG-25 high-altitude high-speed interceptor were not equipped with aircraft guns, and in the 5th Middle East War in 1982, Syria's MiG-25P fighter aircraft exposed fatal combat flaws. The air-to-air missile equipped on this aircraft has a short range and is not sufficient to confront the F-15C fighter jet with over the horizon strike capability at high altitudes; In the mid to low altitude, the aircraft was not equipped with aircraft guns and had no advantage in close range combat, ultimately falling into the dilemma of "unable to fight or escape" on the battlefield. The "last line of defense" in beyond visual range combat is mainly composed of beyond visual range missiles in modern air combat, but electronic interference greatly reduces the hit rate of missiles. During the Russian "Caucasus 2020" strategic exercise, the hit rate of the Su-35S fighter jet launching R-77-1 air-to-air missiles under electronic interference conditions decreased from 78% to 29%, while the GSh-30-1 gun equipped on the aircraft had a hit rate of 67% within 2 kilometers. To ensure combat effectiveness, the Russian military installed an "intelligent fire control compensation system" on the aircraft after the exercise, which is used to automatically switch the combat priority between missiles and aircraft guns. In the "Red Flag Exercise 2022" of the US Air Force, the hit rate of the F-35A fighter jet launching AIM-120D air-to-air missiles was reduced to 33% due to electronic interference, but its aircraft guns contributed 58% to killing within 3 kilometers. Afterwards, the US Air Force requested that the F-35A fighter jet be equipped with GAU-22/A gun pods as a backup weapon for close combat in the "Beast Mode" with full missile deployment. Looking at the current situation, countries have different attitudes towards installing cannons on fighter jets. Türkiye's TF-X "Khan" fighter cancels air guns and focuses on BVR operations; Russian Su-57 fighter jets and American F-35 fighter jets retain their aircraft guns as the "last line of defense" for beyond visual range operations. With the continuous maturity of beyond visual range strike technology, the phenomenon of "missile dependence" has emerged in air combat to a certain extent, ignoring the close range attack and defense combat value of aircraft guns. The trend of "marginalization" of aircraft artillery is difficult to reverse. In the Gulf War, the US F-117A fighter jets carried out 1270 missions without firing a single aircraft artillery shell. In the 2011 airstrikes on Libya, precision guided munitions dropped by NATO fighter jets accounted for 98% of the total amount dropped. On the other hand, the use of aircraft guns is limited to repelling low altitude drones. In addition, the usage rate of aircraft guns has been close to zero in multiple regional conflicts in recent years. The phenomenon of "zero use" of aircraft guns is essentially an inevitable result of the leap in the form of warfare - when the accuracy of beyond visual range strikes exceeds the 90% threshold and the response time of directional energy weapons is compressed to the millisecond level, the destructive effectiveness of aircraft guns will continue to shrink. The evolution direction of future air combat weapons will focus on the exponential improvement of electromagnetic spectrum control and energy delivery efficiency, while the phasing out of aircraft guns seems inevitable, until they are submerged in the wave of iterative air combat paradigms. Prior to this, aircraft guns will still play a limited role as a "tactical backup" and "deterrent symbol". In some special situations, the value of aircraft artillery lies not only in its physical destructive ability, but also in its ability to establish an "adjustable, reversible, and interpretable" crisis management mechanism. Its mode of action and effect are similar to "firing warning shots", playing a warning and deterrent role in non war military operations. For example, driving away illegal intrusions in airspace, displaying a refusal attitude, and avoiding conflict escalation. (New Society)