Aircraft ordnance or ordnance (in the context of military aviation ) is any expendable weaponry (e.g. bombs , missiles , rockets and gun ammunition ) used by military aircraft . The term is often used when describing the payload of air-to-ground weaponry that can be carried by the aircraft or the weight that has been dropped in combat. Aircraft ordnance also includes air-to-air , anti-ship and anti-submarine weapons.
6-433: This is a list of weapons ( aircraft ordnance ) carried by aircraft. In World War I , aircraft were initially intended for aerial reconnaissance , however some pilots began to carry rifles in case they spotted enemy planes. Soon, planes were fitted with machine guns with a variety of mountings; initially the only guns were carried in the rear cockpit supplying defensive fire (this was employed by two-seat aircraft all through
12-706: A hardpoint . For many weapons there is a limit to the length of time they can be flown (e.g. because of vibration damage); after this their safety or effectiveness is not guaranteed. This can be a problem if weapons designed for high intensity conflict are carried on multiple missions in a long counter-insurgency campaign. Ordnance can be divided into guided and unguided categories based on their targeting capabilities. Guided ordnance , such as Precision-guided munitions (PGMs) , use advanced technologies like GPS , infared , radar or laser tracking to precisely hit designated targets. Unguided ordnance , commonly known as "dumb bombs," lack guidance systems and rely on
18-614: The primary armament since the early 1960s, the Vietnam War showed that guns still had a role to play and most fighters built since then are fitted with cannons (typically between 20 and 30 mm in caliber) as an adjunct to missiles. Modern European fighter aircraft are usually equipped with the revolver cannon , whereas the United States and to some extent Russia generally favor the Gatling gun . The Gatling gun quickly became
24-462: The propeller. In World War II , fighter aircraft carried machine guns and cannons mounted in the wings, engine cowlings, nose, or between the banks of the engine, firing through the propeller spinner. Night fighters sometimes utilized guns firing upwards as well. Bombers typically carried from one to 14 flexible machine guns and/or autocannon as defensive armament, while certain types added fixed offensive guns as well. While missiles have been
30-420: The war). Seeing a need for offensive fire, forward-firing weapons were devised. The Airco DH.2 pusher plane had its gun in the front while the engine was in the back, some experimented with mountings on the (side) wing or on the biplane's upper wing (above the cockpit), until by 1916 most fighter aircraft mounted their guns in the forward fuselage using a synchronization gear so that the bullets did not strike
36-480: The weapon of choice for most air forces. Aircraft ordnance Some aircraft types can carry a wide variety of ordnance – for example, the Fairchild AU-23 Peacemaker could use forward-firing gun pods , 500 and 250 pound bombs, napalm units, cluster bomb units, flares, rockets, smoke grenades and propaganda leaflet dispensers . Ordnance can be carried in a bomb bay or hung from
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