I wonder if we’re going to see the return of machine gunner ball turrets with this new era

The reason for those was that the bombers were vulnerable to fighters approaching from below. I don’t think that this’ll be applicable for a number of reasons:

• No reason to use a large aircraft like that. All they need is a plane that can get altitude and hold two people.

• My guess is that one issue for the B-17 in WW2 was that they needed to fly in formation, couldn’t maneuver much, to achieve the “interlocked fields of fire” that was their defensive doctrine of the time. So becomes harder to deal with a blind spot by maneuvering, so there’s a need for exotic things like the ball turret.

• The drones that they’re shooting down are defenseless. If Russia does start sending out drones with some kind of air-to-air capability, my guess is that a ball turret won’t be a good counter.

• I’m pretty sure that those ball turrets used .50 cal machine guns. They probably don’t need that. My understanding is that the round caliber in WW2 that a fighter carried depended on what they expected to run into. It was a the reason that the US only used .50 cal machine guns, not 20mm autocannons, in its fighters – the 20mm was only considered necessary to bring down a bomber, where the thing was a big structure, big struts, could potentially absorb a lot of damage. The US wasn’t fighting anyone who was going to be using much by way of heavy bombers against them. I suspect that the lightest of bullets will probably mess those little drones up badly. Honestly, they’d probably do best with a shotgun or automatic shotgun at the very short ranges that I’ve seen footage of them engaging at; that’s more likely to expend kinetic energy inside the drone, hit a lot of stuff in there. Also reduces collateral damage to whatever is off in the distance behind the drone.

I think a small caliber automated turret to be carried on a hard point would be more realistic.

1. Shahed drone

2. ww1 gunner in a warplane was just a guy in the second seat with a handgun

3. presumably footage from the Ukraine war of a guy in the second seat aiming with a hand gun. On the plane there are markings of how many shahed drones they shot down.