[Commander Zane]

For the fact that they're anti-aircraft, and like artillery, have a range beyond what most of the fighters and bombers' weapons have.

[S-99]

And inhumane. All that shrapnel could hit civilians, or anything else you don't wanna hit.

Oh geez now that was unnecessary. I said ENEMY SOLDIERS, but i guess you'd ban grenades and especially the automatic grenade launcher too since the shrapnel would be inhumane. Since we already use a lot of weapons with the premise of shrapnel doing the damage; you speak retardedly late in history. We don't need squares in this conversatioon.

Remember everyone, don't be too mean to your enemies, you could kill them in war.

I stand behind my kickass idea of the apache mounted repeating flak cannon.

[Woolie Wool]

You do realize that deliberately or negligently killing civilians is a major war crime and automatic flak cannons would cause massive civilian casualties if fired anywhere near a place where civilians might possibly live? The casualty radius would be enormous. Never mind that an 88mm flak cannon would probably be too large and powerful for a small helicopter chassis to handle. Every action causes an equal and opposite reaction...

And if you really want to push it, several types of weapons are banned by international law for being too inhumane for warfare, most notably hollow-point bullets and flamethrowers.

[S-99]

I'm pretty sure grenades exploding mid-air repeatedly would be similarly inhumane. I did happen to say ENEMY SOLDIERS. Meaning intended use for them. It's as easy as not using a certain destructive weapon in favor of more tactical weapons if there is civilians around. All wars have collateral damage anyhow, the most you can do is to try to minimize it, a good way is to use certain weapons in certain situations. Such as ooohh, i figured it out, don't use the repeating flak cannon if there is any chance of a civilian getting killed (now that's an idea there that i already mentioned in this post).

I still like the apache mounted repeating flak cannon.

Used in the right situations it'd be a great diversionary and deadly weapon that would ruin enemy morale so they run for the hills (enemy troops will not want to stick around when crap is repeatedly exploding above their heads).

[Dilmah G]

Point he's making is

This would only work in conventional warfare, something that we haven't seen lately. Most combat takes place in urban/close quarters environment, making the cannon useless other than for an environment we're not currently engaged in.

[Droid803]

And that is why we should use those anti-missile lasers currently on that 747 thing to burn through people.
Pinpoint accuracy, impossible to miss, no ricochets, virtually unlimited ammo.
Only downside is massive power requirements

[Pred the Penguin]

Large scale deployment of laser weaponry is only impossible because of those power requirements.

If and when more efficient power sources are invented, I'm pretty sure we'll see lasers all over the place. o_o

[Woolie Wool]

I'm pretty sure grenades exploding mid-air repeatedly would be similarly inhumane. I did happen to say ENEMY SOLDIERS. Meaning intended use for them. It's as easy as not using a certain destructive weapon in favor of more tactical weapons if there is civilians around. All wars have collateral damage anyhow, the most you can do is to try to minimize it, a good way is to use certain weapons in certain situations. Such as ooohh, i figured it out, don't use the repeating flak cannon if there is any chance of a civilian getting killed (now that's an idea there that i already mentioned in this post).

I still like the apache mounted repeating flak cannon.

Used in the right situations it'd be a great diversionary and deadly weapon that would ruin enemy morale so they run for the hills (enemy troops will not want to stick around when crap is repeatedly exploding above their heads).

Even if you use it on an open field miles fron any civilians (which is highly unlikely due to the modus operandi of America's current enemies), how are you going to keep what is basically an artillery cannon from knocking an Apache off course with each round? How are you going to make a loader that can load shells at a decent rate? Where are you going to put all these huge shells (the Apache is not a big aircraft, and is actually much lighter than a modern jet fighter, never mind an A-10 or AC-130)? Why not just drop a bunch of fragmentation bombs on them instead or annihilate them with an MLRS strike?

[Mongoose]

And how are we going to keep errant posters from knocking this already-tenuous thread further off-topic?

Oh.  That's right.  I can do that.