more firepower is usually a good idea. Fighter pilots were told back in the 1950s that dogfighting was over. Planes like the F-4 were built without cannons since missiles would be able to do everything. The fighters weren't very maneuverable, either. No problem, right? After all, who needs maneuverability when dogfighting is dead?

Reality hit hard in Vietnam. One problem with firing long range missiles at targets you can't see is making sure you're shooting the bad guys. Target identification proved difficult back then so they had to close to visual distances. The Mig-17s and Mig-21s they encountered were pretty small so they had to get pretty close. Unfortunately, those Migs were also very maneuverable. I saw a Mig-17 last month and it looked smaller than my Cessna. The kill ratio dropped from about 12:1 in Korea to barely 3:1 in the early days of Vietnam. Something had to give. Fortunately, it did.

First, they put cannons back on the fighters. Early F-4s carried their cannon in a pod underneath the plane. Later versions had the cannon built in. Then, fighter tactics and dogfighting training (e.g. Top Gun) retaught the pilots the same lessons learned over the trenches in WWI, updated to take into account for the new technology. By war's end, the kill ratio reached a much more respectable level.

Dogfighting in the stealth era, as promised by planes like the F-22 and JSF, will be somewhat different but will still face some of the same challenges. The idea for the F-22 is to kill your target before he even knows you're in the neighborhood. LPI radars, data links from AWACS, and long range missiles like the AIM-120 AAMRAM will, in theory at least, be able to kill the enemy at long ranges without detection. As the forces close, shorter ranged missiles like the AIM-9X Sidewinder and newer, more maneuverable ones in development will take care of targets inside the AAMRAM's engagement envelop. However, there will still be a cannon on board in case you run out of missiles or the target is in really close.

Eventually, some combat aircraft will be unmanned. This will most likely happen first for attack missions. Unmanned air-to-air will take a while, especially if you're talking about using AI. There are times when it's best not to shoot and you'll have a hard time teaching that to a computer.