I remember watching a documentary or reading an article a little while back about how the combat effectiveness of jets in the vietnam war dropped drastically because the pilots relied on missiles too much they didn ' t put guns on the planes anymore or something , and when they began teaching traditional dog fighting skills i . e . top gun , the combat effectiveness of these pilots climbed back to where it was prior . I can ' t speak to what todays jet fighting is like , because I haven ' t done any research , but I ' d imagine they incorporate machine guns into combat , at least when its air to air combat , which would make my original point make more sense . But again , my experience with planes is the movie Top Gun , some wikipedia articles , and flying games like War Thunder so please don ' t get mad if I ' m wrong haha .