Exactly! That's the thing people don't realize about the Phalanx! It's a freakin droid! It's autonomous! If they put wheels in those feet, then it would be R2-D2's roided out older brother with a huge gun penis!
Years ago, I read when they were first testing this system, they flew a target drone out to the ship. One of the techs was asked how many rounds did he think it would take. His response was like, a 100 or so. I can’t remember how many rounds they loaded up, but when the drone came by the the gun emptied itself in mere seconds. They found out later that after it hit the drone, it kept firing at pieces over a certain size. They decided to adjust its sensitivity a little. The guy that wrote the article said he would’ve loved to see a printout of what the gun was thinking…” Kill, Kill, Kill”. It sure can rip, makes an incredible sound.
@@richardmartin8998 No, if he was an XO then he wouldn't care and would've made some poor Seaman clean it up. More likely he was that poor seaman; multiple times.
A possibly apocryphal story from a British shipyard (I have heard variations of the same story, I'll just pass on the bits where they agree). The goalkeeper CIWS on a Type 23 under construction was being tested. The weapon was not armed but it was able to move as it tracked. The gun was behaving oddly, it was ignoring the targets given, instead it seemed to be tracking something else. After some investigation, it transpired goalkeeper had locked on to a shipyard worker, a long way away, and was following him around the yard. When he went indoors, it patiently waited for him to come out.
That IS funny. What part of the target acquisition would pick up a human over a more suitable target? Was he the FLASH? Lucky it wasn't loaded. Imagine the splash he would have made if shot. That would be a simple 100 round burst. The accident investigation would have been a doosey.
Fun note from my dad, an FC that worked on the block 0. At least back then, the cwis didn't shoot tracers. The rounds flew so fast they glowed like tracers.
The tracers are only used by the Centurion C-RAM version, which use M940 MPT-SD (Multi Purpose Tracer Self Destruct) for shooting mortar rounds. On ships, they use Mk149 or Mk244 APDS. Mk 149 is about ~1300 grains, Mk244 is ~1900 grains. Both are tungsten, though early Mk149 was DU.
They need by my calculations one of these every 100 ft of ship, and one up facing to the sky, and one hung upside down covering the water surface. It's a badass defense system. We need small versions of this system on the F15, A10, and on all long range bombers.
No they don't, I was a Vulcan gunner in the Army back in the 80's, I've shot both tracer and non tracer ammo out of them during the day and at night and I can assure you that nothing that isn't a tracer glows heading downrange. I'll tell you what will glow at night however, that's the guns barrels if you unload an entire 1,200 rd drum of ammo in one long continuous burst set on Lo-No (1,000 rds per minute), our guns had 2 firing rates, 3,000 per with burst limits of 10, 30, 60 and 100, and the low setting of 1,000 per with no burst limit (hence Lo-No). A good gunner with it set on the high rate at 100 burst limit could release and reapply the trigger so it almost sounded like a long continuous burst at 3,000 per and when the drum was empty the barrels wouldn't be glowing, you certainly wouldn't want to touch them but they wouldn't be glowing and that's because the faster you spin the barrels the better it cools even though the firing rate is so much higher, but on Lo-No if you just held the trigger and unloaded an entire drum the barrels would be glowing so red I'll guarantee you could have lit a cigarette off of them, probably burn your mustache off trying it but it'd light one. At this point I'd like to thank the American tax payer for funding a supply of ammo for me to have the time of my life with that no private citizen including Warren Buffet could afford to pay for, a big shout out to you guy's 👍👍👍🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲
I've always assumed if wartime conditions broke out we'd have to find a way to double the number of CWS on our ships. And double the number of ships....
They would have to be built and due to all our "weapons gifts" to Ukraine the US military is extremely short of spares and it will take years to even catch up to what we've given away at tax payer expense.
@@danielkinder8260 Well, of course they'd have to be built. I don't think we really keep stockpiles of those. I don't believe we given any CWS or Phalanx to Ukraine though..... While artillery shell reserves concern me, nothing else really does. America isn't going to pass up on the opportunity to neuter it's longest term rival for relatively on the cheap. As long as our donations are killing Russians and destroying their stockpile in masse, America will keep supplying Ukraine. It's not about freedom or defending democracy, but ridding ourselves of the Russian stockpile so we can focus on our new rival, China. It's honestly a godsend to a point.
How exactly? lost skill is very hard get back if ever it could be reclaimed. Also you have a generation ween on not doing hard work. Another thing building shipyards takes alot of time.
So, two fun stories on this. First, that tracking radar was so good that early versions of the system were though to glitch out and go wild making a whole bunch of jerky movements every time they destroyed a target. It wasn't until they took a closer look at the target debris that they realized it was tracking and shooting down the target fragments individually after destroying the initial target. Second story is a first-hand account. On deployment we decided one day to scuttle our paint skiff by using it for target practice. We put some barrels in it and set it adrift. Couldn't hit it with the 5", and the 50cals peppered it. However the CIWS chewed a 10" hole in the side of it from half a mile out in Surface mode. I only know this because that damn skiff wouldn't sink no matter how many holes we put in it so we recovered it.
@@ctrlaltdebug the Rheinmetall MANTIS fires *35mm* smart airburst shells, thats a real pdc Btw you remember the expanse season 4 scene were the roci fires single shot from PDC‘s on tellus and there’s just a huge explosion?
I'm still not Convinced That's most of the alien Or otherwise, UFO counters are literally not just basically alien version Of millennials On there intergalactic version of tik tok, deciding to prank our planet.
@@ericwilner1403 I was thinking the same, though a more realistic view would be "they are probably xenobiologists"... not unlike our own biologists, they seek out new species, collect samples, dissect and study said samples, classify and codify... I am pretty sure they classify humans as a semi-intelligent parasitic creature.
At some point after WWII the Iowa battleships could track the flight of their 16" guns shells and plug the radar output into their big Ford Instrument mechanical fire control computer. The computer even accounted for the rotation of the earth, relative velocity of ship and target.USS New Jersey Battleship Museum, I believe it is. The curator is tops! I highly rec the site!.
This is what Patriot does as well. And fun fact, patriot is cockpit biased. Because of how the system works, a plane being intercepted won’t know until just before they can see the intercept missile. And so they go to eject except… the missile is designed to ignore the plane, go up, and come down onto the cockpit. So if they do manage to eject, they eject directly into an intercept missile going Mach 4. America knows that the pilot is more valuable than the plane. I wouldn’t be surprised if phalanx has a similar system designed as well for when dealing with manned threats.
There are significant advantages to having the targeting system mounted on a CIWS such as that even if, say, the Aegis system/other naval aerial warning system got knocked out somehow the CIWS still works independently.
@@SacredCowShipyards I'd be more worried about the delay from the required processing. Maybe passing the data on wouldn't incur too much of a delay, but the additional calculations from watching the rounds sideways could cause fucky wackery.
I remember my dad talking about how one of the senior engineers on Phalanx had an artillery shell with a hole plugged through it on his desk, so the anti-artillery capability was on the table since at least the 80s or early 90s.
@@mrmors1344 o I do not say it is a lie, on the contrary, they did use Artileri projectiles to test the gun and tracking radar (far cheaper than missiles) but the gun was pre-aimed at the expected artillery path. and the phalanx did the tracking and shooting. whit the c ram one of the changes was the evolution of the radar modules used for detection
@@anuvisraa5786Except yes really. CIWS was tested in '77. First fully equipped ship was in '80. Block 1 upgrade started in '88. Ships sent to the persian gulf for desert storm/shield were so equipped. There was even a friendly fire incident involving CIWS between uss missouri and uss jarret. They thought they had an incoming missile. Jarret's CIWS was in automatic mode. Missouri fired off flares. The CIWS picked up the flares from missouri and engaged them. Punched some small holes in missouri in non-critical places. One crewman was injured by shrapnel. Many of the bullet holes are still there. So if a CIWS could nearly instantaneously pick up and engage a damned flare coming from an unexpected direction, it sure as shit could pick up something like a howitzer shell.
I'm a huge fan of the Goalkeeper system. It's heavier and takes up more space then the Phalanx but it's significantly larger round makes up for it. Goalkeeper or Phalanx paired with the SeaRAM missile system, apart but on the same ship, is an extremely effective point defense system.
Yes that's a commonly quoted problem with GK. The Phalanx is basically drop and go. It's why support ships and the like that are usually unarmed can quickly be given 2 to 4 of them in war time. The GK requires you cut a hole in the deck and make some modifications. It's not a quick process.
You may not be able to do a proper testudo, but if you have enough ships and proper battlefield networking you can do massed arc-firm, a'la "Storm" from 2002's Hero. You have to admit that seeing flashes from across the water, followed a second later by a BRRRRRRRRRRRr sound and a surprise visit from the demolition fairies would have a marked effect on receiving force's morale. Also, R2-D2 does not need dakka. Regular maintenance to his auxiliary systems will suffice. Lest we forget, R2-D2 managed to kill two Super Battle Droids with nothing more than his on-board lubricant reserve and his in-atmosphere maneuvering thrusters.
@@MonkeyJedi99 I admit, I made it up just now. I just thought "what would a military person informally call the sudden effect of a titanic number of impactors that are probably too small to see from a survivable distance?"
@@ciCCapROSTi He has a much higher kill-count than Darth Vader. It's part of what makes the "anti-R@/C3PO" pair of assassin droids so funny - R2's directly-caused deaths dwarf theirs by and order of magnitude, if not more.
A long time ago, in a distant galaxy, a different world.. called.. the 1990s. I got the joy of standing about 3 yards away from a CIWS during test firing. There are not words to describe the awesome.. also, you have to hold onto the railings to keep upright because that thing vibrates the deck panels so hard you WILL fall over. I had a photo of it somewhere. You know.. ON FILM.. where you have the base and then the muzzle flash but pure empty sky in between. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT. The C-RAM interceptors are pretty crazy effective too at intercepting all kinds of small incoming munitions. Like a tiny little mortar shell, or even small rocket. The C-RAM is the buzz that lets you go back to sleep when Haji was throwing old school munitions your way.
@@FLMKane If programmed to, and by bullets you mean fairly sizeable projectiles.. YES. If it can track it's own sabos, it can hit it's own sabos, which means it can hit any projectile of similar size. Short Range Interceptors that are projectile based are already being mounted on armored vehicles and tanks. Including laser interceptors (not intercepting lasers but using lasers rather than projectiles to intercept incoming rounds, and yes, it works).
How many shells would it take a mortar team to cause a cram to burn through its mag. I guess I’m wondering what volume of fire these things were actually tested in battle against.
@@spykezspykez7001 they don't work alone but in defined sectors. So, I couldn't say. They worked well enough but in most cases two or three would engage the incoming fire at once. Which was more than enough to handle the limited indirect fire capacity found in Iraq and Afghanistan.
@@spykezspykez7001 - This was from a concentrated incoming attack in Iraq like 11 years ago. There's a longer version of the vid but it was hard to find this one, after looking for it for like an hour. - ua-cam.com/video/XceGKHATcYE/v-deo.html
The AK-630 refers to six 30 mm barrels. They're slaved to a radar in pairs, and the Moskva had three pairs, but only one gun out of the six was working. On the bad day that working gun was facing the sea not the shore. By the way, rolling airframe defense missile launchers have been in use since at least the 90s and possibly earlier. Atop that, the 150 kilowatt lasers are now in use.
did you expect differnet names from the nation that gave us the m1, the m1, the m1, the m1, the m1, and the m1. Most of them in service at the same time
haha so true.... the amount of times they call something 'new' just to have another M1 on the books.... From wikipedia, just for the AS Army, you get 2 M1 tanks, 1 armoured car, 3 artillery tow vehicles, 7 artillery/field pieces, 3 autocannons, a bayonet, a frag, a mustard gas mine, 2 rifles, a helmet, a mortar, a Tommy gun, a flamethrower, a bazooka, and a harpoon.
I have a relative that was a FTC that served on Carl Vinson. He said don't mess with Phalanx. They were doing target practice exercise off of Hawaii the banner the the A-6 was towing broke off. The system is so precise that it locked onto the broken shackle at the end of the tow cable. The skipper gave premission to shoot. It hit the shackle and started tracking up the cable towards the A-6. Needless to say they got a call from the squadron and were informed that 150 feet of cable was missing. 26:39 yeah, but no😂. The picture you have there is hydraulically powered. Those braided lines are the pressure and return lines going to aircraft hydraulic. system.
@@SacredCowShipyards If you're referring to the drive for the gun itself yes, they are powered by both electric motors and hydraulically driven, aircraft use both depending on the particular application and the M163A1/A2 VADS I was a crewmember on used an electric drive motor on the gun. We had 2 firing rates we could select from, 3,000 rounds per and 1,000 rounds per depending on the target. The General Electric M61 cannon while originally designed for being on jet fighter's turned out to be very versatile and has had several variations that have been adapted to many different platforms both air and land, it's longevity, versatility and usefulness is right up there with the Browning M2 .50 cal it was designed to replace
A good excuse for that logic gap is that you're going to be operating in an ECM environment. In wizard war like that you're going to get false images that do all kinds of things including turning at 12, 32, or 45 G's
A disturbing possibility is that if all the lives were saved on the Titanic (i.e., she hadn't sunk in the first place), future casualties could've been greater, since no safety mandates would've been imposed (such as # of lifeboat spots should equal number of souls on board, distress call sign standardization, better training/life boat drills, etc.). How about two ocean liners colliding, where each is 3 x bigger than the Titanic? Or when the Titanic gets sunk by German U-boats a few years later alongside her sister ships? Counterfactual analysis is so much fun, don't you think?
@@Doomer1984 Well, that's the sad reality. Health and safety is written in blood. We try to mitigate it with near miss reporting but rarely does anything change without a token payment.
Funny thing about the titanic - While a great amount is said about the lack of life boats, having more of them wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference. They *barely* finished launching the boats they actually did have. The last two were floated right off the deck. There's genuinely a lot of things that went wrong with titanic. The life boat count is maybe item number 10.
Most significant was the radio rooms not being crewed 24/7 - the ships nearby that could've affected rescue if they'd known, but their Marconi staff had knocked off for the night. The lifeboats intended to shuttle survivors to the rescue ship, not to carry all the survivors at sea indefinitely.
As a grunt I will swear by the ground based version. The CRAM Phalanx going off is the sweetest lullaby, next to the AC-130. A great way to improve their usefulness against hypersonic targets would be to load several of them on a small boat, and send several of those boats to the perimeter of the fleet group. Tie them to a much bigger search OTH radar, maybe from an EWACS or dedicated sensor ship, and they will be far enough out to hopefully keep them from the important ships. You hearing this Raytheon? I want royalties.
Prior to joining the Navy, a buddy of mine was in the national guard during the Gulf War. He commented about Abram tanks being devastating against camels. Talking to some deck apes and gunner mates years later, when they tested the sea whiz they would dump trash and turn hard to port or starboard and well damn a flock of seagulls just happen to be in the way.😂
Regarding the IFF signal receiver, or lack there of. Frankly, this mistake should never have the chance to be made in war time. Because if a plane is so close to your ship or ground base that a CIWS or a CRAM can effectively engage it, then it is definitely a friendly airplane. As an enemy one would have deployed it's weapons long before such system could effectively engage it.
I remember some older sci-fi talking about the necessity of similar systems *just* as a necessity for travelling at a decent proportion of C and clearing your path.
@@MrGrimsmith CIWS is basically a continuation of any rapid fire AA system. Let's look at what was arguably top of the line 1950 naval rapid(ish) firing AA gun -- 57mm/60 Bofors. It had: radar guidance, fully automated tracking (operator basically had to point a gun at radar dot and press a button), and each shell had proximity fuse to work as a mini flak. All the basics are pretty much there, the systems simply became smarter to respond to missiles becoming deadlier
I love that the PDCs in the Expanse have internal magazines. Because who wants a space walk to reload... in a fight that has the ship pulling crazy moves?
I managed to recreate the ballistic performance and rate of fire of the GAU-8 in the Children of a Dead Earth module editor. Ever since, the Goalkeeper (or as close a facsimile as the game allows) has been the standard CIWS on all my capital ships. There's no practical way to put enough armor on a ship in that game to withstand 395 grams of DU booking it downrange at 1km/s (at least not while maintaining a useful amount of delta-v), so anything it can connect with gets turned into confetti (or literally sawed in half by a stream of bullets). The low muzzle velocity does limit it's range pretty substantially, especially since the game won't let you issue any targeting orders more sophisticated than "shoot at that guy", so you can't saturate their maneuver cone or anything, but it's still useful for stopping any missiles that are too heavily armored for your lasers or pellet guns to bring down, or for mopping up enemy warships that are 99.999% disabled but won't just fucking die so that you can complete the mission.
Have read _Timewreck Titanic_ It's a pretty cool combination of _The Final Countdown_ and _Titanic_ Of course the Dutch built a CWIS system around the GAU-8. They have been at war with the sea for centuries and are taking no chances with that cold and ancient foe.
Let's get one thing straight, there is NEVER enough Dakka. The only bad part about CIWS is that there isn't a little chair for me to sit next to it whilst firing. Seriously AI on guns? What's the point? If yous not gonna getz in da shoota, no point to waaagh
That thing about the Dutch having a better air defense gun has historical precedent: before WWII the Dutch Navy had developed a 3-axis stabilized, local radar ranging, mount for the Bofors 40mm. Edit: correction of mount design
@@Poctyk Yes, you are correct. I was mixing up two different mounts; I meant to refer to what Wikipedia calls the Royal Navy QF 40mm Mark IV mount, copied from a Dutch minesweeper.
To be sure, the CIWS "If it Flies, it Dies" philosophy is well known in the Aviation and Surface community. Point defense systems are designed (and personnel are trained and operate) under the assumption that if a Pilot gets into range of one of these close-in weapons, the Pilot is in the wrong, and you "deserve" to be shot down. As any Aviator or Flight Officer knows "Know your position", "Situational Awareness", double-check that flight plan with your instrumentation, etc. We had this situation come up multiple times during wars, in every service (For the Army, a British plane deviated from his flight plan during the Iraq War and flew over a Patriot Battery that was guarding a City) and as far as I know, it's always regarded as "Pilot Error" - no matter what the politicians say to the public - and the operational standards for CIWS or basic air-defense procedures stay the same.
I guess you remember the destroid Mechanized systems too. They were the Non transformable version of combat robots that the humans use against the zendrotti in macross. A lot of those actually became battle tech models. Such is the archer and the war hammer. Even the zentro commander pod became known as the Marauder in battle tech.
@@lornbaker1083 Glaug became the Marauder, Tomahawk the Warhammer, Phalanx to the Rifleman, Spartan to the Archer and maybe by inspiration the Monster to the Stone Rhino.
@@barrybend7189 The Stone Rhino (Inner Sphere/Comstar reporting name Behemoth) in the original Battletech 3055 Technical readout looked more like the lovechild of a MBR-04-Mk VI Destroid Tomahawk and a Roiquonmi Glaug Commander Type Tactical Pod than having any resemblance with the HWR-00-Mk II Monster. I would link a picture, but, UA-cam has a habit of deleting posts when I do and deleted an entire post similar to this I had worked up on NGNG when this very topic was brought up. Look it up, the old artwork is still amazing.
Ive had angry R2 give me plenty of hearing damage having contracted overseas for many years. But its also saved my life, including the rocket body clipping my buildings roof and falling about 15 yards away in my concrete yard while I was out smoking. It may not be the best in every possible category objectively. But subjectively, I want one within 100 yards of me at all times
I was in Iraq in 2008 around Baghdad and some of the bigger bases had this system. I remember in spring around march JAM decided they really wanted to play. I remember looking up while reloading during a massive and long firefight at night and seeing about 5 streams of fire from this arcing up into the sky from i don't know how many systems and it was an awesome sight. I also remember being near one of these when it engaged a bird or something and it was deafening like extremely painful deafening
A couple days ago I saw a short, of a Phalanx busy tracking a landing airliner as it glided down slope towards an airport. And was very glad the man inside didn't sneeze and bump the wrong button. But the system test seemed to work.
Rule number one of gun safety. Do not point your firearm at anything that you would not be willing to destroy/kill/main/injure/damage. Rule number two. Check what's behind your target. Rule number three. No gun is safe. But it helps to use your safety, clear the chamber, and pull the magazine and verify no ammunition remains in the firearm.
Maybe the option of having an IFF system togglable for exercises would be beneficial, like if they know they're in friendly waters toggle the IFF on, then in all other situations, have it default to standard.
"Phalanx neither knows nor cares if you are friendly or not." I AM COMPLETELY AND MENTALLY STABLE. HEY LOOK A CIVILIAN AIRLINER! LOCK IT! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA LOCK IT!
WW2 the ships started loading every MG they could on to defeat a very specific type of "missile". as soon as that ended it's like every nation in the world decided that "that's not how the future will be, let's make sure to only plan for gentlemanly duels of 1-2 projectiles launched per-barrage, with ample time for countermeasures and our massively slashed air-component numbers to deal with". Whose who forget the past and all that. . . .
They also used the assumption that long range radar guided SAMs would knock out a good chunk of those incoming while they’re over the horizon. It isn’t a total capability reduction.
You make a decent point but it discounts the idea that if you're worked down to just your CWIS guns for anti missile defense, something else has gone horribly wrong.
@@highjumpstudios2384 true but as useful as missiles can be we went from an utter reliance on people for every facet of production to an assumption that future foes would be as risk-adverse to the human toll of combat as we have become. the effectiveness of a low tech option applied in numbers has been long underestimated and "the west" has been humbled more than a few times by this oversight.
@@IRMentat How are you planning on getting these manually operated missiles close enough to trouble the fleet? Any aircraft considered disposable is going to have a huge radar signal and lack the countermeasures to get through the long range missile barrage. Lets not forget that it's not one ship acting alone either, they operate in packs to combine weapon systems, you've got aircraft in the air fulfilling a multitude of roles and extending AWACs, destroyers keeping an ear out for subs and frigates watching the skies. A lot of lessons have been learned from naval conflicts in the modern period, the British learned the hard way during the Falklands that assuming you know the range of your opponents ordinance is foolish and that doctrine needs to be the same across all ships, the US learned during the Iran/Iraq conflict that if an unidentified aircraft doesn't respond once entering your defensive perimeter that you should very much exercise your right to self defence.
PDCs on auto-track, beginning evasive maneuvers, I'm putting us into a spin. Oh shit no wait, they work in The Expanse, real ones are a hilarious gimmick.
You know, hitting a car that's going 7,500 mph with a soda can going 2,500 mph the other way might be considered non trivial. The PDC's in the Expanse work because of the magic of writing. They don't have to deal with pesky things like reality. These things work. They can be improved, as was obviously stated. On the other hand, a typical carrier strike group has 2 AEGIS cruisers (122 SM-3's and 2 CIWS each) in addition to up to three DDG's (with varied anti-missile/anti-air rockets plus at least one CIWS) and 2 more CIWS on the super carrier. That gives you a defensive shield for a fuck ton of incoming missiles. Like somewhere north of 400. There is only one nation that can theoretically take down a CSG with missile attacks(plural, because one won't cut it). Big surprise. When numbers one and two go at it with hammers and tongues, sparks will fly.
@@Keiranful I think one of the primary flaws is magazine space. IFF is mostly a software problem. If it had a "ready" magazine and a below deck or off to the side auto loading system that would go a long way.
I remember playing a sim game called Dangerous Waters, I'd set the CIWS on my frigate into full auto mode and launched the ship's helicopter, not thinking there'd be an issue. Well the helicopter got off the deck and as soon as it entered the CIWS's arc it was turned into swiss cheese. And that was the day I discovered that the Phalanx lacks an IFF.
Phalanx is just a very very aggressive chaff ejection system, don't need more than 1 or 2 on a ship. There's a story about one of the Iowas being hit by the P.P. stream because it popped chaff.
To be fair, the "drop-in" feature of the phalanx limits the magazine size, but in turn the system can be mounted on trucks, shore batteries, and smaller vessels with limited bellow deck space. You coouldn't mount a kashtan on a patrol boat, there simply isn't enough space to fit the bellow deck magazines
I saw the first half of the title and thought it would be "The real problem with the Phalanx is that there aren't enough to make a phalanx of Phalanxes
On the A6-E story...I was on that cruise. The A6 squadron was VA-115, the Eagles. Their Gedunk sold a bumper sticker that said "If you are not attack, you're support." After the bird was shot down, they recovered all the pieces they could and stowed them in 3 triwalls on the hanger deck. They were there so long, some clown painted the correct "TAC" numbers on the boxes, which was funny. Then one of the tomcat guys from VF-154, the Black Knights, stenciled "If you are not a fighter, you're a target." on the side of the boxes. It was great fun to watch.
Standing next to a CIWS while it's knocking out a target drone/missle is actually a lot of fun. No recording I've ever heard yet, does justice to how it sounds. I have a series of photos I took of the target flying off into the clouds and getting shot down...it amuses me. I'm a plank owner of USS Theodore Roosevelt. Don't recall exactly where we were when they did that little demonstration, but it really was fun. You are not entirely correct about it ignoring objects that aren't approaching. If that were 100% true, it sure as hell wouldn't have shot down the target, which was flying directly away from TR that day.
The offshore Locus Solus battleship in Ghost in the Shell 2 [at 1:09:00] supplements it's main battery salvos with a sustained broadside of five Vulcans. I imagine they have the same number on the other side. It seemed sufficient, at least for radical landscape gardening.
One of the less flattering names I’ve heard for the Phalanx is the “Close In Warning System” with the implication that a warning that you’re going to be hit is the only service it provides.
Well my personal rules for time travel. 1 where are you 2 when are you 3 are you still yourself (body) 4 try to stay off the radar until you can defend/protect yourself 5 truth is a beautiful thing until it bites you in the ass be Extremely careful who you share it with 6 go wild with your knowledge after all your mere presence already changed the time-line 7 going back to original (if you want to) than going back should have changed nothing in that reality as long as you return the exact same moment you left 8 Have Fun
Something you didn't mention about DARDO: the gun mount uses 2x 40mm Bofors guns loaded with a mix of proximity-fused HE shells for longer range with an automatic magazine change to APFSDS (armor-piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding sabot) shells up close (inside 1 km), has a range of 4 km, and weighs 700 kg less than Phalanx. If there was enough room on the hull, I'd have both DARDO and Phalanx on board with the fire control system set up to hand off between the two weapons as smoothly as possible.
I saw a story about development of Phalanx. They were in port, testing targeting. The machine decided that a worker was a threat. It tracked him into a porta potty, and waited for him to come out. Another development story. In early testing after firing and hitting the target, it would pause then go into a brief "spasm" firing bullets in seemingly random directions. Disconcerting. After some debugging, they figured out that the spasm of firing was Phalanx targeting and shooting down the fragments of the original target...
Supernatural already figured out what would happen if you went back in time and saved the Titanic: Celene Dion would never have become famous and our ears would have been saved from a gawd awful song.
"You don't want your CIWS trying to shoot down a seagull..." Let me think about that one..... Yes i do. Watching a bird get reduced to it's constituent atoms by a multi barrelled gun shooting high velocity armor piercing rounds would be awesome Have to call the slow mo guys so we can get it on film.
The problem is that a ship can only mass so much especially in the superstructure) before it gets too top heavy. Throughout WWII US ships generally had as many AA guns strapped on as they could without completely ruining the ships' seakeeping, and as the radar sets got bigger and more numerous, they started having to strip guns off to keep the weight (and center of mass) down. Point is, there are tradeoffs.
I was an electronics tech in the RAN in the eighties. We did actually call it R2D2, unofficially. The early ones were very twitchy and were rumored to shoot at seagulls. If you threw a can of coke at it, it could shoot it down. The system shoots at the largest target, so once the initial target breaks apart it will continue to shoot at the next biggest/closest piece until it decides it is no longer a threat. The main drawback is the ammunition supply which will run out in less than a minute or two if it fires continuously. Reloading takes a minimum of 4 minutes. (The one we had then.) They improved them a lot since then.
Absolutely the story of _Carpathia_ absolutely needs to be known by more people. It was a miracle the ship was able to float with the size of the brass balls the captain and engineer were carrying around.
Speaking of the friendly fire potential of CIWS, there was such an incident between uss missouri and uss jarret during desert storm. They thought they had an incoming missile. Jarret's CIWS was in automatic mode. Missouri fired off flares. The CIWS picked up the flares from missouri and engaged them. Punched some small holes in missouri in non-critical places. One crewman was injured by shrapnel.
That minions cover should be standard issue on all CIWS. Thinking about the milliseconds of realization(recognition?) that your enemy gets as their boat is getting shot out from under them by a bullet pissing mutated corn puff in bib overalls, is just hi larious.
The CIWS is just a stopgap to fill in while we wait for the laser defense systems. The GAU-8 is pretty cool, but not remotely necessary when we could sink more money into lasers.
So, there's a lot more to unpack here that isn't mentioned about Close In Weapons Systems. These systems are primarily used to defend against missile attacks, but because of how those work, it's not the only weapon. As of writing, the primary ship mounted anti missile defense SYSTEM is the Aegis Combat System. This system is... insane, and effectively makes a multi-layered dome for anti-missile protection (This system is also capable of engaging other threats, including aircraft, surface threats, and submarine threats, as technically speaking it also includes the MH-60r Seahawk, however, it's primary function is missile defense). This system mostly works off of probability, how many missiles will a particular weapon PROBABLY shoot down. The system can actually engage theater (medium range) ballistic missiles, as well as tactical (close range) anti-ship missiles, and includes the RIM-66, RIM-67 (max of 200nmi), RIM-161 (anti-ballistic, max of 650nmi), RIM-174 (max of 130nmi), the Phalanx CWIS (seen here, max of 4nmi), and the Mk 41 VLS (As well as variants, which are even larger and can hold generally larger missiles); which can hold all perviously mentioned variety of missiles, as well as the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow (Very small, max of 10nmi), and the RIM-162 Advanced Sea Sparrow (improved, 27nmi+ range classified). In a standard carrier battlegroup, there is usually AT LEAST one cruiser, and two destroyers. This is most likely a minimum compliment for the four home protection fleets. With a fleet this size, you can expect a mixed armament of defensive and offensive missiles, however, the cruiser should mount upwards of 80 (Max of 122) anti-missile weapons, most of which will probably be a RIM-161. The destroyers can also pack up to 96 missiles in their VLS systems. This is also not taking into consideration that the RIM-162 advanced sea sparrow is quad packed into a VLS cell, meaning for every 161 "SM-3" missile, you can have four 162 sea sparrows. This gives a theoretical max of 1256 missiles (assuming all quad packed sea sparrows.) Then FINALLY, you have close in weapons systems, which includes CWIS, SEARAM, the Mk 45 5 inch gun (which has anti missile ammo and is also radar guided), and soon, the AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System. All of this also has ship mounted fire control and radar systems, as well as active and passive jamming systems. Like I said, much more complex. IF a phalanx has to open up on a missile, then something has gone very, very, VERY wrong. Also, I'm not worried about the soviet missiles. Like... really? More than likely it'll run out of fuel halfway to the target because private conscriptovich pawned off half of it to pay for his new Lada. Finally, no system is 100% perfect. Whilest the chance of a single missile getting past all defenses is around 1-2%, it is possible for a VERY large amount to get one or two past and get a hit. Which is why USN damage control is the best in the world, and has been for almost 100 years.
There are a massive number of USN ships that will never mount AEGIS and yet spend most of their operations well over the horizon of ships that do, especially in ESGs, or, say, the ships that refuel said groups of ships (which, granted, are not USN, but also will never mount AEGIS).
@@SacredCowShipyards True. Usually, the ships that do mount them though are in escort of the ships that don't. Carriers for instance don't mount Aegis. What I'm trying to say with my long, overly complicated, and also probably inaccurate somewhere comment is that the Phalanx system does have weaknesses, but those weaknesses are USUALLY covered up by the other parts, such as missiles and the like, strengths. I do agree with quite a few of your arguements actually. A FoF reciever, one that could be turned off if necessary, for instance, when it's put into automatic mode should be included, and wouldn't be complicated, and a networked fire control radar would REALLY help redundancy. However, there are two counterpoints to those. The first is that it's a weapons system, and as such, bits and pieces are classified or buried under miles and miles of boring documents. The other is that Phalanx is... REALLY old... Love the videos, btw. Been a long time fan.
My point is that figlets used to spend entire "counter-narco-terrorism" operations with naught but a nulka, an outdated EW suite, and a CIWS between them and who knows what. Sure, they're decommissioned now, but something else is filling that gap, if only for the political points. Hell, for 21 years LPDs and the like steamed around the Persian Gulf - in a designated Combat Zone, mind you - without a DDG or CG anywhere to be found. Of-times those missile-throwers were doodling about the coast of Pakistan, hoping to throw something over the hills into Afghanistan proper. Yes, you're right, all CIWS are - by definition - last ditch solutions. But for a pile of independently-operating ships, they were the /only/ guns-out solution. So just excusing its faults as, "Oh, well, everything before it would catch anything that was a problem," is... rather dismissive of the lives on those secondary hulls that don't mount AEGIS or VLS or even Sea Sparrows.
The problem with below-deck ammo storage is that you can't just bolt it on wherever you have some deck space. If a peer or near-peer conflict broke out, the number of CIWS and SeaRAM mounted on most ships would probably at least double. It would take far more time and money to overhaul ships to add additional Goalkeepers. Though a Goalkeeper or Rheinmetall CIWS as a primary with Phalanx as add-on options wouldn't be a bad way to play it. It's also worth noting that the SM-2 can also act as an interceptor at longer ranges, so without even getting into electronic warfare you've got long range SAMs, short range SAMs, and phalanx as the absolute last line of defense for incoming missiles.
The true long range missile defence for US battlegroups is the F/A 18 fighter and the nuclear attack submarine. Doctrine has always been to send the enemy ship to the bottom well before it can get a missile off. An admiral who lets his ships get into range of enemy SSMs has ALREADY made a mistake.
These things sound like the jake brake on a tractor trailer.... btw, I love your opener about "Where no ship is safe from being called a piece of shit!" Had me instantly hooked 🤣
A slight correction for you. The USN uses a "data mile" of 2000 yards not a "nautical mile" of 6076.12 feet. Unless they've changed that since I was in CIC last.
The excuse for the problems with the CIWS block 0 is it was a self contained bolt on refit kit to upgrade ships built before it was invented, it was not intended to be the end-all be-all point defense solution by its developers. You would think that newer ships would be built with something like goalpost, but politicians and accountants nixed that idea, because we already had CIWS and it was good enough... except it had never been intended to be, it was a stop hap solution. One good thing about CIWS and pretty much all US military airdefense, area and point defense systems is they are constantly updating and improving the software. DARPA is currently testing a system for the army and navy were all the defense assets in ground area or navy taskforce can talk with each other and choose the optimal engagement options for each inbound threat. This could result in multiple missile launchers and guns engaging multiple targets and only doubling up on a single target if absolutely necessary.
One of the more under-rated CIWS currently is the Italian Dardo system, featuring a pair of Bofors 40mm/L70 guns packing radio-proximity-fuzed explosive/fragmentation shells. Lower velocity and rate of fire than competing systems, but inarguably requires far fewer rounds expended to disable a target; even a near miss is likely to result in a mission kill. Bonus points: It has the option to have an internal magazine system.
"Minimum speed makes sense because you dont want to see a CWIS trying to shoot down a seagull" (paraphrased) Dont you tell me what I dont want to see! That video footage would be amazing! Also would be good practice to see how it can do against a drone swarm.... Get a whole flock of gulls flying around and then set the minimum speed to 0, also remove the requirement that it has to approch the ship, just prioritize the ship approching gulls, er... i mean "simulation drones"
Anyone who's ever had to deal with seagulls in real life would be really happy to set the CIWS on them. Those fuckers are like oversized mosquitoes, only somehow much more insufferable
@@zolikoff The worst thing about gulls is they are classed as 'endangered species' as their population has dropped to a quarter in the last 100 years, meaning people cant just rid places of them without permission. Except, they are not. What the 'environmentalists' cant seem to get into their skulls, is the gull population increased by a factor or around 10 during the 1600s-1900s, due to human action - specifically feeding of gulls by sailors leaving and entering ports. The decline in the last 100 is simply the gull population returning to its natural levels. Brrrrrrrrrt away.
I use to make theses in General Dynamics Pomona California. We use to say "If it flies it dies". For fun we would throw and bounce a ball in front of it to watch it oscillate the gun up and down and follow the ball.
Man gotta love the coincidence of thales being namedroped and me doing a internship there. Was not aware that the goalkeeper used the a10 warthog's gun.
Fifth-most fun I ever had in the Navy: Firing CIWS in Manual mode, after toggling the FLIR-vs-VIDEO cross-hair on the orange tetrahedral-target - and we recorded everything (wish I could get a copy of that video though). You see a bunch of little splashes in the vicinity, and while it SEEMS like you don't hit it (because the projectiles penetrate so efficiently), it's clear on closer inspection that the target is full of holes (plus it starts deflating/sinking). I wanted to do it on our SINKEX target later, but FCs need opportunities and practice - officers not so much.
In a book I wrote, I have a battleship that has a few CWIS' the Sentient AI calls R2's. As he's getting closer to his final destination, he's thinking (while punch drunk) about the loading systems that he's been provided. His 4" 8" and 16" guns have scuttle ways which allow ammo to be shared, so that if one such turret goes down, the ammo "can" be removed and loaded in another gun. Being an automated ship, this was a design necessity. So as he's heading into his final battle, he's lamenting that the same philosophy wasn't used for his R2's. While the R2's had plenty of spare drums to automatically replace, those spares are useless if the R2 is shot up. So while he has several spare drums laying around, he has one R2 left that is sitting pretty... and empty. This could be solved with a couple dude-bros hoofing the drums as needed, but being an automated ship, he has no said dude-bros to call upon. Several times in the story, there's a point made about the failure of fully automated gunships. As one person put it, they are only as good as the person commanding the ship. More to the point, a small team could take over the ship with minimal casualties; so the concept was an evolutionary dead end. The SAI himself states that flooding will flood, fires will burn, and damage that could be repaired by a team of brave personnel, would be considered a total write-off if he can't make port.
I feel like a solution to the IFF problem would be to have it ignore IFF on targets under a certain size (anti ship missiles and stuff) as it's primary objective is to stop enemy munitions rather then enemy aircraft.
I'd imagine a better option would be an integrated fleet C&C tied into all available radar systems, and marry it to something like a Phalanx, but with two or three interception weapons (SeaRam, Phalanx, and maybe a laser based system)
Goalkeeper has a vastly superior tracking radar to that of Phalanx. Goalkeeper uses not one but 2 radar sets, in 2 different radar bands, coupled with FLIR. On top of that in the case of the Dutch and German navy they use a Dutch-designed command and control suite which can combine it with other ship sensors such as its AESA radar. There is a video of Goalkeeper shooting down a missile within literally 2 rounds fired, while Phalanx needs dozens at minimum.
@@Kittamaru There is such a thing, it's called Guardion; the Dutch CMS (combat management system). It uses APAR, SMART-L ER, Scout, Sirius, DSQS-24C, and a couple other sensors, and is linked with every weapons system on board including Goalkeeper and even enables it to send targetting info to other, compatible ships.
Regarding the onboard radar and the magazine that isn't under the deck, it's worth remembering that one of the requirements of the Phalanx system was to be able to be retrofit onto ships that weren't designed for it. It can be (and was) put onto everything from old WWII warships to civilian-built cargo ships. The system can be put anywhere that has a flat bit of deck strong enough to handle the weight, and requires only power and a basic data cable. No special mounts or ammo handling rooms under the gun mount, nor special radar on the ship to guide the system. It's all built into the gun mount. Compare that to many other systems which require special mounts and under-deck spaces to handle the ammo and other components, and installing those systems on ships not designed for them requires rebuilding parts of the ship.
@@SacredCowShipyards The ability to be easily added also has a major side-benefit, in that it allows them to be places where deck-penetrating mounts simply could not be. Many CIWS are placed in areas with important systems underneath. Placing them over the helo hanger is a common example, and if you used a deck-penetratingly mount you'd have to sacrifice hanger space, or put them in a less commanding position. This capability adds a lot of flexibility in where the mount can go. Can you put larger deck-penetrating mounts in odd places as well? Sure, the OHP frigates had a 76 smack in the middle of the superstructure and those are pretty big mounts. But that leads to design compromises since the system is now in competition for space with other systems. As with as the on-mount sensor systems, if there are incoming missiles you probably want to have the ability to shoot them down if the main radar system is damaged. Redundancy is worth the added weight in this case. For what it's worth, I tend to think the more capable systems like the Breda fast-forty are a better bet for many applications (which can handle prox-fuse munitions, has a larger range, and has below-deck reloading capability on many mounts). But the ability to put CIWS on basically anything is still a very useful capability especially if (when) we end up in a major naval war and have to press civilian ships or rushed/minimally changed designs into service.
Don't complain too hard about too similar sounding names. We're still talking about the US- military. They could have called everything M1 and call it a day.
In reguards to why anyone in their right mind would leave the human firing control on, there was a really interesting incident described on the battleship New Jerseys channel in which a British Destroyer popped flares and chaf and a near by close in weapons system on an Iowa Class Battleship enguaged said chaf and nearly caused a friendly fire incident.
The Operation Room channel went over that incident, it wasnt the iowa, but an escorting brittish destoryer that popped couter-measures, and the Iowa's CIWS started shooting at the counter-measure cloud
When the button is pressed, R2-D2 is no longer yours or anyone else's friend.
Exactly! That's the thing people don't realize about the Phalanx! It's a freakin droid! It's autonomous! If they put wheels in those feet, then it would be R2-D2's roided out older brother with a huge gun penis!
@@stcredzero If I had my druthers, I'd make the warning sound for phalanx deployment being a shrill "Exterminate! Exterminate!"
@@MonkeyJedi99 Daleks are not droids though, they're canned mutants.
I prefer the fresh variety myself.
Years ago, I read when they were first testing this system, they flew a target drone out to the ship. One of the techs was asked how many rounds did he think it would take. His response was like, a 100 or so. I can’t remember how many rounds they loaded up, but when the drone came by the the gun emptied itself in mere seconds. They found out later that after it hit the drone, it kept firing at pieces over a certain size. They decided to adjust its sensitivity a little. The guy that wrote the article said he would’ve loved to see a printout of what the gun was thinking…” Kill, Kill, Kill”. It sure can rip, makes an incredible sound.
@@stcredzeroReminds me of an old 7Up commercial involving roving vending machines that shoot soda cans at people
"You don't want your CIWS to shoot down a Seagul"
YES I DO. Don't crap on my boat damnit!
Why waste the ammo when you can crank up the AN-SPY radar and fry the fuckers with science.
You were an XO weren't you.
I want one on my building! Damn seagulls are always crapping the cars!
@@richardmartin8998 No, if he was an XO then he wouldn't care and would've made some poor Seaman clean it up. More likely he was that poor seaman; multiple times.
Forget CIWS, sailors everywhere want LABS (Laser Anti Bird Systems)
A possibly apocryphal story from a British shipyard (I have heard variations of the same story, I'll just pass on the bits where they agree). The goalkeeper CIWS on a Type 23 under construction was being tested. The weapon was not armed but it was able to move as it tracked.
The gun was behaving oddly, it was ignoring the targets given, instead it seemed to be tracking something else. After some investigation, it transpired goalkeeper had locked on to a shipyard worker, a long way away, and was following him around the yard. When he went indoors, it patiently waited for him to come out.
That’s hilarious 😂 poor bloke.
How to fucking delete someone (apparently)
Step 1:
Listen to the voices inside your head
@@Sam-cn4ch There are more bits to the story but the different sources contradict each other. On the other hand, it's nice be wanted? 😂
That IS funny.
What part of the target acquisition would pick up a human over a more suitable target? Was he the FLASH?
Lucky it wasn't loaded. Imagine the splash he would have made if shot. That would be a simple 100 round burst.
The accident investigation would have been a doosey.
I wonder if they told him lol
Fun note from my dad, an FC that worked on the block 0. At least back then, the cwis didn't shoot tracers. The rounds flew so fast they glowed like tracers.
The tracers are only used by the Centurion C-RAM version, which use M940 MPT-SD (Multi Purpose Tracer Self Destruct) for shooting mortar rounds.
On ships, they use Mk149 or Mk244 APDS. Mk 149 is about ~1300 grains, Mk244 is ~1900 grains. Both are tungsten, though early Mk149 was DU.
They need by my calculations one of these every 100 ft of ship, and one up facing to the sky, and one hung upside down covering the water surface. It's a badass defense system. We need small versions of this system on the F15, A10, and on all long range bombers.
As an FC that worked on Block 1A down to Block 1 Base 1, CIWS's tungsten and DU rounds dont glow at all. You do see the sabots flying off though...
No they don't, I was a Vulcan gunner in the Army back in the 80's, I've shot both tracer and non tracer ammo out of them during the day and at night and I can assure you that nothing that isn't a tracer glows heading downrange.
I'll tell you what will glow at night however, that's the guns barrels if you unload an entire 1,200 rd drum of ammo in one long continuous burst set on Lo-No (1,000 rds per minute), our guns had 2 firing rates, 3,000 per with burst limits of 10, 30, 60 and 100, and the low setting of 1,000 per with no burst limit (hence Lo-No).
A good gunner with it set on the high rate at 100 burst limit could release and reapply the trigger so it almost sounded like a long continuous burst at 3,000 per and when the drum was empty the barrels wouldn't be glowing, you certainly wouldn't want to touch them but they wouldn't be glowing and that's because the faster you spin the barrels the better it cools even though the firing rate is so much higher, but on Lo-No if you just held the trigger and unloaded an entire drum the barrels would be glowing so red I'll guarantee you could have lit a cigarette off of them, probably burn your mustache off trying it but it'd light one.
At this point I'd like to thank the American tax payer for funding a supply of ammo for me to have the time of my life with that no private citizen including Warren Buffet could afford to pay for, a big shout out to you guy's 👍👍👍🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲
@@marymarlow5598 Also, some underwater for anti-torpedo purposes.
so give it legs and a cockpit and you have an urbanmech?
Put it on wheels or tracks and you have a C-RAM (Counter Rocket and Mortar). Not as sexy but still BRRRRT
Also have to give it a main cannon cause ac20 urbie is never not fucking hilarious
I mean, you aren't wrong.
And those tungsten subcaliber penetrators would do... something even to mech armor.
Aww the ever loved Urbie
@@SacredCowShipyards the ac20 does leave a huge mark.....
also 5 shot, iirc and empty ..
and 7 tons just the gun...
I've always assumed if wartime conditions broke out we'd have to find a way to double the number of CWS on our ships. And double the number of ships....
They would have to be built and due to all our "weapons gifts" to Ukraine the US military is extremely short of spares and it will take years to even catch up to what we've given away at tax payer expense.
@@danielkinder8260 Well, of course they'd have to be built. I don't think we really keep stockpiles of those. I don't believe we given any CWS or Phalanx to Ukraine though..... While artillery shell reserves concern me, nothing else really does. America isn't going to pass up on the opportunity to neuter it's longest term rival for relatively on the cheap. As long as our donations are killing Russians and destroying their stockpile in masse, America will keep supplying Ukraine. It's not about freedom or defending democracy, but ridding ourselves of the Russian stockpile so we can focus on our new rival, China. It's honestly a godsend to a point.
@@danielkinder8260 I haven't heard of the US giving any warships to Ukraine.
Pretty sure that's why they're bolt-on. Just like slapping down more 20mm Oerlikons in WW2.
How exactly? lost skill is very hard get back if ever it could be reclaimed. Also you have a generation ween on not doing hard work. Another thing building shipyards takes alot of time.
‘R2-D2 with a Gatling gun”. So… BT-1, basically? The second most murder-minded Astromech ever created with more firepower than you’d believe.
My dad called it R2D2 with a hate boner.
Have we forgotten about our lord and savour of murder and war crimes. Cupper?
@@shmee123ful Note: "Second" most murder-minded Astromech ever. No doubting who the king is...
@@shmee123ful Canada?
Really looks like r2D2 with a Gatling gun dick
So, two fun stories on this. First, that tracking radar was so good that early versions of the system were though to glitch out and go wild making a whole bunch of jerky movements every time they destroyed a target. It wasn't until they took a closer look at the target debris that they realized it was tracking and shooting down the target fragments individually after destroying the initial target.
Second story is a first-hand account. On deployment we decided one day to scuttle our paint skiff by using it for target practice. We put some barrels in it and set it adrift. Couldn't hit it with the 5", and the 50cals peppered it. However the CIWS chewed a 10" hole in the side of it from half a mile out in Surface mode. I only know this because that damn skiff wouldn't sink no matter how many holes we put in it so we recovered it.
Strap those skiffs to the outer hull of our warships to make up for the thinner armor.
It's like your CIWS was doing a victory dance every time it got a kill.
Use it for a new drone class if it's that stronk.
"not for close-in combat, per se"
The Expanse: Hold my PDC's
But the PDC‘s are in 40mm and used against lightly armed spaceships. Not 20mm brrt
PDCs are definitely upscaled from this.
@@bierdasbaum0911 so logically the next step is to build a CWIS around the A-10 Warthog's Gatling gun.
@@ctrlaltdebug the Rheinmetall MANTIS fires *35mm* smart airburst shells, thats a real pdc
Btw you remember the expanse season 4 scene were the roci fires single shot from PDC‘s on tellus and there’s just a huge explosion?
@@ctrlaltdebug the phalanx uses the 20mm m61 vulcan
The goalkeeper uses the A-10's 30mm gau-8 avenger
The Dutch were way ahead of you lol
Identifying any impossibly-maneuvering flying object as a no-shoot helps keep us out of interstellar wars, right?
I'm still not Convinced That's most of the alien Or otherwise, UFO counters are literally not just basically alien version Of millennials On there intergalactic version of tik tok, deciding to prank our planet.
@@lornbaker1083 As Douglas Adams called them, teasers. IIRC, Ford Prefect got a lift with one.
@@ericwilner1403 I was thinking the same, though a more realistic view would be "they are probably xenobiologists"... not unlike our own biologists, they seek out new species, collect samples, dissect and study said samples, classify and codify... I am pretty sure they classify humans as a semi-intelligent parasitic creature.
I had no clue about the tracking radar being able to track its own shots and walk in for the kill - that is terrifying and astounding, good job R2
At some point after WWII the Iowa battleships could track the flight of their 16" guns shells and plug the radar output into their big Ford Instrument mechanical fire control computer. The computer even accounted for the rotation of the earth, relative velocity of ship and target.USS New Jersey Battleship Museum, I believe it is. The curator is tops! I highly rec the site!.
This is what Patriot does as well. And fun fact, patriot is cockpit biased. Because of how the system works, a plane being intercepted won’t know until just before they can see the intercept missile. And so they go to eject except… the missile is designed to ignore the plane, go up, and come down onto the cockpit. So if they do manage to eject, they eject directly into an intercept missile going Mach 4. America knows that the pilot is more valuable than the plane. I wouldn’t be surprised if phalanx has a similar system designed as well for when dealing with manned threats.
how do u think speed trackers the police use work
There are significant advantages to having the targeting system mounted on a CIWS such as that even if, say, the Aegis system/other naval aerial warning system got knocked out somehow the CIWS still works independently.
Oh, I would never integrated a CIWS system into something like AEGIS for exactly that reason, but colocating still has tradeoffs and benefits.
@@SacredCowShipyards I'd be more worried about the delay from the required processing. Maybe passing the data on wouldn't incur too much of a delay, but the additional calculations from watching the rounds sideways could cause fucky wackery.
I remember my dad talking about how one of the senior engineers on Phalanx had an artillery shell with a hole plugged through it on his desk, so the anti-artillery capability was on the table since at least the 80s or early 90s.
not really because limitations on the detection radar
@@anuvisraa5786 you do remember that anything made public is like 10-15 years old right? its not entirely out of the question.
@@mrmors1344 o I do not say it is a lie, on the contrary, they did use Artileri projectiles to test the gun and tracking radar (far cheaper than missiles) but the gun was pre-aimed at the expected artillery path. and the phalanx did the tracking and shooting. whit the c ram one of the changes was the evolution of the radar modules used for detection
"... the anti-artillery capability was on the table..."
I see what you did there - and I approve!
@@anuvisraa5786Except yes really. CIWS was tested in '77. First fully equipped ship was in '80. Block 1 upgrade started in '88. Ships sent to the persian gulf for desert storm/shield were so equipped.
There was even a friendly fire incident involving CIWS between uss missouri and uss jarret.
They thought they had an incoming missile. Jarret's CIWS was in automatic mode. Missouri fired off flares. The CIWS picked up the flares from missouri and engaged them. Punched some small holes in missouri in non-critical places. One crewman was injured by shrapnel. Many of the bullet holes are still there.
So if a CIWS could nearly instantaneously pick up and engage a damned flare coming from an unexpected direction, it sure as shit could pick up something like a howitzer shell.
The lack of IFF in phalanx is ironic given that the big feature of early stinger missile launchers was a pop-out IFF transceiver setup
I'm a huge fan of the Goalkeeper system. It's heavier and takes up more space then the Phalanx but it's significantly larger round makes up for it. Goalkeeper or Phalanx paired with the SeaRAM missile system, apart but on the same ship, is an extremely effective point defense system.
yea it is the kashtan
@@anuvisraa5786 meh....I put zero faith in anything Russian at this point.
Yes that's a commonly quoted problem with GK. The Phalanx is basically drop and go. It's why support ships and the like that are usually unarmed can quickly be given 2 to 4 of them in war time.
The GK requires you cut a hole in the deck and make some modifications. It's not a quick process.
@admiraltiberius1989 Seems to work really well when the Sunflower people use it.
Or the Rakia Tribe, but...let's not be going there.
@anuvisraa5786 as long as you have enough systems installed to cannibalize for spares...
You may not be able to do a proper testudo, but if you have enough ships and proper battlefield networking you can do massed arc-firm, a'la "Storm" from 2002's Hero. You have to admit that seeing flashes from across the water, followed a second later by a BRRRRRRRRRRRr sound and a surprise visit from the demolition fairies would have a marked effect on receiving force's morale.
Also, R2-D2 does not need dakka. Regular maintenance to his auxiliary systems will suffice. Lest we forget, R2-D2 managed to kill two Super Battle Droids with nothing more than his on-board lubricant reserve and his in-atmosphere maneuvering thrusters.
I'll have to remember the phrase "demolition fairies", it's a good one.
@@MonkeyJedi99 I admit, I made it up just now. I just thought "what would a military person informally call the sudden effect of a titanic number of impactors that are probably too small to see from a survivable distance?"
*disabled
You ALWAYS need more dakka. Not even sure what the idea was here.
@@ciCCapROSTi He has a much higher kill-count than Darth Vader. It's part of what makes the "anti-R@/C3PO" pair of assassin droids so funny - R2's directly-caused deaths dwarf theirs by and order of magnitude, if not more.
A long time ago, in a distant galaxy, a different world.. called.. the 1990s. I got the joy of standing about 3 yards away from a CIWS during test firing. There are not words to describe the awesome.. also, you have to hold onto the railings to keep upright because that thing vibrates the deck panels so hard you WILL fall over. I had a photo of it somewhere. You know.. ON FILM.. where you have the base and then the muzzle flash but pure empty sky in between. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT. The C-RAM interceptors are pretty crazy effective too at intercepting all kinds of small incoming munitions. Like a tiny little mortar shell, or even small rocket. The C-RAM is the buzz that lets you go back to sleep when Haji was throwing old school munitions your way.
I wonder... Can the cram intercept bullets?
@@FLMKane If programmed to, and by bullets you mean fairly sizeable projectiles.. YES. If it can track it's own sabos, it can hit it's own sabos, which means it can hit any projectile of similar size.
Short Range Interceptors that are projectile based are already being mounted on armored vehicles and tanks. Including laser interceptors (not intercepting lasers but using lasers rather than projectiles to intercept incoming rounds, and yes, it works).
How many shells would it take a mortar team to cause a cram to burn through its mag.
I guess I’m wondering what volume of fire these things were actually tested in battle against.
@@spykezspykez7001 they don't work alone but in defined sectors. So, I couldn't say. They worked well enough but in most cases two or three would engage the incoming fire at once. Which was more than enough to handle the limited indirect fire capacity found in Iraq and Afghanistan.
@@spykezspykez7001 - This was from a concentrated incoming attack in Iraq like 11 years ago. There's a longer version of the vid but it was hard to find this one, after looking for it for like an hour. - ua-cam.com/video/XceGKHATcYE/v-deo.html
The AK-630 refers to six 30 mm barrels. They're slaved to a radar in pairs, and the Moskva had three pairs, but only one gun out of the six was working. On the bad day that working gun was facing the sea not the shore.
By the way, rolling airframe defense missile launchers have been in use since at least the 90s and possibly earlier. Atop that, the 150 kilowatt lasers are now in use.
AK-130 (2x independent, autoloading 130mm, 10-40 RPM/barrel) is an awesome beast.
You mean, on the good day
did you expect differnet names from the nation that gave us the m1, the m1, the m1, the m1, the m1, and the m1. Most of them in service at the same time
and don't forget the X series
haha so true.... the amount of times they call something 'new' just to have another M1 on the books....
From wikipedia, just for the AS Army, you get 2 M1 tanks, 1 armoured car, 3 artillery tow vehicles, 7 artillery/field pieces, 3 autocannons, a bayonet, a frag, a mustard gas mine, 2 rifles, a helmet, a mortar, a Tommy gun, a flamethrower, a bazooka, and a harpoon.
@@Debbiebabe69 Hold up a mustard gas mine? That's the first time I've heard of that one.
@@dragonace119 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_chemical_mine
@@Debbiebabe69 Thats wack.
I have a relative that was a FTC that served on Carl Vinson. He said don't mess with Phalanx. They were doing target practice exercise off of Hawaii the banner the the A-6 was towing broke off. The system is so precise that it locked onto the broken shackle at the end of the tow cable. The skipper gave premission to shoot. It hit the shackle and started tracking up the cable towards the A-6. Needless to say they got a call from the squadron and were informed that 150 feet of cable was missing.
26:39 yeah, but no😂. The picture you have there is hydraulically powered. Those braided lines are the pressure and return lines going to aircraft hydraulic. system.
It can be, and is, powered by a variety of options: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M61_Vulcan
@@SacredCowShipyards
If you're referring to the drive for the gun itself yes, they are powered by both electric motors and hydraulically driven, aircraft use both depending on the particular application and the M163A1/A2 VADS I was a crewmember on used an electric drive motor on the gun.
We had 2 firing rates we could select from, 3,000 rounds per and 1,000 rounds per depending on the target.
The General Electric M61 cannon while originally designed for being on jet fighter's turned out to be very versatile and has had several variations that have been adapted to many different platforms both air and land, it's longevity, versatility and usefulness is right up there with the Browning M2 .50 cal it was designed to replace
A good excuse for that logic gap is that you're going to be operating in an ECM environment.
In wizard war like that you're going to get false images that do all kinds of things including turning at 12, 32, or 45 G's
A disturbing possibility is that if all the lives were saved on the Titanic (i.e., she hadn't sunk in the first place), future casualties could've been greater, since no safety mandates would've been imposed (such as # of lifeboat spots should equal number of souls on board, distress call sign standardization, better training/life boat drills, etc.). How about two ocean liners colliding, where each is 3 x bigger than the Titanic? Or when the Titanic gets sunk by German U-boats a few years later alongside her sister ships? Counterfactual analysis is so much fun, don't you think?
Just how dark can you go. Imagine if a modern superliner went down with no lifeboats. 😮
@@Doomer1984 Well, that's the sad reality. Health and safety is written in blood.
We try to mitigate it with near miss reporting but rarely does anything change without a token payment.
@@iangow-robinson9671 Yep most of traffic safety data was initially based on Mengele and his experiments
Funny thing about the titanic -
While a great amount is said about the lack of life boats, having more of them wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference. They *barely* finished launching the boats they actually did have. The last two were floated right off the deck.
There's genuinely a lot of things that went wrong with titanic. The life boat count is maybe item number 10.
Most significant was the radio rooms not being crewed 24/7 - the ships nearby that could've affected rescue if they'd known, but their Marconi staff had knocked off for the night. The lifeboats intended to shuttle survivors to the rescue ship, not to carry all the survivors at sea indefinitely.
As a grunt I will swear by the ground based version. The CRAM Phalanx going off is the sweetest lullaby, next to the AC-130.
A great way to improve their usefulness against hypersonic targets would be to load several of them on a small boat, and send several of those boats to the perimeter of the fleet group. Tie them to a much bigger search OTH radar, maybe from an EWACS or dedicated sensor ship, and they will be far enough out to hopefully keep them from the important ships. You hearing this Raytheon? I want royalties.
Funny story about the way to defend against the Moskit until the Phalanx was patched...
I concur devil Dawg, I was a squid 5 yrs,and saw the insane guns that we have just setting ready to make examples of something. Sick shat
I love how the ship crews go full creative mode when it comes to decorating the CWIS XD
Prior to joining the Navy, a buddy of mine was in the national guard during the Gulf War. He commented about Abram tanks being devastating against camels. Talking to some deck apes and gunner mates years later, when they tested the sea whiz they would dump trash and turn hard to port or starboard and well damn a flock of seagulls just happen to be in the way.😂
Regarding the IFF signal receiver, or lack there of. Frankly, this mistake should never have the chance to be made in war time. Because if a plane is so close to your ship or ground base that a CIWS or a CRAM can effectively engage it, then it is definitely a friendly airplane. As an enemy one would have deployed it's weapons long before such system could effectively engage it.
I love that a real world weapon system (CIWS) was the inspiration for the PDCs of The Expanse.
I remember some older sci-fi talking about the necessity of similar systems *just* as a necessity for travelling at a decent proportion of C and clearing your path.
Maybe in 30 years we'll see some actually modern point defense in sci-fi, like guided artillery.
I believe it's more the other way around, CIWS comes from sci-fi. Like escalators, moving walkways and waldos. 1950s or so I think?
@@MrGrimsmith CIWS is basically a continuation of any rapid fire AA system.
Let's look at what was arguably top of the line 1950 naval rapid(ish) firing AA gun -- 57mm/60 Bofors.
It had: radar guidance, fully automated tracking (operator basically had to point a gun at radar dot and press a button), and each shell had proximity fuse to work as a mini flak. All the basics are pretty much there, the systems simply became smarter to respond to missiles becoming deadlier
I love that the PDCs in the Expanse have internal magazines. Because who wants a space walk to reload... in a fight that has the ship pulling crazy moves?
I managed to recreate the ballistic performance and rate of fire of the GAU-8 in the Children of a Dead Earth module editor. Ever since, the Goalkeeper (or as close a facsimile as the game allows) has been the standard CIWS on all my capital ships. There's no practical way to put enough armor on a ship in that game to withstand 395 grams of DU booking it downrange at 1km/s (at least not while maintaining a useful amount of delta-v), so anything it can connect with gets turned into confetti (or literally sawed in half by a stream of bullets). The low muzzle velocity does limit it's range pretty substantially, especially since the game won't let you issue any targeting orders more sophisticated than "shoot at that guy", so you can't saturate their maneuver cone or anything, but it's still useful for stopping any missiles that are too heavily armored for your lasers or pellet guns to bring down, or for mopping up enemy warships that are 99.999% disabled but won't just fucking die so that you can complete the mission.
Have read _Timewreck Titanic_ It's a pretty cool combination of _The Final Countdown_ and _Titanic_
Of course the Dutch built a CWIS system around the GAU-8. They have been at war with the sea for centuries and are taking no chances with that cold and ancient foe.
CIWS, defense through superior pew-pew
DA BEST DEFENCE IS MORE DAKKA!
Dock master: "you don't want this thing shooting down seagulls"
Me: "why not, that would be hilarious"
Also, those assholes deserve it.
Let's get one thing straight, there is NEVER enough Dakka.
The only bad part about CIWS is that there isn't a little chair for me to sit next to it whilst firing. Seriously AI on guns? What's the point?
If yous not gonna getz in da shoota, no point to waaagh
Even inside the ship that thing is loud with all its Dakka Dakka glory.
That thing about the Dutch having a better air defense gun has historical precedent: before WWII the Dutch Navy had developed a 3-axis stabilized, local radar ranging, mount for the Bofors 40mm.
Edit: correction of mount design
The only sextuple Bofors 40/60 I can find is British
@@Poctyk Yes, you are correct. I was mixing up two different mounts; I meant to refer to what Wikipedia calls the Royal Navy QF 40mm Mark IV mount, copied from a Dutch minesweeper.
To be sure, the CIWS "If it Flies, it Dies" philosophy is well known in the Aviation and Surface community. Point defense systems are designed (and personnel are trained and operate) under the assumption that if a Pilot gets into range of one of these close-in weapons, the Pilot is in the wrong, and you "deserve" to be shot down. As any Aviator or Flight Officer knows "Know your position", "Situational Awareness", double-check that flight plan with your instrumentation, etc.
We had this situation come up multiple times during wars, in every service (For the Army, a British plane deviated from his flight plan during the Iraq War and flew over a Patriot Battery that was guarding a City) and as far as I know, it's always regarded as "Pilot Error" - no matter what the politicians say to the public - and the operational standards for CIWS or basic air-defense procedures stay the same.
Cwis aka the Vulkans. Famous support weapons for mobile suits head guns. Macross's Cwis are mobile mechs with 30mm gatling cannons.
I guess you remember the destroid Mechanized systems too. They were the Non transformable version of combat robots that the humans use against the zendrotti in macross. A lot of those actually became battle tech models. Such is the archer and the war hammer. Even the zentro commander pod became known as the Marauder in battle tech.
@@lornbaker1083 Glaug became the Marauder, Tomahawk the Warhammer, Phalanx to the Rifleman, Spartan to the Archer and maybe by inspiration the Monster to the Stone Rhino.
@@barrybend7189 The Stone Rhino (Inner Sphere/Comstar reporting name Behemoth) in the original Battletech 3055 Technical readout looked more like the lovechild of a MBR-04-Mk VI Destroid Tomahawk and a Roiquonmi Glaug Commander Type Tactical Pod than having any resemblance with the HWR-00-Mk II Monster. I would link a picture, but, UA-cam has a habit of deleting posts when I do and deleted an entire post similar to this I had worked up on NGNG when this very topic was brought up. Look it up, the old artwork is still amazing.
Gundams have 60mm Vulkans in their heads
@@FLMKane yeah but not much ammo.
Ive had angry R2 give me plenty of hearing damage having contracted overseas for many years. But its also saved my life, including the rocket body clipping my buildings roof and falling about 15 yards away in my concrete yard while I was out smoking. It may not be the best in every possible category objectively. But subjectively, I want one within 100 yards of me at all times
I was in Iraq in 2008 around Baghdad and some of the bigger bases had this system. I remember in spring around march JAM decided they really wanted to play. I remember looking up while reloading during a massive and long firefight at night and seeing about 5 streams of fire from this arcing up into the sky from i don't know how many systems and it was an awesome sight. I also remember being near one of these when it engaged a bird or something and it was deafening like extremely painful deafening
There is something horrifying and hilarious in a very black way about one of these "engaging" a bird. Ooof.
A couple days ago I saw a short, of a Phalanx busy tracking a landing airliner as it glided down slope towards an airport.
And was very glad the man inside didn't sneeze and bump the wrong button.
But the system test seemed to work.
That particular unit appeared to be down for maintenance, given the orientation of its FLIR system.
Rule number one of gun safety. Do not point your firearm at anything that you would not be willing to destroy/kill/main/injure/damage.
Rule number two. Check what's behind your target.
Rule number three. No gun is safe. But it helps to use your safety, clear the chamber, and pull the magazine and verify no ammunition remains in the firearm.
Maybe the option of having an IFF system togglable for exercises would be beneficial, like if they know they're in friendly waters toggle the IFF on, then in all other situations, have it default to standard.
"Phalanx neither knows nor cares if you are friendly or not."
I AM COMPLETELY AND MENTALLY STABLE.
HEY LOOK A CIVILIAN AIRLINER!
LOCK IT! YOU KNOW YOU WANNA LOCK IT!
WW2 the ships started loading every MG they could on to defeat a very specific type of "missile".
as soon as that ended it's like every nation in the world decided that "that's not how the future will be, let's make sure to only plan for gentlemanly duels of 1-2 projectiles launched per-barrage, with ample time for countermeasures and our massively slashed air-component numbers to deal with".
Whose who forget the past and all that. . . .
They also used the assumption that long range radar guided SAMs would knock out a good chunk of those incoming while they’re over the horizon. It isn’t a total capability reduction.
@@spartanalex9006Kinda like how the US destroyers had the 5"/38 gun, primary surface weapon and heavy AA in one!
You make a decent point but it discounts the idea that if you're worked down to just your CWIS guns for anti missile defense, something else has gone horribly wrong.
@@highjumpstudios2384 true but as useful as missiles can be we went from an utter reliance on people for every facet of production to an assumption that future foes would be as risk-adverse to the human toll of combat as we have become. the effectiveness of a low tech option applied in numbers has been long underestimated and "the west" has been humbled more than a few times by this oversight.
@@IRMentat How are you planning on getting these manually operated missiles close enough to trouble the fleet? Any aircraft considered disposable is going to have a huge radar signal and lack the countermeasures to get through the long range missile barrage. Lets not forget that it's not one ship acting alone either, they operate in packs to combine weapon systems, you've got aircraft in the air fulfilling a multitude of roles and extending AWACs, destroyers keeping an ear out for subs and frigates watching the skies.
A lot of lessons have been learned from naval conflicts in the modern period, the British learned the hard way during the Falklands that assuming you know the range of your opponents ordinance is foolish and that doctrine needs to be the same across all ships, the US learned during the Iran/Iraq conflict that if an unidentified aircraft doesn't respond once entering your defensive perimeter that you should very much exercise your right to self defence.
PDCs on auto-track, beginning evasive maneuvers, I'm putting us into a spin. Oh shit no wait, they work in The Expanse, real ones are a hilarious gimmick.
No, they work quite well in real life, just certain limitations. Had one of these watching over me for a few years.
And I can't believe that, by then, we're still not using projectile-bases CIWS...
You know, hitting a car that's going 7,500 mph with a soda can going 2,500 mph the other way might be considered non trivial. The PDC's in the Expanse work because of the magic of writing. They don't have to deal with pesky things like reality.
These things work. They can be improved, as was obviously stated. On the other hand, a typical carrier strike group has 2 AEGIS cruisers (122 SM-3's and 2 CIWS each) in addition to up to three DDG's (with varied anti-missile/anti-air rockets plus at least one CIWS) and 2 more CIWS on the super carrier. That gives you a defensive shield for a fuck ton of incoming missiles. Like somewhere north of 400. There is only one nation that can theoretically take down a CSG with missile attacks(plural, because one won't cut it). Big surprise. When numbers one and two go at it with hammers and tongues, sparks will fly.
@@Keiranful I think one of the primary flaws is magazine space. IFF is mostly a software problem. If it had a "ready" magazine and a below deck or off to the side auto loading system that would go a long way.
They work far better than getting hit by a missile works.
I remember playing a sim game called Dangerous Waters, I'd set the CIWS on my frigate into full auto mode and launched the ship's helicopter, not thinking there'd be an issue.
Well the helicopter got off the deck and as soon as it entered the CIWS's arc it was turned into swiss cheese. And that was the day I discovered that the Phalanx lacks an IFF.
Now where is my dual minigun Phalanx system or even a triple. I ordered one but for some reason I have been put on a list of some sort? It’s weird
Phalanx is just a very very aggressive chaff ejection system, don't need more than 1 or 2 on a ship.
There's a story about one of the Iowas being hit by the P.P. stream because it popped chaff.
To be fair, the "drop-in" feature of the phalanx limits the magazine size, but in turn the system can be mounted on trucks, shore batteries, and smaller vessels with limited bellow deck space.
You coouldn't mount a kashtan on a patrol boat, there simply isn't enough space to fit the bellow deck magazines
Dude I love that really mean R2D2!
And his cousin R2-FU. Apparently he has an even more nasty temper.
I would enjoy seeing a Phalanx delete a seagull
Have to call the slomo guys for that one.
Wouldn't be much to see. One moment there's a seagull, the next you hear a very brief BRRRT! and there's a few feathers floating toward the water.
I saw the first half of the title and thought it would be "The real problem with the Phalanx is that there aren't enough to make a phalanx of Phalanxes
On the A6-E story...I was on that cruise. The A6 squadron was VA-115, the Eagles. Their Gedunk sold a bumper sticker that said "If you are not attack, you're support."
After the bird was shot down, they recovered all the pieces they could and stowed them in 3 triwalls on the hanger deck. They were there so long, some clown painted the correct "TAC" numbers on the boxes, which was funny. Then one of the tomcat guys from VF-154, the Black Knights, stenciled "If you are not a fighter, you're a target." on the side of the boxes. It was great fun to watch.
"WMDs have a definition that does not involve Gatling guns." *Is that a challenge I hear?*
Standing next to a CIWS while it's knocking out a target drone/missle is actually a lot of fun. No recording I've ever heard yet, does justice to how it sounds. I have a series of photos I took of the target flying off into the clouds and getting shot down...it amuses me. I'm a plank owner of USS Theodore Roosevelt. Don't recall exactly where we were when they did that little demonstration, but it really was fun.
You are not entirely correct about it ignoring objects that aren't approaching. If that were 100% true, it sure as hell wouldn't have shot down the target, which was flying directly away from TR that day.
Depending on pacfire constraints, some gates can be overridden.
The offshore Locus Solus battleship in Ghost in the Shell 2 [at 1:09:00] supplements it's main battery salvos with a sustained broadside of five Vulcans. I imagine they have the same number on the other side.
It seemed sufficient, at least for radical landscape gardening.
i am now going to go watch that movie again.
"Spontaneous urban renewal" Damn I love the toys in Ghost in the Shell.
Huh. Certainly not the video I expected to see a reference to ghost in the shell under.
"EEEEEEEERECTIN' A SENTRY!" - N. G.
One of the less flattering names I’ve heard for the Phalanx is the “Close In Warning System” with the implication that a warning that you’re going to be hit is the only service it provides.
Well my personal rules for time travel.
1 where are you
2 when are you
3 are you still yourself (body)
4 try to stay off the radar until you can defend/protect yourself
5 truth is a beautiful thing until it bites you in the ass be Extremely careful who you share it with
6 go wild with your knowledge after all your mere presence already changed the time-line
7 going back to original (if you want to) than going back should have changed nothing in that reality as long as you return the exact same moment you left
8 Have Fun
Something you didn't mention about DARDO: the gun mount uses 2x 40mm Bofors guns loaded with a mix of proximity-fused HE shells for longer range with an automatic magazine change to APFSDS (armor-piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding sabot) shells up close (inside 1 km), has a range of 4 km, and weighs 700 kg less than Phalanx. If there was enough room on the hull, I'd have both DARDO and Phalanx on board with the fire control system set up to hand off between the two weapons as smoothly as possible.
Only so much time.
I saw a story about development of Phalanx. They were in port, testing targeting. The machine decided that a worker was a threat. It tracked him into a porta potty, and waited for him to come out.
Another development story. In early testing after firing and hitting the target, it would pause then go into a brief "spasm" firing bullets in seemingly random directions. Disconcerting. After some debugging, they figured out that the spasm of firing was Phalanx targeting and shooting down the fragments of the original target...
Supernatural already figured out what would happen if you went back in time and saved the Titanic: Celene Dion would never have become famous and our ears would have been saved from a gawd awful song.
That song would reach you near, far, wherever you are.
"You don't want your CIWS trying to shoot down a seagull..."
Let me think about that one.....
Yes i do. Watching a bird get reduced to it's constituent atoms by a multi barrelled gun shooting high velocity armor piercing rounds would be awesome
Have to call the slow mo guys so we can get it on film.
Brrrttttt is still a great sound, but yes, we need a lot more cwis systems per ship considering a modern missile saturation attack threat
The problem is that a ship can only mass so much especially in the superstructure) before it gets too top heavy. Throughout WWII US ships generally had as many AA guns strapped on as they could without completely ruining the ships' seakeeping, and as the radar sets got bigger and more numerous, they started having to strip guns off to keep the weight (and center of mass) down.
Point is, there are tradeoffs.
Triggerhappy robots always make for good entertainment.
And why do I hear vampire vampire vampire in my head that you're talking about this
I did not succumb to the desire to freak out a certain population of my audience.
This time.
@@SacredCowShipyards at mach 4 I don't think you have time to get the 3rd vampire out before impact.
I was an electronics tech in the RAN in the eighties. We did actually call it R2D2, unofficially.
The early ones were very twitchy and were rumored to shoot at seagulls. If you threw a can of coke at it, it could shoot it down.
The system shoots at the largest target, so once the initial target breaks apart it will continue to shoot at the next biggest/closest piece until it decides it is no longer a threat.
The main drawback is the ammunition supply which will run out in less than a minute or two if it fires continuously. Reloading takes a minimum of 4 minutes. (The one we had then.)
They improved them a lot since then.
Absolutely the story of _Carpathia_ absolutely needs to be known by more people. It was a miracle the ship was able to float with the size of the brass balls the captain and engineer were carrying around.
Speaking of the friendly fire potential of CIWS, there was such an incident between uss missouri and uss jarret during desert storm.
They thought they had an incoming missile. Jarret's CIWS was in automatic mode. Missouri fired off flares. The CIWS picked up the flares from missouri and engaged them. Punched some small holes in missouri in non-critical places. One crewman was injured by shrapnel.
That minions cover should be standard issue on all CIWS.
Thinking about the milliseconds of realization(recognition?) that your enemy gets as their boat is getting shot out from under them by a bullet pissing mutated corn puff in bib overalls, is just hi larious.
Always thought that CIWS was just wearing a chef's hat, because he was about to cook up a storm.
When an UrbanMech goes to sea. I have to mention the Soviet Dalek AK-630. Not saying it is good, just a Commie, seagoing Dalek.
Cost of 1 Block1 A/B was $13M each @ Wikipedia,
Much less than a ship and crew, et al!
I remember when our sister ship was a test bed for the rolling airframe missile in the mid 80s. Holy crap! Love the Avenger upgrade! LOL
'Domed' A squishie taking one of these rounds is going to evaporate.
I don't say ATM machine, just ATM. I do say DC comics. But considering all the other DC products specifying the comics is actually necessary.
The CIWS is just a stopgap to fill in while we wait for the laser defense systems. The GAU-8 is pretty cool, but not remotely necessary when we could sink more money into lasers.
That's a long-running "stopgap".
"Imagine being domed by one of those". I'm having trouble typing this because I'm still laughing.
"Oh, papoy." BRRRRRRRRT
Abdi: "You realise that no one is ever going to believe us when we tell this story."
So, there's a lot more to unpack here that isn't mentioned about Close In Weapons Systems. These systems are primarily used to defend against missile attacks, but because of how those work, it's not the only weapon. As of writing, the primary ship mounted anti missile defense SYSTEM is the Aegis Combat System. This system is... insane, and effectively makes a multi-layered dome for anti-missile protection (This system is also capable of engaging other threats, including aircraft, surface threats, and submarine threats, as technically speaking it also includes the MH-60r Seahawk, however, it's primary function is missile defense). This system mostly works off of probability, how many missiles will a particular weapon PROBABLY shoot down. The system can actually engage theater (medium range) ballistic missiles, as well as tactical (close range) anti-ship missiles, and includes the RIM-66, RIM-67 (max of 200nmi), RIM-161 (anti-ballistic, max of 650nmi), RIM-174 (max of 130nmi), the Phalanx CWIS (seen here, max of 4nmi), and the Mk 41 VLS (As well as variants, which are even larger and can hold generally larger missiles); which can hold all perviously mentioned variety of missiles, as well as the RIM-7 Sea Sparrow (Very small, max of 10nmi), and the RIM-162 Advanced Sea Sparrow (improved, 27nmi+ range classified).
In a standard carrier battlegroup, there is usually AT LEAST one cruiser, and two destroyers. This is most likely a minimum compliment for the four home protection fleets. With a fleet this size, you can expect a mixed armament of defensive and offensive missiles, however, the cruiser should mount upwards of 80 (Max of 122) anti-missile weapons, most of which will probably be a RIM-161. The destroyers can also pack up to 96 missiles in their VLS systems. This is also not taking into consideration that the RIM-162 advanced sea sparrow is quad packed into a VLS cell, meaning for every 161 "SM-3" missile, you can have four 162 sea sparrows. This gives a theoretical max of 1256 missiles (assuming all quad packed sea sparrows.)
Then FINALLY, you have close in weapons systems, which includes CWIS, SEARAM, the Mk 45 5 inch gun (which has anti missile ammo and is also radar guided), and soon, the AN/SEQ-3 Laser Weapon System.
All of this also has ship mounted fire control and radar systems, as well as active and passive jamming systems.
Like I said, much more complex. IF a phalanx has to open up on a missile, then something has gone very, very, VERY wrong.
Also, I'm not worried about the soviet missiles. Like... really? More than likely it'll run out of fuel halfway to the target because private conscriptovich pawned off half of it to pay for his new Lada.
Finally, no system is 100% perfect. Whilest the chance of a single missile getting past all defenses is around 1-2%, it is possible for a VERY large amount to get one or two past and get a hit. Which is why USN damage control is the best in the world, and has been for almost 100 years.
There are a massive number of USN ships that will never mount AEGIS and yet spend most of their operations well over the horizon of ships that do, especially in ESGs, or, say, the ships that refuel said groups of ships (which, granted, are not USN, but also will never mount AEGIS).
@@SacredCowShipyards True. Usually, the ships that do mount them though are in escort of the ships that don't. Carriers for instance don't mount Aegis. What I'm trying to say with my long, overly complicated, and also probably inaccurate somewhere comment is that the Phalanx system does have weaknesses, but those weaknesses are USUALLY covered up by the other parts, such as missiles and the like, strengths. I do agree with quite a few of your arguements actually. A FoF reciever, one that could be turned off if necessary, for instance, when it's put into automatic mode should be included, and wouldn't be complicated, and a networked fire control radar would REALLY help redundancy. However, there are two counterpoints to those. The first is that it's a weapons system, and as such, bits and pieces are classified or buried under miles and miles of boring documents. The other is that Phalanx is... REALLY old...
Love the videos, btw. Been a long time fan.
My point is that figlets used to spend entire "counter-narco-terrorism" operations with naught but a nulka, an outdated EW suite, and a CIWS between them and who knows what. Sure, they're decommissioned now, but something else is filling that gap, if only for the political points.
Hell, for 21 years LPDs and the like steamed around the Persian Gulf - in a designated Combat Zone, mind you - without a DDG or CG anywhere to be found. Of-times those missile-throwers were doodling about the coast of Pakistan, hoping to throw something over the hills into Afghanistan proper.
Yes, you're right, all CIWS are - by definition - last ditch solutions. But for a pile of independently-operating ships, they were the /only/ guns-out solution. So just excusing its faults as, "Oh, well, everything before it would catch anything that was a problem," is... rather dismissive of the lives on those secondary hulls that don't mount AEGIS or VLS or even Sea Sparrows.
The problem with below-deck ammo storage is that you can't just bolt it on wherever you have some deck space. If a peer or near-peer conflict broke out, the number of CIWS and SeaRAM mounted on most ships would probably at least double. It would take far more time and money to overhaul ships to add additional Goalkeepers. Though a Goalkeeper or Rheinmetall CIWS as a primary with Phalanx as add-on options wouldn't be a bad way to play it.
It's also worth noting that the SM-2 can also act as an interceptor at longer ranges, so without even getting into electronic warfare you've got long range SAMs, short range SAMs, and phalanx as the absolute last line of defense for incoming missiles.
The true long range missile defence for US battlegroups is the F/A 18 fighter and the nuclear attack submarine.
Doctrine has always been to send the enemy ship to the bottom well before it can get a missile off.
An admiral who lets his ships get into range of enemy SSMs has ALREADY made a mistake.
@@Debbiebabe69your Doctrine only works if your fighting a significantly inferior military force that has no hope of braking American air supremacy
A lot of independently operating ships have Phalanx and none of the rest of that.
These things sound like the jake brake on a tractor trailer.... btw, I love your opener about "Where no ship is safe from being called a piece of shit!" Had me instantly hooked 🤣
"piece of ship"
By design. ;)
A slight correction for you. The USN uses a "data mile" of 2000 yards not a "nautical mile" of 6076.12 feet. Unless they've changed that since I was in CIC last.
The excuse for the problems with the CIWS block 0 is it was a self contained bolt on refit kit to upgrade ships built before it was invented, it was not intended to be the end-all be-all point defense solution by its developers.
You would think that newer ships would be built with something like goalpost, but politicians and accountants nixed that idea, because we already had CIWS and it was good enough... except it had never been intended to be, it was a stop hap solution.
One good thing about CIWS and pretty much all US military airdefense, area and point defense systems is they are constantly updating and improving the software. DARPA is currently testing a system for the army and navy were all the defense assets in ground area or navy taskforce can talk with each other and choose the optimal engagement options for each inbound threat. This could result in multiple missile launchers and guns engaging multiple targets and only doubling up on a single target if absolutely necessary.
The Swiss gotta defend Lake Geneva
One of the more under-rated CIWS currently is the Italian Dardo system, featuring a pair of Bofors 40mm/L70 guns packing radio-proximity-fuzed explosive/fragmentation shells. Lower velocity and rate of fire than competing systems, but inarguably requires far fewer rounds expended to disable a target; even a near miss is likely to result in a mission kill. Bonus points: It has the option to have an internal magazine system.
Fewer, but likely more expensive.
"Minimum speed makes sense because you dont want to see a CWIS trying to shoot down a seagull" (paraphrased)
Dont you tell me what I dont want to see!
That video footage would be amazing! Also would be good practice to see how it can do against a drone swarm....
Get a whole flock of gulls flying around and then set the minimum speed to 0, also remove the requirement that it has to approch the ship, just prioritize the ship approching gulls, er... i mean "simulation drones"
Anyone who's ever had to deal with seagulls in real life would be really happy to set the CIWS on them. Those fuckers are like oversized mosquitoes, only somehow much more insufferable
@@zolikoff The worst thing about gulls is they are classed as 'endangered species' as their population has dropped to a quarter in the last 100 years, meaning people cant just rid places of them without permission.
Except, they are not.
What the 'environmentalists' cant seem to get into their skulls, is the gull population increased by a factor or around 10 during the 1600s-1900s, due to human action - specifically feeding of gulls by sailors leaving and entering ports.
The decline in the last 100 is simply the gull population returning to its natural levels.
Brrrrrrrrrt away.
@@zolikoff Damned things are flying rats that'll even attack a cat or small dog to eat it if given half the chance.
One former CIWS FC once said that he threw a can from his ship and the gun actually tracked it.
CIWS - Christ It Won't Shoot is what it used to mean
De Do Do Do DiT!
I'm HaViNg TrOuBlE wItH tHe RaDaR sIr!
I'm HaViNg TrOuBlE wItH tHe RaDaR sIr!
I'm having trouble with the radar sir.
It just needs a line of code: "if speed > mach2: kill it;else wait for human;"
You’d have to consider though, things like tomahawks don’t travel at 2mach.
Bit awkward when you're doing carrier operations.
I use to make theses in General Dynamics Pomona California. We use to say "If it flies it dies". For fun we would throw and bounce a ball in front of it to watch it oscillate the gun up and down and follow the ball.
Man gotta love the coincidence of thales being namedroped and me doing a internship there. Was not aware that the goalkeeper used the a10 warthog's gun.
Fifth-most fun I ever had in the Navy: Firing CIWS in Manual mode, after toggling the FLIR-vs-VIDEO cross-hair on the orange tetrahedral-target - and we recorded everything (wish I could get a copy of that video though). You see a bunch of little splashes in the vicinity, and while it SEEMS like you don't hit it (because the projectiles penetrate so efficiently), it's clear on closer inspection that the target is full of holes (plus it starts deflating/sinking). I wanted to do it on our SINKEX target later, but FCs need opportunities and practice - officers not so much.
DO YOU HAVE A SKELITON OF THESE PUNS
We have a pun more to come.
In a book I wrote, I have a battleship that has a few CWIS' the Sentient AI calls R2's.
As he's getting closer to his final destination, he's thinking (while punch drunk) about the loading systems that he's been provided. His 4" 8" and 16" guns have scuttle ways which allow ammo to be shared, so that if one such turret goes down, the ammo "can" be removed and loaded in another gun. Being an automated ship, this was a design necessity.
So as he's heading into his final battle, he's lamenting that the same philosophy wasn't used for his R2's. While the R2's had plenty of spare drums to automatically replace, those spares are useless if the R2 is shot up. So while he has several spare drums laying around, he has one R2 left that is sitting pretty... and empty. This could be solved with a couple dude-bros hoofing the drums as needed, but being an automated ship, he has no said dude-bros to call upon.
Several times in the story, there's a point made about the failure of fully automated gunships. As one person put it, they are only as good as the person commanding the ship. More to the point, a small team could take over the ship with minimal casualties; so the concept was an evolutionary dead end. The SAI himself states that flooding will flood, fires will burn, and damage that could be repaired by a team of brave personnel, would be considered a total write-off if he can't make port.
I feel like a solution to the IFF problem would be to have it ignore IFF on targets under a certain size (anti ship missiles and stuff) as it's primary objective is to stop enemy munitions rather then enemy aircraft.
Train it on images of birds so it doesn't BBBBBRRRRRRT every seagull with $20K in tungsten sabot rounds and deafen the crew 10 or 20 times a day
Some anti-ship missiles are larger than some fighter jets. I don't think that'll work. Just add IFF compatibility to the phalanx.
You time travel device has an unpatched Y2K bug... Oh my, I was a giggling so hard my house mate felt the need to check in on me!
What I'm hearing is that we should pair the Goalkeeper system with Phalanx's tracking radar
I'd imagine a better option would be an integrated fleet C&C tied into all available radar systems, and marry it to something like a Phalanx, but with two or three interception weapons (SeaRam, Phalanx, and maybe a laser based system)
@@Kittamaru So the AEGIS systems, which i belive do support cross ship linking for fire control
Goalkeeper has a vastly superior tracking radar to that of Phalanx. Goalkeeper uses not one but 2 radar sets, in 2 different radar bands, coupled with FLIR. On top of that in the case of the Dutch and German navy they use a Dutch-designed command and control suite which can combine it with other ship sensors such as its AESA radar. There is a video of Goalkeeper shooting down a missile within literally 2 rounds fired, while Phalanx needs dozens at minimum.
@@Kittamaru There is such a thing, it's called Guardion; the Dutch CMS (combat management system). It uses APAR, SMART-L ER, Scout, Sirius, DSQS-24C, and a couple other sensors, and is linked with every weapons system on board including Goalkeeper and even enables it to send targetting info to other, compatible ships.
@@pieterveenders9793 oh wow, that sounds bad ass!
Regarding the onboard radar and the magazine that isn't under the deck, it's worth remembering that one of the requirements of the Phalanx system was to be able to be retrofit onto ships that weren't designed for it. It can be (and was) put onto everything from old WWII warships to civilian-built cargo ships. The system can be put anywhere that has a flat bit of deck strong enough to handle the weight, and requires only power and a basic data cable. No special mounts or ammo handling rooms under the gun mount, nor special radar on the ship to guide the system. It's all built into the gun mount. Compare that to many other systems which require special mounts and under-deck spaces to handle the ammo and other components, and installing those systems on ships not designed for them requires rebuilding parts of the ship.
Well, sure, but every currently-floating USN warship was built with the system in mind now, and if you're going to do that...
@@SacredCowShipyards The ability to be easily added also has a major side-benefit, in that it allows them to be places where deck-penetrating mounts simply could not be. Many CIWS are placed in areas with important systems underneath. Placing them over the helo hanger is a common example, and if you used a deck-penetratingly mount you'd have to sacrifice hanger space, or put them in a less commanding position. This capability adds a lot of flexibility in where the mount can go.
Can you put larger deck-penetrating mounts in odd places as well? Sure, the OHP frigates had a 76 smack in the middle of the superstructure and those are pretty big mounts. But that leads to design compromises since the system is now in competition for space with other systems.
As with as the on-mount sensor systems, if there are incoming missiles you probably want to have the ability to shoot them down if the main radar system is damaged. Redundancy is worth the added weight in this case.
For what it's worth, I tend to think the more capable systems like the Breda fast-forty are a better bet for many applications (which can handle prox-fuse munitions, has a larger range, and has below-deck reloading capability on many mounts). But the ability to put CIWS on basically anything is still a very useful capability especially if (when) we end up in a major naval war and have to press civilian ships or rushed/minimally changed designs into service.
I loved having C-RAM on my FOB. We had like 30 of them around the FOB and it would literally shoot a golf ball out of the sky.
Don't complain too hard about too similar sounding names. We're still talking about the US- military. They could have called everything M1 and call it a day.
In reguards to why anyone in their right mind would leave the human firing control on, there was a really interesting incident described on the battleship New Jerseys channel in which a British Destroyer popped flares and chaf and a near by close in weapons system on an Iowa Class Battleship enguaged said chaf and nearly caused a friendly fire incident.
The Operation Room channel went over that incident, it wasnt the iowa, but an escorting brittish destoryer that popped couter-measures, and the Iowa's CIWS started shooting at the counter-measure cloud
@@kuhljager2429 ahh, thank you for the clarification! I wasn’t quite sure which Iowa it was so I kept to the “Iowa Class” type deal.
CIWS in full autonomous mode thinking happy thoughts " if it flies, it dies".