My oldest son and daughter-in-law are both Navy firecontrolmen and, among other systems, maintain and operate the Phalanx CIWS guns on their ships. My son has told me that his next assignment may be to Iraq to help the Army with their CWIS guns. I wasn’t aware of this before, but these guns are supposedly capable of intercepting artillery rounds and RPGs! The Army version is called C-RAM for"Counter Rocket, Artillery, Mortar. Any of you Army types know about this? Redleg? HeavyArty? Rob? I was amazed. Here’s a photo:
I would say that an artillery piece like this would not be that hard to scratch build. (well, except for me, that is)
The Phalanx is only part of the CRAM system. It is a full system of sensors (radars and others) and the gun. It can’t hit direct fire systems like the RPG, but is quite effective on incoming w/a ballistic trajectory. I have one about 200meters from my office. Sounds pretty cool when it goes off. Good system. I wish your son luck.
I had seen some info on the concept but did not know it was deployed.
I presume Gino, like the A-10 nose gun, it sounds like an elephant with bad gas when it does fire.
I would think it uses something similar to the Q36 radar to track the incoming and aim the system? What MOS is going to be responsible for this system? Is it the redlegs or is it the guys with the missile through the cannons?
With that thing on the ground, it must make one hell or a mess in spent brass and links after a short burst!!
I’m glad to see our goverment thought SO hioghly of you that they deployed thier most modern counter battery system to protect you![;)]
When I was in the Air Defence I used to work on the 35mm Twin Gun which was capable of being controled by the Skyguard FCU Radar. When the canadian army decided to mothball the gun/skyguard I heard rumours that the U.S. Army was looking at purchasing some to use as a perimeter defence weapon in Iraq. I guess the powers that be opted for a land-based CIWS. Here is a pic of a gun/skyguard system:
Yes, it does sound wonderfully aweful. A large, long burp is more like it.
The missile-wearing guys have taken this on. Its their only real mission over here. Not too many hostile aircraft to worry about. It is linked into many radar systems, the Q-36 being one of them. It also uses ADA radar amd ground sensors.
All the brass is actually neatly collected in bins in the bottom of it. Remember, it started in the Navy, so it had to be all ship-shape and neat. No lead falling down range either. The rounds self-destruct at a given range if they don’t hit anything. We would hate to have stray round falling all over Baghdad; there’s already enough celabratory fire for that.
Yup, its nice knowing there is one looking out for me…and the other 30,000 or so soldiers on BIAP.
I read somewhere last week that Israel is seriously considering a land-based Phalanx CIWS to knock out rockets and arty shells. They condiered the laser interceptor prototype but it’s still too far out to be fielded.
He’ll be OK. Thanks. Our family has had some pretty good luck in war zones going all the way back to the French and Indian War. Women are what kills and maims the men in our family.
A very good thing, considering the shipboard units fire DU or tungsten alloy rounds. At sea they just sink to the bottom but they might prove problematic over land. Not the sort of thing you want the bad guys collecting and packing into IEDs.
The night firing video clips are impressive. It must be amazing to watch in real life.
I remember watching AC-130 Spectres firing at night at Eglin AFB. They fired the 20mm Vulcan guns (two at a time) for what seemed like long burst times, probably 10 seconds or so. The Vulcan is basically the same weapon as the Phalanx. It was spectacular.
