[Shade]

I never heard anything about them being phased out.

Several US warships (including all carriers, I believe) and most if not all German warships have already replaced or in some cases augmented their Phalanx system with the RIM-116 RAM missile system.

Aditionally, even at mach 2, geting hit by a gattling equals getting blow to smitherines. The missile will definately NOT reach the ship.

Now, see, this is wrong. Against the modern breed of armoured missiles, even a 20mm cannon needs to score several good hits in order to do anything to them. And hitting is hard: It's a small target (facing it head on, remember? You're gunning for something around 50cm in diameter. And if it's not head on, that means it just turned in an evasive pattern and you'll miss anyway). Further, at those speeds, you don't get many shots... at mach 2, a missile will cover 150 metres per second. In other words, from maximum engagement range to impact, you have maybe 15 seconds to take it apart so thoroughly that nothing big enough remains to do damage to your ship when the pieces hit.

[Steel Prophet]

In other words, from maximum engagement range to impact, you have maybe 15 seconds to take it apart so thoroughly that nothing big enough remains to do damage to your ship when the pieces hit.

That would be 45.000 to 67.500 shots with a 20mm Phalanx. I think that should be enough to score some decent hits even at Mach 2. And as it was already stated above: CIWS are not the only defense a ship has.

[IceFire]

In other words, from maximum engagement range to impact, you have maybe 15 seconds to take it apart so thoroughly that nothing big enough remains to do damage to your ship when the pieces hit.

That would be 45.000 to 67.500 shots with a 20mm Phalanx. I think that should be enough to score some decent hits even at Mach 2. And as it was already stated above: CIWS are not the only defense a ship has.

Then you'd have to worry about accuracy and likely the margin is much smaller given that the kill zone needs to be far enough away to prevent a hit.  Plus there has to be slight delay as the Phalanx spools up to maximum fire rate.

[Steel Prophet]

How many hits are necessary to destroy such a missle? 100? Maybe 1000? With the number of shots fired (given that they are fired before the missle hits) i still think that it's enough time. But ... i'm no expert in missle defense

Edit: Awwwww forget what i've said. I just noticed that i completely messed up the number of shots fired   

Sorry 

[TrashMan]

All the videos I've seen on You Tube show a CIWS ripping missiles appart in MILISECONDS.
Alltough I have to give it to the russians - they allways build thing big. They got 30mm CIWS with a higher rate of fire than US/Europe ships.

B.t.w - they can begin tracking and warming up (rotating the barrel) well before the missile is in range, and open up even before it enter effective range.

ERm..IIRC, a 20mm Phalnax has a 6000 PRM fire rate (100 per second) - meaning 1500 bullets for 15 seconds of flight. One or two hits is usualyl enough.

[Shade]

That would be 45.000 to 67.500 shots with a 20mm Phalanx. I think that should be enough to score some decent hits even at Mach 2

And

ERm..IIRC, a 20mm Phalnax has a 6000 PRM fire rate (100 per second) - meaning 1500 bullets for 15 seconds of flight. One or two hits is usualyl enough

Yes. Really useful to throw out that much lead in no time at all when you have only just over 1500 rounds available and rarely more than two units per ship, isn't it? Especially when you have not one, but several missiles bearing down on you, and can only engage one of them at a time. Even more so when, due to the armour protection and sheer momentum of the missile, it's hard to tell if it's been hurt enough to safely switch to the next target or not. Very useful.

I have never disputed that a gun can take out a missile. It's not that they can't do the job, it's that they're ineffective. The reasons why are stated earlier in the thread, so I see no reason to repeat them here. And the fact the gun-based CIWS systems look like the fury of some angry god when you see them in action, and that there are videos on youtube of them effectively shooting down some second-rate missiles while expending half their ammo doing it, doesn't change the fact that they're no longer up to the task against the more serious ornance out there.

That doesn't make them useless- Most countries aren't fielding the kinds of missiles that can shrug off 20mm round, and they'll certainly handle anything that isn't a dedicated anti-ship missile. But if the enemy starts lobbing the likes of Kingfish or Shipwreck missiles and you're stuck with the Phalanx as your last line of defense, you better pray your longer range defenses are up to the task because your CIWS won't make much of an impression.

[TrashMan]

Piff..it's not like you can't have a lot more ammo stored...ship are big...

And we're comparing a missile vs. phlanax on a 1vs1 scenrio here.
I can just as well say that I have 4 tightly grouped ship and they can open up with a total of 10 phalanx on a single missile and vaporize it. Does that make missiles useless?


Also, you can have various types of rounds.. armored missiles? AP round...or explosive ones.
IMHO, CIWS systems are far from washed out.

[BengalTiger]

So a few things to correct for the beginning:
Sound speed is about 330 m/s (dang are FS ships slow:p)
So a mach 2 missile will go 660 m/s.

Since the Phalanx's range is about 1 mile, or 1600 meters, it would have some 2,6 seconds (260 rounds) to shoot down the mach 2 missile.

Another thing is that Phalanx shoots depleted uranium, not lead. One of the Iowa class BB's was hit by phalanx in a friendly fire incident in Desert Storm. The bullets shot through the exterior bulkhead and ended up sticking out of the armor inside, so if it hits an 'armored' missile, it should kill it.

And as for the RAM missile systems- they can engage the next target after attacking the previous one without waiting to see if there's a hit (Phalanx needs to watch the bullets to make aiming corrections, RAM missiles guide themselves).
They can also attack targets up to 11 miles away, and that's another uber advantage.

[Shade]

Piff..it's not like you can't have a lot more ammo stored...ship are big...

Let's deal with facts, shall we? The phalanx block 1 system carries exactly 1550 rounds, which in fact is an improvement over the block 0 version which carries only 989. And ammo stored below decks is useless after the ship has been sunk due to the actual phalanx system being out.

And we're comparing a missile vs. phlanax on a 1vs1 scenrio here.

Actually, no, the missiles mentioned in the original post are quite specifically referred to in plural. Not to mention that is makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to consider a 1vs1 situation, when such a situation will never occur since you just don't launch single missiles at targets that are capable of defending themselves. In fact, the more serious missiles that I and others have referred to several times by now are, as you would know had you bothered to look them up even on something as simple as Wikipedia, designed to be fired in volleys.

I can just as well say that I have 4 tightly grouped ship and they can open up with a total of 10 phalanx on a single missile and vaporize it. Does that make missiles useless?

You don't see it yet, I gather. So much so in fact that you just supported my argument, although in a bit of a roundabout way. The problem here is that while, yes, that would probably wipe out the missile, that's exactly the kind of concentration you'd need to ensure destruction of the missile. Meanwhile, its seven buddies just sunk your fleet since gun-based CIWS systems can't multitask. A missile based system could launch one interceptor at each incoming missile, per ship in the cluster, from a longer range. So suddenly you have four ships each engaging every missile instead of four ships engaging one missile. Rather better odds that way.

Also, you can have various types of rounds.. armored missiles? AP round...or explosive ones.

Again, facts. Or in this case, lack of them. The phalanx system fired tungsten-based APDS rounds, and nothing else. They used to use DU rounds instead, but that was abandoned some time ago.

IMHO, CIWS systems are far from washed out.

Against the stuff 3rd world countries or bandit states are fielding? Certainly not, they'll do fine, and indeed this is where the major threat lies these days. Against the stuff the major powers are fielding, though? That's when you start to need the missile based systems. You have to realise there's a difference here - This thread, from the very beginning, dealt with Russian anti-ship missiles, which are some serious hardware.  Best in the world, probably, at that. And it's against those and anything comparable from other countries that gun-based CIWS systems are fast becoming ineffective, not against the stuff a fleet is actually likely to encounter.

[TrashMan]

CIWS incapable of multitasking? Well ,that's new for me.

As for the future of CIWS..you think it's impossible to make them better..after all the missiles are improving too...you think AP ammo, more ammo storage and better tracking mechanisms are impossible?

[Corsair]

See, what you do, is you get a large squadron of Badgers to launch a large number of cruise missile drones - the target drone variant of the Kelt, for instance - from the outer RADAR range of the Carrier group, drawing off most of the carrier's air-wing as they try to intercept. All the while, a sizable squadron of Bears do their best to circle around the group and, once the American air-wing has been drawn off, light up and launch a bugger-load of Kingfish at the fleet. Scratch one fleet, at least for the time being.

Somebody's been reading Clancy again. One of his best books, in my opinion.

Well given that Red Storm Rising begins with - among other things - destruction and disruption of US/NATO satellites using hunter/killer satellites that tracking would be a tad difficult. That is if comparing things to that particular book

I think it was only one KH-11 that got knocked out at the beginning of the war. It wasn't taking down NATO's whole satellite capacity, just some photorecon.

[Shade]

CIWS incapable of multitasking? Well ,that's new for me.

Unguided munitions. They have to stick with one target until it's dead before moving on. Missile-based systems can engange several different targets at the same time. As has already been stated repeatedly, so hardly news if you've been following the thread. They can of course waste time traversing between multiple targets to take potshots at each, but they can only ever engage one of them at a time.

As for the future of CIWS..you think it's impossible to make them better..after all the missiles are improving too...you think AP ammo, more ammo storage and better tracking mechanisms are impossible?

Of course it is possible to make them better. In fact, there's already a far more effective system being introduced - The RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile launcher. Which is a dedicated CIWS system, and in some setups even reuses the mounting and tracking radar of the Phalanx system, making it just as compatible.

[NGTM-1R]

Shade, I hate to break it to you, but the gun-based CIWS ain't going away. The Phalanx system is, as of right now, considered to be low end of acceptablity, but it's not dead. The Phalanx, when first tested, was placed on a destroyer that was to be expended as a target and then shot at with a wide variety of weapons including Harpoons, laser-guided and TV-guided bombs, and converted Telos SAMs. It knocked them all down, including a multiple attack by three supersonic Telos approaching at 50 feet altitude. Phalanx's real weakness today is the mount's warmup time, which is nearly two minutes long.

Other systems like the Italian 76mm/62 Super Rapido have been tested as able to engage up to four subsonic seaskimmers coming at it simulantanously from widely different bearings, starting to engage at 6km, first rounds arriving on target at 5.5km, and all missiles knocked down before any of them approach with a kilometer. This is without the specialized, guided "DART" antimissile ammunition, just the mount's normal mix of HE and APFSDS rounds.

The Brit Goalkeeper 30mm/70 was designed with almost the sole purpose of engaging Exocet-type missiles and is extremely good at knocking them down; it is estimated that one could handle as many as five targets subsonic or three supersonic targets.

The Russians have built the CADS-1 combined gun-missile CIWS, with the missiles intended to engage the simpler or larger targets because they can do so at greater ranges, and the gun meant for the targets missiles would be less effective against such as seaskimmers as well as to backstop the missiles.

The USN's current intended successor, note the use of "successor" rather than "replacement", for the Phalanx is NOT the Rolling Airframe Missile, but the 57mm/75 cannon from BAE Systems. It is a successor, as it is intended to take the role of the Phalanx on all new-construction ships, but the Phalanx will be with us until the last of the current ships in the inventory is phased out.

[DeepSpace9er]

CIWS Phalanx are useful because:

A. They are compact and can be fitted on pretty much any surface ship frigate size

B. Bullets are cheaper than missiles and not all antiship missles will be impossible to track, hell they are pretty much all trackable, just the kill times are low.

C. Phalanx and RAM should complement eachother on ships, taking out which targets are necessary with each system. No sense throwing a missile at an unguided rocket with gyro aiming.

[Mars]

Just for clarity CWIS means Close In Weapons System, the debate here is not about CWIS vs. RAM, RAM is a CWIS system.

The debate here is over the qualities of RAM vs. Phalanax based CWISs