The reason why I don’t think that 20mm Phalanx is completely inadequate these days is its inability to defend against massed attacks. It is designed to kill the target by directly hitting it, which means that one turret has to stay on target till destruction, and given it’s rather smallish engagement envelope (outer edge > inner edge) it might well be busy with one single missile all the way through this envelope, giving the others a free ride.
Thus the reason why I favour 35mm Millennium is its ability to put a lead cloud in the flightpath of a target and then switch to the next, giving it true multi-engagement capability, but at the same time its ability to stay on a target till destruction. And that is something a missile like RAM can’t do (basically it doesn’t matter which missile, it’s a basic characteristic of missile-CIWS). You can never be sure to destroy a target, as long as the missle hasn’t exploded it (and even then it might not have effected the target enough). This results in the need to fire multiple missiles to be sure (even with high single-kill probabilities). Thus you can’t go for neither missile OR gun alone, you need both.
Other questions for CIWS design are placement of turrets/launchers and sensors, and stand-alone capability/survivability.
For a number of reasons I strongly believe that sensors and turrets/launchers should be seperated (bit not exclusively with centralized C2, like the Russians do/did). Of course a system like Phalanx is easier to install, but it’s the quick’n-dirty solution.
For a distributed CIWS solution to work and survive it has to be battle damage tolerent, meaning distributed, networked, independent C2 and data network (e.g. fibre optical, incl own power supply) and local power supplies for the turrets/launchers to keep going even after the ship loses main power. As this is just an emergency configuration, it could be designed for only limited duration (20/30 minutes?), running off power packs (preferably batteries). No idea how far this is already done, but I think even Phalanx is connected to the ship power grid (for sure RAM) and doesn’t have its own integrated supply.
the massed attacks arguments very difficult to justifies as there has never been a massed anti-ship missile attack ever the only time ASM have been successful has been when critical systems have been off line and the vessel hasn’t be expecting an attack. Massed attacks are only plausible from the PRC and Russia and possibly India would have enough assets to plan track and pull off such a difficult operation. So by planning your last ditch defense on something that is very unlikely seems unfordable so i would want to move to a RAM/typhoon systems for close in attacks and CWIS. as both are based on systems already in service.
Sign In
