Aug 172008
Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar
This is a US Navy 20mm Phalanx anti-missile gun system mounted on a trailer, and used to bring down rockets and mortar shells in Iraq. It uses special ammo that blows itself up in flight so that the shells don’t come raining down on civilian areas.
Videos of the system in use are available here, here and here. Note that the rounds in flight all sparkle out at the end and disappear… that’s the self-destruct.
One thing that occurs… the trailer system looks pretty large. Yet decades ago the same gun was mounted to APCs; I’m left to wonder why the current system requires such an extensive infrastructure. Shrug.
3 Responses to “This is what I want for my birthday”
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“the trailer system looks pretty large. Yet decades ago the same gun was mounted to APCs; I’m left to wonder why the current system requires such an extensive infrastructure.”
Since the weapon itself is the same, the differences would have to be in the mounting, the fire control system and the ammunition supply. My assessment is that since the CRAM is more or less a duct-tape-and-plastic-strips modification of the Navy Phalanx, which was developed for mounting on warships, it is not optimized for size and mass. The M113-mounted M163 VADS and M163A2 PIVADS on the other hand were designed from the ground up as land-vehicle-mounted systems.
Regards & all
Thomas L. Nielsen
Denmark
Also, this has the associated radar, auto-aiming system, and I imagine, far larger ammo supply.
They really want to raise hell, they should put the 30 mm Avenger rotary gun used on the A-10 on a trailer mounting; that gun forms the basis of the Dutch Goalkeeper air defense system for ships; a scaled-up Phalanx.
Yes, the original M163 Vulcan has a suimple range-only radar, no autonomouis capability at all and is strictly a human-cued system. Power to the turret & weenie radar are all the energy that the system has to provide, so a small internal APU on the M113 chassis did the job. The Phalanx, on the other hand is a fully automated system and is both heavier and has a more quickly slewing & more accurate turret system (both of whch add significantly to the power requirements). Add in the longer range tracking radar and the autonomous engagement electronics and you end up with both more boxes and more power for the boxes.
I’m actually fairly imrpessed that it fits into such a small package…