Originally Posted by
WE Branch Fanatic
I agree - but they do have to obey the laws of Physics. 4Greens mentioned a 'speedboat', which implies something like a RIB or a skiff. He also suggested a man portable weapon, such as an RPG or an ATGW. Modern ATGW might be accurate fired from a stable position, but a small craft moving a speed is not very stable.
Phalanx block 2B does indeed have a manual surface to surface mode, but it is primarily an anti aircraft.missile weapon. However, as
this page suggests...
Did a fair bit of work on this for the Royal Navy, when we brought in the latest -1B version of Phalanx and its “anti-surface capability” was being proposed as a reason to get rid of some other weapons that, supposedly, would now be redundant.
For those interested, Phalanx was originally purely an automatic air defence gun – it decided what it would shoot at and when, and other than putting it into “Air Mode Auto” that was the extent of operator interaction. One of the many updates it’s had to keep it capable, is a thermal camera: radar is very accurate in range and excellent for finding and locking onto “fast, small thing coming at you at nearly Mach 1”, infrared is then outstanding for giving a very precise angle of sight onto that object so the gun can be aimed even more accurately and kill incoming threats further out with fewer rounds fired. While it’s mostly used fully automated, the nice engineers at Raytheon thought “since we’ve got the camera, why don’t we put the image in front of the operator so they can see what they’re shooting at?” followed by “if we can see where the gun’s pointing, why don’t we give the operator a controller so he can drive it manually?” Hence why the -1B version of Phalanx gained its ability to manually engage small boats and slow air targets – it was a “why not do this?” rather than a “there is a pressing need to…”
The reason not to be worried that the Phalanx doesn’t seem to be hitting and sinking the boats are twofold. Against small boats, you’re not in any sort of automatic mode; the operator is tracking and firing manually. The gun is stabilised, but that’s all the help you get: there’s a fair bit of spray-and-pray and Kentucky windage involved. (The really clever – and genuinely impressive – open-loop tracking and fire control only works well on fast airborne targets, which is the job Phalanx was always designed for). It’s not the mount’s priority, so the operators don’t get huge amounts of practice in peacetime.
The other problem is that Phalanx is firing a 20mm APDS round, which is very lethal fired head-on into incoming missiles but just drills a 9mm hole through a boat when it hits: if you don’t hit the engine or the coxswain, it won’t do much. Small boats can be *tough*; we had an incident a few years ago when a destroyer seized a drug-smuggler’s go-fast and, having secured relevant evidence, used it as a gunnery target precisely because it would stay afloat despite being shot full of holes and set on fire: it gave all the weapon-aimers needing to stay qualified, the chance to get their practice shoots in. (It never did sink, even after one of the boarding team blew it into smallish pieces with some PE7)
Phalanx is a very good system for defending against missiles and aircraft close-in, and the manual mode is better to have than not have, but it’s a backup not a priority. For surface threats close-in, we use 30mm cannon firing high explosive/incendiary shells; the USN’s got assorted 25mm and 30mm weapons for the job. And of course when it’s really close, there are assorted machine-guns, small arms and (in our case) Mk 44 Miniguns coming into play.
The 30mmm cannon is the DS30M Mk2 which was designed specifically to deal with the small boat threat, and incorporates things such as an Electro-Optical tracker.
Thanks for that WEBF. Apols for my sloppy typing, when I said Block 2B I meant Block 1B baseline 2, which the UK is upgrading to. My understanding was that baseline 2 includes a radar upgrade (ie in addition to the 1B's FLIR) that adds a surface mode to "track, detect, and destroy threats closer to the water's surface", specifically with the aim of increasing the ability to defend against fast-attack boats as well as low-flying missiles. Not sure whether or how far that moves it beyond the level of capability you describe - but in any event as you say it's a useful complement to the 30mm mounts.