Ever dreamed of flying a drone or plane into US controlled airspace? I present the following information to dissuade you from attempting such an insane act.. This is the Phalanx CIWS:
A General Dynamics built "close-in" automated defense turret with FLIR and Ku-band radar tracking firing 20mm auto detonating rounds... With every 5th round as a tracer.. Look at this firing rate:
As you can see this damn thing fires FAST Remember you can only see every 5th bullet being fired as its a tracer round.. So for every 5th bullet you see glowing red as a tracer.. there are literally 4 other bullets also whizzing through the air with it.. Now that is a hell of a rate of fire! The rate of fire, depending on what model the damn thing is, spools up to around 3000 rounds per minute (~50 rounds a second) all the way up to 4500 rounds per a minute (~75 rounds per second).. JFC
This vulgar display of power is produced by the General Dynamics M61 Vulcan Cannon. * sploosh *
This beast of a defense system started was brought to the design table in 1969 and saw deployment around 1980. Being mounted both on naval warfare vessels as well as on the back of army highway tractor trailers these bad boys have been doing incoming air defense in countless theatres of war for almost 50 years. While the data to calculate this things overall kill/death ratio is unavailable, one has to assume it's got thousands of kills in comparison to very few if any of these systems being RIP'd.
The Military Industrial Complex Makes Cool Shit
While I sure as shit don't applaud the US military's reasoning for going into a lot of the theatres of war they've played parts in.. I can't not tip my hat at the technological prowess and innovation that in reality has saved the lives of hundreds if not thousands of service men and woman within the US military. These machines have seen at least 1 upgrade since their inception which is neat, and a testament to how valuable an asset and ability this defense weapons system provides.
While not entirely a war-monger type myself.. I have to really applaud the technology and design effort that went in to making a system like this.. Things like FLIR and Gatling cannons just excite me for whatever reason.. Maybe because it's just a vulgar display of human ingenuity.
Anything that can automatically track and destroy shit like artillery rounds, mortar shells, drones and incoming missiles and save lives is ok in my books. It's a hell of a piece of tech and frankly without it there would be far more deaths in the sick game of "rule by force" that humans call warfare.
