CIWS Soup?

[thewood1]

Where does it state, beyond conjecture, that CIWS failed? I see nothing that states that or hints at a source for any information about the state of the CIWS. This article seems like it is grinding an ax. How is anyone drawing the conclusion that CIWS fails. Please bring sources or even real world experience that CIWS would be active in a simple tracking test.

[GGLurch]

Well, just my opinion here...

There is no saying concerning the when the missile drone went out of control. It might have been very close when the crew realized that it got serious here. One has to realize that when a target pops up over the horizon, you got 45-60sec to react due to the high speed - meaning establishing a solid track and start firing. When the weapons were off-line - there might not have been enough time to get them fully up and running or the target was engaged very late. Also - the Phalanx system in use (if activated) has certain criteria to decide if it fires or not. One of the these is if the target is actually capable of hitting the ship - e.g. because of the target heading. Like I said. If the drone went out of control in very close proximity it might have been to late for a successful engagement because the max. probability for a successful hit which is determined the the weapons computer might have passed and also because the system will "walk" the fire to the target - meaning the first bullets will not hit. Another possibility is that the CIWS might not have been in automatic engagement mode - but only recommended firing to the operator. To have the weapons off-line in such exercises is not uncommon in general, either to prevent it to shoot down (expensive) target during a tracking exercise or if other ships are in the vicinity. It happened before that CIWS rounds hit other ships during exercises. E.g. the Iwo Jima incident in '89 ('88?) i believe. Additionally - A weapon can miss!

Also - one has to realize that close-in weapon systems are - well - operating in close proximity. A target going 600mph can be hit and destroyed - however - damage to the ship might still happen due to shrapnel and debris. In this case, it might have also been a problem since the drone obviously did not carry any warhead that could go up when hit by CIWS. On the pictures it looks like the thing struck as a whole though, probably doing some extensive damage inside. I would have assumed some serious fire at least due to the drones fuel.

All in All - To me - in all honesty - it looks like a freak accident, not at all questioning the operational capabilities of the ship and the systems itself. From my time in the (German) navy - i know there is HUGE difference between a tracking exercise and war-zone operations. Not only in terms of readiness and availability status of weapons but also in how fast the crew is hitting the engagement button. They never assumed the thing to be hostile in the first place. They were handling a tracking exercise.

GG

[CV32]

Good post, GGLurch.

[incredibletwo]

+1 GGLurch

There's every chance the CIWS was not in automatic engagement mode due to the nature of the exercise.

Source: two brothers in the RAN. [8D]

[mrfeizhu]

As soon as some thing does work, the media will pick up on it and say the weapon or ship design is a failure. Years back an RPG , hit an Abrams tank in Iraq, it destroyed the tank, but the crew was un hurt, but the article said how tanks were obsolete. This was in CNN or another main stream media publication. Was the Phalanx even loaded. When i was in the navy all weapons were unloaded, and all ammunition was in the magazine, but that was in the 70's, the only thing that was loaded was part of the crew a lot of time.

[Apocal]

Usually when my ship (USS Enterprise) did a tracking exercise our CIWS was unloaded and locked into position.