Land Base Phalanx

www.liveleak.com...

Its just so awesome seeing something like that. Love seeing it in action at night. Looks like they made it against anti-mortar. Based on the footage it looks like a 120 mm mortar round, maybe I'm wrong. Can be used against aircraft of course, but it looks like it was meant for mortars or rockets in response to attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq.

Great find

Truly a beautiful thing to watch...

See why we gotta go to war? I mean we got all these great toys =)

I'm gonna agree with you and say it looks more designed for mortars and rockets... Although it'd probably scare the poo out of any pilot flying into that crapstorm =)

lol well, all i can say is i have GOT to get me one of those...

absolutly no practical purpose but who cares?

Originally posted by Damocles
absolutly no practical purpose but who cares?

You've never had large migratory geese crap all over you property on their way South? This would give them something got think about...

LOL

two words....

Trap Shooting


"PULL!!"

Originally posted by deltaboy
www.liveleak.com...

Its just so awesome seeing something like that. Love seeing it in action at night. Looks like they made it against anti-mortar. Based on the footage it looks like a 120 mm mortar round, maybe I'm wrong. Can be used against aircraft of course, but it looks like it was meant for mortars or rockets in response to attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq.

Yeah right.

And then the tired old gunny sat up with a start and pronounced with a mighty rolling f*rt in a righteous hallowed tone:

"What C-whizzeth up into the sky like tracered piss.

Must just as surely fall back to earth as DU #e."

Before rolling over to fall back unto blissful oblivion rocked like a baby by the sound of 'distant guns'.

Given the number of rounds wasted (a couple of seconds at 3,000spm is going to be on the order of 90-120 projectiles, depending on spoolup), I would truly /hate/ being 'defended' by such a monstrosity firing OVER my position.

I also wouldn't really enjoy reloading the magazine helix after every 2nd or 3rd engagement with the want-the-AD-kill coordinated saturation attack putting 10-20 such mortar bombs all around me like crap from an incontinent condor.

Of course, in an urban environment, the norm is for a couple mortar rounds to be 'randomly' dropped down a tube (They are, after all, merely animals. Targeting markets and soccer grounds because they are too stupid to hit anything smaller as much as for the CNN schlock value) and then the tube itself is chucked into a shoot'n'scoot vehicle trunk or taken back inside a building.

Here too, the defense of the 'innocent' might also cause more pain than the diseased wolves themselves.

Now further apply this to the scenario of a recoilless or manpackable rocket system chucking a couple rounds out of Aqaba town center on a much lower trajectory. You shoot back and you've just hosed down half the shorefront and maybe a block or two further (assuming R2 can reject the clutter or track optically).

At which point you start to see exactly how useless the Phalanx really is.

Ballistically, it can't reach high enough to stop even 'conventional' AShM from close-aboard showering a vessel with blast/fragments. Against assymetric threats in a collaterals dense environment, it's the veritable sledgehammer vs. the mosquito swarm.

Now a couple 35mm AHEAD rounds /might/ do better and would certainly spray less toxic crap but they'd also better safe out early if the miss or they will go a helluva lot further downrange.

In any case, the real answer is of course ATL/M-THEL/Nautilus and all the other 'magic ray guns' because even if you can't just pick your unit tail up and march sufficiently far into the desert as to create a killzone between you and the barbarians (what UCAVs are made for).

You can at least throw the power switch with limited 'fallout' footprinting from the inbound itself.

The rest 'comes down' to Shortstop, Buried Facilities with Deep Overhead and Pure Dumb Luck.


KPl.

Originally posted by ch1466
Must just as surely fall back to earth as DU #e.

I'm afraid not, it does not fire DU rounds but HEIT-SD ammunitions, it explodes upon contact with the target or when the tracer burns out.

Land-Based Phalanx Weapon System PDF

Very nice WP, it looks like they fire the self destruct rounds, which is why we hear those firecracker sounds. No collateral damage. Its better than shooting back where insurgents may be firing in the alleys next to apartment buildings with women and children are in.

[edit on 28-11-2006 by deltaboy]