AiirSource Military
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2021–2023
2:40 · 16M views · Apr 29, 2015
Footage of the US Navy's Phalanx CIWS, a radar-guided 20 mm Gatling gun, firing in live target practice. The Phalanx serves as terminal defense against anti-ship missiles.
Linked as a vivid illustration of automated close-in defense when threads discuss drones and autonomous defense.
3 comments from Hacker News
Well, if proximity detonation is an issue, there's always weapons like CIWS [1] and C-RAM [2]. I imagine there could easily be some kind of adaption made for specialized ammo. Instead of typical bullets, use some kind of very low grade concussive. The explosive wouldn't necessarily need to be an explosive , but merely just something to disrupt the air around one or two blades of the drone to force it into an unrecoverable spin. Similar to small grade concussives, I've heard some interesting defense systems use a projectile that has a kind of "mini parachute" to overwhelm target acquisition systems. I can't recall what it was in relation to. Chaff, maybe? The point is, if you could get enough small objects floating in the area, you could make it much harder for an enemy drone to maneuver within a specific area. Honestly, I think the soon-to-be hurdle would be around implementing a good jamming system against automated defenses, which would probably lead to inventing some sort of miniaturized version of current fighter planes, but built in such a way that doesn't need to account for things like G tolerance for pilots. [1] this video [2] [LINK]
> (...) perhaps a radar controlled light machine gun would have to be developed. The Phalanx CIWS would fit the bill nicely (except for the 'light' part) [0]. [0] this video
I don't know how you'd be able to attack such a flock effectively Phalanx CIWS Close-in Weapon System In Action - US Navy's Deadly Autocannon this video