Israeli Air Defense

As you know, Israel has established its multi-tier Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow 2/3 defense systems for defending against incoming rockets and missiles.  Official claims have put the success rate somewhere in the 90+% range. However, based on careful consideration of photos and reading between the lines of various attack news stories (mostly Iron Dome) over the years, ComNavOps places the success rate at something closer to 40%-50%.  Now, with the latest hostilities between Iran and Israel, we are accumulating a new, extensive set of data with seemingly much less public relations spin applied.
 
A Breaking Defense article states,
 

As of this report, the IDF said Iran had managed to launch at least 400 missiles in 17 salvos since Israel’s strike on Iran last week, in addition to 1,000 drones.
 
The drones do not appear to have penetrated Israel’s defenses, but more than 20 of the ballistic missiles have, killing more than two dozen people.[1]

As of Monday morning, Israel reported 24 dead and 500 injured which gives an indication of the degree of penetration of Iranian missiles through the Israeli defenses.
 
So, what does all this tell us about the effectiveness of the Israeli defense system?  The numbers we have suggest a success rate of 95%, on the face of it, however, my understanding is that many missiles are not even engaged due to being assessed as not a threat.  Iranian missiles are not exactly renowned for accuracy.  Thus, if 400 missiles have been fired at Israel, only a fraction of them were actual threats and had to be engaged.  Here, now, is where we have no basis, whatsoever, to further judge effectiveness.  However, for the sake of illustration, if only, say, 30% of the Iranian missiles were actual threats then the defensive success rate would drop to something on the order of 80%.  You can plug in whatever numbers you wish and calculate resulting defensive success rates, if you’re so inclined.
 
The takeaway from this is that the state of the art Israeli defense system, matched against some pretty low capability Iranian missiles, still allowed, perhaps, something on the order of 20% of attacking missiles to get through.  What does this mean to us?  Well, consider what will happen when Aegis faces modern, highly capable Chinese missiles.  What will the defensive success rate of our ships be?  Who can say, but this is just another data point that leads ComNavOps to conclude that Aegis will be nowhere near as effective as we hope.  This, in turn, strongly suggests that we need to mount many more short range and close in weapons on our ships.  Combine this with the analyses we’ve done about engagement windows and it paints a pretty bleak picture – one that Navy leadership is ignoring instead of preparing for.
 
 
 
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[1] Breaking Defense website, “Left of boom: Israeli strikes concentrate on Iranian missile threat”, Seth J. Frantzman, 18-Jun-2025,
https://breakingdefense.com/2025/06/left-of-boom-israeli-strikes-concentrate-on-iranian-missile-threat/

Red Sea Weapon Expenditure

The War Zone website has an article offering the first glimpse into weapon expenditures in the Red Sea against the Houthis.  As stated by head of Naval Surface Forces, Vice Adm. Brendan McLane, here are the weapon expenditures:
 

• 120 SM-2 missiles
• 80 SM-6 missiles
• 20 Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) and SM-3 missiles (combined, for some unknown reason)
• 160 rounds from five-inch guns

 
Total = 220 missiles
Total = 160 shells
 
CIWS was not mentioned although at least one example of CIWS use has been documented and acknowledged by the Navy.
 
Against this expenditure, the Admiral claims “more than 400” targets were engaged.
 
 
Elementary arithmetic shows that if the Navy’s 380 total munitions fired destroyed “more than 400 targets”, that’s a kill ratio (pK) of greater than 1.0 !!!!!  In other words, every Navy munition killed its target and many killed more than one target.  That’s amazing.  That’s incredible.  That’s unbelievable.  No, seriously, that’s not believable.  In fact, it’s blatantly wrong.
 
The admiral continues his unbelievable statements with,
 

“We’ve done the analysis with what we used to shoot in World War II, and we’re at about two rounds per incoming missile,” McLane said.[1]

We didn’t engage missiles in WWII so I have no idea what he’s talking about.  Aerial targets in WWII required thousands of rounds per hit so, again, I have no idea what he’s referring to.
 
Further, the good admiral undoubtedly is not including 5” shells in his statement of analysis as 5” guns have a near-zero chance of hitting a missile.  So, subtracting out the 5” shells, that means the Navy’s 220 missiles destroyed more than 400 targets for a pK of 1.8 or almost two targets destroyed by each defensive missile fired.  That’s just totally absurd, of course.
 
Setting all that aside, the admiral claims that two ‘rounds’ (which I assume to mean missiles) were used per engagement which would conform to the Navy’s standard ‘shoot, shoot, look’ tactic.  That means that the 220 missiles could have engaged only a maximum of 110 targets not more than 400.  That also assumes that every engagement worked and that would so greatly fly in the face of all historical defensive missile performance as to be flat out unbelievable.  The pK’s throughout history have been uniformly in the 0.01-0.25 range not 1.0-2.0.
 
Now, to be fair, the admiral wasn’t offering a detailed engagement analysis;  he was just providing weapon expenditures and likely threw out a ballpark number of targets just to provide context.  I don’t think he was lying or even being intentionally misleading.
 
I can readily imagine that some of the 400 targets were engaged by aircraft whose weapons (Sidewinders, presumably) weren’t included in the Navy’s ship weapons expenditure although that would mean that even fewer targets were actually engaged by ship missiles and that would significantly lower the pK.
 
We know that 5” guns are notoriously inaccurate (recall the Vincennes incident where some one hundred rounds were fired with zero hits) so the 160 shells fired were probably directed at just a few targets.
 
Clearly, this scant bit of information the admiral provided is not useful in analyzing weapon performance, only total expenditure and even that has gaps in the information since Sidewinders, CIWS, and RAM, among others, were not mentioned.  While the presumed pathetically poor quality and performance of the attacking missiles would result in better pK’s than historically found, I’m certain that the pK is nowhere near 1.0 and, indeed, the admiral’s own claim of two rounds per engagement disproves the apparent pK.  Unfortunately, until the Navy provides some detailed performance data, we can only speculate.
 
The only valid conclusion from the admiral’s statements is that we are on the wrong side of the cost curve … big time!  We’re using $2M-$4M missiles (two at a time!) to shoot down thousand dollar drones and cheap missiles.
 
This simply reinforces the common sense conclusion that you deal with attacks not by defending but by destroying the source of the attacks.  Perhaps the new administration will take a different view of the Red Sea actions than the previous administration.  We’ll have to wait and see and, in the meantime, we’ll continue to bleed money, deplete our missile inventories, and risk our ships while waiting for the inevitable leaker that gets through.
 
 
 
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[1]The War Zone website, “Navy Just Revealed Tally Of Surface-To-Air Missiles Fired In Ongoing Red Sea Fight”, Geoff Ziezulewicz, 14-Jan-2025,
https://www.twz.com/news-features/navy-just-disclosed-how-many-of-each-of-its-surface-to-air-missiles-it-fired-during-red-sea-fight

Marine Iron Dome

The Marines are moving ahead with acquiring the Israeli Iron Dome system in a modified form.

 

… USMC officials have developed and tested an MRIC [Medium Range Intercept Capability] prototype that removes the Rafael-made Iron Dome launcher from its heavy base, mounts it on the back of a trailer to fire Tamir missiles, and integrates it with other service capabilities.[1]

 

Why are the Marines doing this?  A Breaking Defense article offers this,

 

Growing concerns about cruise missile threats have prompted US military leaders to hunt for innovative ways to quickly field new air defenses.[1]

 

Here’s a bit more,

 

Ultimately, the service wants to outfit three Marine Air Wings each with an MRIC battery by the end of 2028 … [1]

 

So, these anti-air units would, presumably, be used to defend Marine air bases?  Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO)?

 

The entire point of the Marine’s small unit, hidden base concept is that they’re hidden.  Clearly these units would not be suitable for that, given their size and large amount of required resources and support, as we see here,

 

… in addition to utilizing the truck-mounted Iron Dome launcher paired with the Tamir interceptors, it also uses the Common Aviation Command-and-Control System (CAC2S) and a mini battle management control (BMC) system for the Tamir missile, along with the AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR).[1]

 

That’s only suitable and viable for a large, well established base.  This could fit with the EABO concept if the EABO base is large.  That being the case, this is the Guadalcanal scenario where the base is well known to the enemy and we’re in a continuous, pitched battle for the base’s survival.

 

Marine Iron Dome Test

Of course, we next have to wonder if the system is even suitable and effective as an anti-missile system.  Remember that the Israeli Iron Dome was developed as an anti-rocket system, not an anti-missile system.  Can it actually intercept cruise missiles?  Supposedly the Marines tested the system, however, the description of the testing leaves much to be desired and engenders a lot of doubts.

 

… the USMC wrapped up its series of three MRIC live-fire tests in September 2022 when it used the more mobile, expeditionary launcher for the first time against several threats including a maneuvering target.[1]

 

It’s clear from the preceding that the Marine’s testing was mostly conducted under non-representative conditions as the mobile launcher and a maneuvering target were only used during the wrap up testing and the suggestion is that was a one-time event.  Did they test it against supersonic targets?  Targets with electronic warfare penetration aids?  Saturation attacks?  Targets with terminal evasive maneuver capability?  In bad weather?  Against sea-skimming targets?

 

Given the example of the fraudulent Marine testing and declaration of IOC for the F-35 (see, “Pencil Whipped”), one cannot help but be highly suspicious.

 

Is that the extent of the concerns?  No, there’s also cybersecurity issues.

 

Questions abound about the [cyber]security of weaving these capabilities together …  the Army has flagged it as a prime concern and said it does not plan to integrate the two Iron Dome batteries it currently has in its inventory into its larger air defense architecture.[1]

 

In fact, the Army has selected a different system instead of Iron Dome.

 

Does it make sense for the Army and Marines to have selected two different systems for the exact same application?  Isn’t that a bit like the Navy building both the Freedom and Independence variant LCS for the exact same application?  We see how that worked out.

 

One of the potential missions for both Army and the Marines is to defend Air Force bases.  Wouldn’t it make more sense if they each had the same equipment?

 

 

Summation

 

As with almost every decision the Marines have made over the last several years, I’m at a loss to understand exactly what the Marines are trying to accomplish.  I’m all for anti-air defense systems but is selecting a non-Army standard, unproven, large footprint, anti-rocket system really the best way to go about defending against potentially supersonic cruise missiles?  Does that really fit with the missile-shooting concept or the EABO concept?

 

 

__________________________________

 

[1]Breaking Defense, “Marines greenlight mobile Iron Dome launcher development, seek 2025 prototype fielding”, Ashley Roque, 5-Jan-2023,

https://breakingdefense.com/2023/01/marines-greenlight-mobile-iron-dome-launcher-development-seek-2025-prototype-fielding/

Atlanta/Juneau Anti-Aircraft Cruiser

The WWII Atlanta/Juneau classes of anti-aircraft (AA) cruisers were a fascinating development.  In the initial design discussions, the ships were intended as flotilla leaders but they were quickly optimized for the anti-aircraft role as war established the primacy of aircraft.  Based on additional combat experience, the initial Atlanta class was further optimized as the follow on Juneau class.

 

USS Juneau, CL-119

Typical later war weapon fits are listed in the table below.

 

 

	5”/38 dual	40 mm quad	40 mm dual	20 mm dual	20 mm single
Atlanta Class	6 (12 barrels)		8 (16 barrels)		16 (16 barrels)
Juneau Class	6 (12 barrels)	6 (24 barrels)	4 (8 barrels)	8 (16 barrels)

 

 

Atlanta class had 30 gun mounts with a total of 44 gun barrels of various types.

Juneau class had 24 gun mounts with a total of 60 gun barrels of various types.

 

The Atlanta/Juneau classes were extremely efficient and effective anti-aircraft platforms, for the time.  Battleships, of course, had far larger anti-aircraft weapon fits but they were extremely expensive and we only had a handful of those ships.  The AA cruisers offered a cheaper, yet still effective, supplement to the battleships.

 

The anti-aircraft cruisers had what was, for the time period, a complete fit of long range (5”), medium range (40 mm), and close in (20 mm) weapons providing total coverage and, most importantly, they had large numbers of each.

 

USS Spokane, CL-120

Atlanta/Juneau and Burke Comparison

 

Weapon Distribution – In comparison to the Atlanta/Juneau weapon densities noted above, a modern Burke has just three defensive mounts (2x VLS clusters, 1x CIWS).  Admittedly, a direct comparison of ‘mounts’ is meaningless but it does offer an impression of the density of weapon mounts on a WWII warship versus today’s barely armed ships.  The number of mounts is meaningful.  A single hit on one of the Burke’s two VLS clusters would eliminate 1/3 or 2/3 of the ship’s total weapons, depending on whether the forward or aft cluster was hit, and just two hits could eliminate the ship’s entire weaponry.  This is unconscionable in a warship design.

 

More importantly, the WWII ships had a balanced and heavy distribution of long, medium, and short range defensive weapons.  Contrast this to Burkes which have good fits of long (Standard) and medium (ESSM) range weapons but almost no short range (CIWS) weapons – a shocking deficiency for an anti-aircraft ship.

 

Armor – The Atlanta/Juneau classes had armor appropriate for their size with nearly 4” side armor and 1-3/4” deck and turret armor. 

 

As in the larger cruisers, the belt armor was split into a wide band over machinery spaces with narrower underwater sections fore and aft over magazines.  The inner bottom extended up the side to the (flat) protective deck.  Magazines would be separated from the ship’s side by fuel oil aft and by a wiring passage or cofferdam forward.[1, p.233]

 

In contrast, the Burke class has only scattered Kevlar spall liner protection.  There may be some armor surrounding the below deck VLS space, presumably intended not as protective armor but to direct VLS explosions upward rather than inward.  I’ve been unable to verify this.

 

The obvious observation is that the WWII ships were built to stand and fight and were intended to be able to fight hurt, stay in the fight, and remain effective for as long as possible.  Burkes are bordering on one-hit mission kills, if not outright sinkings, and have little hope of staying in a fight and fighting hurt.  In fact, the experience of the Port Royal Aegis cruiser grounding strongly suggests that the radar array and VLS alignments are so delicate that a single low intensity vibration (explosion shock … or gentle grounding) is enough to render the equipment unusable.  See, “Port Royal Grounding Lessons”.

 

Survivability – As noted, both the presence of significant armor and the weapons density offered a much greater chance of ship survival than the Burke’s nearly non-existent armor and only three weapon mounts.  The sheer number of weapon mounts, fire control directors, and local backups on the WWII cruisers guaranteed that the ship could continue fighting effectively even after absorbing multiple hits.  In contrast, a single hit on either of the Burke’s VLS clusters will likely render the entire cluster unusable resulting in the instantaneous loss of 1/3 or 2/3 of the ship’s weapons, depending on whether the forward or aft cluster was hit.

 

On a related note, testing the effects of a typical anti-ship cruise missile on a VLS cluster is one of the many realistic tests the Navy desperately needs to conduct to get a handle on the true combat-worthiness of today’s ship designs.

 

Conceptual Design – The AA cruisers were the epitome of a focused, single function ship.  They were intended to shoot down aircraft and that was all.  As the war progressed, extraneous equipment such as depth charges, sonar, and torpedo tubes were generally removed and replaced with additional guns.  In comparison, the Burkes are the epitome of do-everything design with the attendant corollaries of do nothing well and cost a lot.  In a sense, the Burkes are the epitome of a failed and flawed, unfocused design philosophy.

 

 

Conceptual Anti-Aircraft Ship

 

Let’s take the lessons of the Atlanta/Juneau anti-aircraft cruiser and apply them to a modern, conceptual anti-aircraft ship design and see what we get.

 

First, what is the job of an anti-aircraft ship?  This is not a trick question.  The answer is simple … it’s anti-air warfare!  It’s not anti-submarine.  It’s not land attack or deep strike.  It’s not helo operations.  It’s not amphibious attack or logistics or harbor tug.  It’s anti-air warfare.  Pure and simple.  One function.  Do it and do it exquisitely well.  Be optimized for it. 

 

With that single function focus firmly in mind, here’s the weapons and sensors such a ship would have:

 

• 4x 16-VLS clusters (disperse the risk) with 32 quad packed ESSM (128 total ESSM) plus 32 Standard
• 6x SeaRAM
• 8x CIWS
• 4” side and 2” deck armor[2]
• 2x main fire control radars (TRS-4D or similar)
• 4x backup fire control radars (SPQ-8B or similar)
• Electro-optical back up fire control systems

 

This conceptual design provides long, medium, and short range anti-air weapons and offers the ability to stand and fight, even when hurt.  It emphatically addresses the flaw (well, one of the flaws) in the Burke class which is the near total lack of close in defensive weapons.

 

There would be no flight deck and hangar as AAW does not require aviation capability.  On the Burke, for example, aviation facilities comprise a solid third of the ship’s length (!) and represent significant size, weight, and cost.

 

There would also be no hull mounted sonar, stern towed array sonar, or ASW function.  Eliminating those functions further reduces the size, weight, and cost of the ship.

 

Being physically smaller, the ship can’t help but be stealthier and some judicious shaping and repackaging (à la Visby) could make it even more stealthy which would make it more survivable and effective in its role.  You see how easy ship design should be?  All you have to do is pick a primary function, stick with it (and only it !), and the rest is easy.  But, I digress …

 

So, our conceptual anti-aircraft ship will be 2/3 the length of a Burke, have more weapons, and cost a third less!  What’s not to like?

 

 

 

___________________________________

 

[1]Friedman, Norman, “U.S. Cruisers, An Illustrated Design History”, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 1984

 

[2]Armor recommendation is for whatever a modern equivalent to WWII armor thicknesses would be.

Defensive Weapon Fits

Before the Navy embarks on their insane fantasy of arming amphibious and logistic ships with anti-ship cruise missiles and sending them out alone (distributed lethality) to sink fleets of Chinese warships, perhaps it would be better to start by arming them with a useful AAW defensive weapons fit.

 

For example, a WWII attack transport (APA) such as the Haskell class (455 ft long, 15,000 ton displacement) mounted:

 

• 1x 5"/38 dual-purpose gun
• 1x quad 40 mm gun
• 4x twin 40 mm guns
• 10x 20 mm guns

 

That’s 16 mounts with a total of 23 gun barrels of various calibers!

 

 

Compare that to today’s larger San Antonio (LPD) class (684 ft long,  25,300 ton displacement):

 

• 2x Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) launchers (2x21 missiles)

 

The San Antonio is 68% larger displacement and has only 2 defensive weapon mounts!

 

Well, what about the mammothly larger America class LHA?  Surely that has many more weapon mounts, right?  The America (LHA) class (844 ft long, 45,000 ton displacement) AAW defensive mounts are:

 

• 2x Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM) launchers (2x21 missiles)
• 2x Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile launchers (16 missiles)
• 2x CIWS

 

The America is 2x-3x larger than the Haskell and has only 6 weapon mounts.  I know that a direct comparison of weapons from two different eras is meaningless but the point is the weapon density on the Haskells puts current ship designs to shame.  We built warships in WWII; now, build nearly defenseless cruise ships.

 

Alright, those are amphibious ships.  What about combat ships?

 

The Baltimore class heavy cruiser is crudely analogous to today’s Burke and mounted:

 

• 6x twin 5"/38 dual-purpose gun
• 12x quad 40 mm gun
• 24x 20 mm guns

 

That’s 42 mounts with a total of 84 gun barrels of various calibers!

 

Compare that to the Burke Flt IIA class:

 

• 1x 32-cell VLS
• 1x 64-cell VLS
• 1x CIWS

 

That’s 3 mounts.

 

Now, before anyone gets all worked up, I know there’s no way to directly compare a WWII gun system to a modern multi-cell missile system.  They’re just two different animals.  The salient point is the mount density relative to the size of the ship.  Even this is an imperfect comparison because the size of the mounts vary widely.

 

While a direct comparison between WWII weapons and today’s weapons is pointless, the overarching conclusion is inescapable:  WWII ships were built with a significantly greater weapon density.  We have lost sight of what the role of a WARship is today and how to design one.  Our ships are deployment cruise ships with weapons added almost as an afterthought. 

 

Rather than get caught up in a meaningless attempt to directly compare defensive weapon fits of WWII and now, let’s instead take a look the defensive weapon fits of our current surface ships compared to what we’ve learned from this blog about defensive requirements, all the while bearing in mind the mount density lesson from WWII. 

 

 

	Has a	Should Have
Nimitz
ESSM/Sea Sparrow	2	4
RAM/SeaRAM	2	7
CIWS	2	8
Ford
ESSM/Sea Sparrow	2	4
RAM/SeaRAM	2	7
CIWS	3	8
Zumwalt b
ESSM	? mounts, ?20? cells	? mounts, 20 cells
RAM/SeaRAM	0	6
CIWS	0	8
Ticonderoga
ESSM	2 mounts, ?30? cells	4 mounts, 30 cells
RAM/SeaRAM	0	6
CIWS	2	8
Burke, Flt IIA
ESSM	2 mounts, ?24? cells	4 mounts, 24 cells
RAM/SeaRAM	0	6
CIWS	1	8
LCS
ESSM	0	1 mount, 8 cells
RAM/SeaRAM	1	2
CIWS	0	4

 

 

^a The phrase ‘mounts’ refers to the number of VLS missile clusters.  Each cluster is a single missile mount and represents a single point of failure in the event of an enemy hit.  A single cluster, no matter how large, can be destroyed by a single hit.  It stands to reason that more mounts, spread out over the length of the ship, are less susceptible to damage.  This is simple dispersal of risk.  A Burke can only absorb two hits on its unarmored VLS clusters before being rendered BOTH OFFENSIVELY AND DEFENSIVELY INEFFECTIVE!  Two hits!

 

Compare this to a WWII cruiser/battleship with three heavily armored main mounts and several armored secondary mounts as well as dozens of defensive mounts, all scattered along the length and width of the ship.

 

^b For the Zumwalt, the concept of missile clusters doesn’t really apply since the unarmored VLS cells are dispersed around the periphery of the ship.  This is both good and bad since any single hit has a very high chance of destroying some VLS cells but, on the other hand, the number of cells affected by a single hit is limited.  Also, placing the VLS cells on the periphery of the ship almost assures that a hit will destroy several of the cells as opposed to placing the cells in a more centerline position.

 

 

There are, undoubtedly, going to be some people who look at the ‘Should Have’ column of the table and complain that the numbers are far too high, that the numbers simply aren’t realistic for modern ships.  These people are laboring under a constraining paradigm that they don’t even recognize as such.  I would remind those people of two things:

 

1.     WWII ships had a much greater density of defensive weapons.

2.     The cost – in money and ship’s space – for these extra weapons is miniscule compared to the construction cost of a new ship to replace the sunken ship – lost due to the penny wise, pound foolish lack of a some extra defensive weapons.

 

 

Some might also suggest that modern weapons, being more accurate, are not needed in large numbers like inaccurate WWII 5”/40mm/20mm AA fits.  On the face of it, this is appealing.  However, there are a couple of problems with this line of thought:

 

1.     No one knows that modern AAW weapons are actually more accurate.  In fact, the entire history of modern defensive systems strongly indicates otherwise.  The best, most successful set of data I can think of is the British in the Falklands and they only managed to achieve around a 25% success rate and even that rate was skewed by many of the targets being non-maneuvering, defenseless drones, for all practical purposes.

2.     In WWII, attacking aircraft generally attacked individual ships singly or in spaced out intervals despite their attempts to conduct simultaneous attacks.  Modern naval theory suggests the use of massed, simultaneous missile attacks.  So, even if one accepts the belief that modern defensive weapons have a higher accuracy, the massed attacks will require as many defensive weapons as possible to deal with the much greater numbers of simultaneous attacking missiles.

 

 

Conclusion

 

The rot of peace has eroded our design practices for WARships.  We’ve come to emphasize habitability for our glorified cruise ships rather than emphasizing weapons, armor, and sensors for combat. 

 

Our lax peacetime mentality has led us to believe that our ships will never take a hit and, therefore, our ship design philosophy has all but abandoned defensive AAW weapons.  The poster child for this is the Zumwalt with no AAW defensive weapons at all !!!!!

 

In a peer war, ALL ships will be subject to aerial attack.  Our WWII fathers knew this and armed even the logistic and amphibious ships accordingly.  We need to relearn those lessons and begin arming our ships for war, not for leisurely peacetime cruises.

 

Before we can even begin to contemplate idiotic ideas like distributed lethality, we need to arm our ships so that they at least have some chance of defending themselves.

Burke Close In Defense

Here’s a simple awareness post.  Are you aware that our main (and only!) surface combatant has almost no close in self-defense weapon fit?  It consists of a single aft mounted CIWS and … nothing else.

 

As an example, here is a photo, dated 13-Oct-2009, of the USS McCampbell (DDG-85) showing the single aft mounted CIWS and … nothing else.

USS McCampbell - Note the single CIWS aft.

 Again, here is a Jul 2016 photo showing the Spruance and Momsen with no forward CIWS.

Spruance and Momsen without forward CIWS

Lest you think there was some temporary shortage of CIWS and that the ships have since been equipped, here is a photo of USS Nitze (DDG-94) dated 12-Oct-2020 and it shows the same single CIWS configuration.

USS Nitze, DDG-94

Although exact information is hard to come by it appears that DDG-51 to DDG-84 have two CIWS and DDG-85 on have only a single CIWS.  None have RAM or SeaRAM.

Alternatively, SeaRAM appears to have been installed on four Burkes (DDG-64, DDG-71, DDG-75, DDG-78) in place of their CIWS. 

 

Here is a Feb 2021 photo of USS Carney (DDG-64) showing a SeaRAM in place of the aft CIWS mount.

USS Carney with aft SeaRAM in place of CIWS

I don’t know whether the Navy’s experiment with SeaRAM will be continued and expanded or not.  New construction ships do not appear to show any SeaRAM so I’m assuming this is a dead end trend but we’ll see.

So, what’s the problem with only a single close in weapon system?  As we’ve previously demonstrated, naval anti-air engagements are likely to start at the horizon rather than hundreds of miles out as the Navy seems to believe (see, “Detection and Engagement Range”).  That means there will only be time for a few defensive missile launches which, in turn, means that close in weapon systems will assume vital importance.  Given the likelihood of saturation attacks and the number of missile likely to get through the very brief medium range (horizon) ESSM engagement zone, large numbers of close in weapons will be needed.  A single CIWS is going to be quickly overwhelmed.

 

The more recent CIWS versions have a ready magazine of 1550 rounds and a firing rate of 4500 rds/min.  That means the CIWS has a total firing time of 20 seconds before the ammo drum is depleted.  Even if one optimistically assumes, say, 5 seconds per engagement, that’s only 4 engagements before the CIWS is rendered inoperative due to emptying the ammo drum.  Yes, the drum can be replaced but that is a manual operation and time consuming.  Any attack will be over long before reload occurs.  The arithmetic makes it painfully obvious that a ship needs several CIWS to have any chance of survival.

 

Another problem is CIWS coverage area.  As you can see, the aft CIWS covers only the aft 180 deg or so sector.  Our main surface ship doesn’t even have full 360 deg close in defensive coverage!  If a missile approaches from a forward aspect, Burkes have no close in defense whatsoever!  Our main surface warship has no close in defensive coverage for half its aspect??!

 

I wonder if the lack of CIWS installations is the result of the Navy having bet – and lost! – that fully functional AAW lasers would be available by now and that the Navy could, therefore, save money by not installing CIWS?  That’s pure speculation on my part but it certainly fits nicely with the way the Navy thinks, doesn’t it?

 

 

In any case, we need to immediately begin adding CIWS and/or SeaRAM mounts to our Burke class destroyers.  We might also begin considering new forms of close in AAW defense (see, “A New AAW”).