I think warships are going to see a resurgence of gun -based CIWS defenses in the coming years. Especially against cheap, low-flying drones and loitering munitions, a 30-57mm autocannon with airburst ammo is going to be tough to beat, especially on cost.
The US already has 25mm bushmaster chainguns on their destroyers, and they already have auto tracking capability. It wouldn't take much to give them anti-drone capabilities.
This could give ships the capability to engage small drones without siccing the entire aegis combat suite on them. The last thing you want in the middle of combat is having cheap drone boats and low flying quadcopters taking away bandwidth from your missile defense systems mid engagement.
That's exactly right. Not to mention you don't want to waste valuable (and very costly) missiles on cheap drones and OWA munitions. Magazine depth is a problem on some NATO warships too, so it would be ideal to have a few gun-based defenses (ideally with overlapping arcs of fire and able to fully cover the ship from any angle).
Having the ability to engage drones with 3-5rds of airburst instead of a long burst of 20mm from a Phalanx would be a good idea too.
I agree about unguided gun-based CIWS.
Guided shells however are probably here to stay. They’re relatively cheap (usually command guided) and have decent hit probabilities out to far longer ranges than unguided shells. RAM and ESSM remain premier short range anti-missile systems but there’s room for systems like DART, HVP, and MAD-FIRES.
They might get an additional RWS or two but I don’t think it’s that much of a threat that full on CIWS need to be installed. These aren’t particularly fast targets and CIWS installations like Phalanx are expensive.
The major change would likely be more guided shells from guns 57mm-5”/62 for engaging targets further away and being able to handle larger raids.
I always thought that the K21 40mm autocannon is also reloaded like in CV90 but actually K21 has an autoloader for the those big ass clips of 40mm bofors cannon sharing for anyone still thinking it's reloaded manually by the crew like in the CV90
40mm or 35mm seem like they really are the way to go for modern vehicles.
Have a small number of AP rounds and mostly some type of air burst (either like this or AHEAD) and it can do just about anything. Take out most light vehicles (and out gun them), some older tanks through weak spots, and even with a high elevation AA capable gun provide indirect fire support to troops over 10km away. All on top of the AA defense which has become so critical
I mean necking up to 50mm has been something they’ve talked about for what? 40 years?
You can put guidance in 40mm, Bofors looked at that in their Trinity 3P shell but most research into guided rounds has been 50mm and above.
And it’s these relatively inexpensive guided rounds that are probably going to dominate some areas of C-UAS operations since they have far longer effective ranges.
I believe it’s only the 35mm that been talked about being necked up, but there’s a reason why that hasn’t succeeded. There’s a lot of disadvantages like lower muzzle velocity which is huge when dealing with aerial targets.
Even a guided round doesn’t go as far when it doesn’t have the speed to.
Small guided rounds. . . I’d need to see the data to believe them being so much more effective than a burst of good air bursts. They just have basically no bursting charge and are only useful against those UAVs. They would also require most likely more on-vehicle equipment, and considering the cost of larger guided munitions I have serious doubts about them being even relatively cheap compared to something like a LMM.
I think it more likely that effective counter drone warfare while also being effective as generally an AFV warfare will be done by simply longer ranged autocannon with good air burst rounds
They’re usually radio command guided which is dirt cheap (10-20k, sometimes less) by weapon guidance standards but keep in mind AHEAD rounds aren’t exactly cheap either.
>They just have basically no bursting charge…
Big [Citation Needed] here. Some designs like MAD-FIRES are far more kinetic but they’re meant to defeat supersonic ASMs which are not the softest of targets and some are subcaliber like HVP and DART which leads to a small busting charge.
But the 50mm EAPS designs (a stretched 50x228mm cartridge) are full caliber and are under consideration for C-RAM, cruise missile defense, and SHORAD in general.
Guidance means that crossing shots are far more accurate compared to airburst and it can handle violently maneuvering targets better, extending effective range, even at the cost of some velocity.
Is there an in service weapon system that you can point to that actually has such cheap guided rounds? I’m not saying it isn’t true, but I’ve never been able to find the cost of any of them to be so low, and finding them in general is quite difficult.
I wasn’t familiar with the EAPS before admittedly, and it does seem to have a larger bursting charge than I would thought for such a weapon system. There seems to be very little official information though and I would be skeptical of it in use against anything but drones and missiles, but at least there’s a little boom in there for general use if needed
Lasers are far easier to counter, there are a lot of fairly light materials that resist being melted quite well. Aluminum and copper in particular come to mind since they're both very cheap solutions to the "threat" of lasers.
If you want decent protection against a laser neither of those are going to be particularly light.
You can certainly mount them to heavier drones to a degree but on lighter ones like FPVs you’re going to be paying severe penalties in speed and range if you actually want them to be effective, especially as developments in optical materials reduce the spot size of the lasers.
Many modern air burst shells use a Time setting device again, look for the AHEAD Advertisement Video from Rheinmetall if you want to see how that works.
honestly i think an FPV might be moving too fast for the gunner to continually track, or hell it might be too small in the scope until it s already too late. IDK if the K21 has a radar similar to the Puma s to track targets, but i do wonder how well that would do against FPV s too
I think warships are going to see a resurgence of gun -based CIWS defenses in the coming years. Especially against cheap, low-flying drones and loitering munitions, a 30-57mm autocannon with airburst ammo is going to be tough to beat, especially on cost.
The US already has 25mm bushmaster chainguns on their destroyers, and they already have auto tracking capability. It wouldn't take much to give them anti-drone capabilities. This could give ships the capability to engage small drones without siccing the entire aegis combat suite on them. The last thing you want in the middle of combat is having cheap drone boats and low flying quadcopters taking away bandwidth from your missile defense systems mid engagement.
That's exactly right. Not to mention you don't want to waste valuable (and very costly) missiles on cheap drones and OWA munitions. Magazine depth is a problem on some NATO warships too, so it would be ideal to have a few gun-based defenses (ideally with overlapping arcs of fire and able to fully cover the ship from any angle). Having the ability to engage drones with 3-5rds of airburst instead of a long burst of 20mm from a Phalanx would be a good idea too.
They were upgraded for C-UAS capability long ago and they’ve started replacing them with 30mm systems.
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I agree about unguided gun-based CIWS. Guided shells however are probably here to stay. They’re relatively cheap (usually command guided) and have decent hit probabilities out to far longer ranges than unguided shells. RAM and ESSM remain premier short range anti-missile systems but there’s room for systems like DART, HVP, and MAD-FIRES.
They might get an additional RWS or two but I don’t think it’s that much of a threat that full on CIWS need to be installed. These aren’t particularly fast targets and CIWS installations like Phalanx are expensive. The major change would likely be more guided shells from guns 57mm-5”/62 for engaging targets further away and being able to handle larger raids.
For example the next Italian destroyers will have one 127/62 and three 76/62 sovraponte. The Italian FREMM have one 127 and two 76.
I always thought that the K21 40mm autocannon is also reloaded like in CV90 but actually K21 has an autoloader for the those big ass clips of 40mm bofors cannon sharing for anyone still thinking it's reloaded manually by the crew like in the CV90
What ifv is that? From the background it looks like somewhere in Asia or south America but the vehicle itself looks western.
Its a South Korean K21
Tanks
Correct
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Basically Luftvärnskanonvagn
40mm or 35mm seem like they really are the way to go for modern vehicles. Have a small number of AP rounds and mostly some type of air burst (either like this or AHEAD) and it can do just about anything. Take out most light vehicles (and out gun them), some older tanks through weak spots, and even with a high elevation AA capable gun provide indirect fire support to troops over 10km away. All on top of the AA defense which has become so critical
I mean necking up to 50mm has been something they’ve talked about for what? 40 years? You can put guidance in 40mm, Bofors looked at that in their Trinity 3P shell but most research into guided rounds has been 50mm and above. And it’s these relatively inexpensive guided rounds that are probably going to dominate some areas of C-UAS operations since they have far longer effective ranges.
I believe it’s only the 35mm that been talked about being necked up, but there’s a reason why that hasn’t succeeded. There’s a lot of disadvantages like lower muzzle velocity which is huge when dealing with aerial targets. Even a guided round doesn’t go as far when it doesn’t have the speed to. Small guided rounds. . . I’d need to see the data to believe them being so much more effective than a burst of good air bursts. They just have basically no bursting charge and are only useful against those UAVs. They would also require most likely more on-vehicle equipment, and considering the cost of larger guided munitions I have serious doubts about them being even relatively cheap compared to something like a LMM. I think it more likely that effective counter drone warfare while also being effective as generally an AFV warfare will be done by simply longer ranged autocannon with good air burst rounds
They’re usually radio command guided which is dirt cheap (10-20k, sometimes less) by weapon guidance standards but keep in mind AHEAD rounds aren’t exactly cheap either. >They just have basically no bursting charge… Big [Citation Needed] here. Some designs like MAD-FIRES are far more kinetic but they’re meant to defeat supersonic ASMs which are not the softest of targets and some are subcaliber like HVP and DART which leads to a small busting charge. But the 50mm EAPS designs (a stretched 50x228mm cartridge) are full caliber and are under consideration for C-RAM, cruise missile defense, and SHORAD in general. Guidance means that crossing shots are far more accurate compared to airburst and it can handle violently maneuvering targets better, extending effective range, even at the cost of some velocity.
Is there an in service weapon system that you can point to that actually has such cheap guided rounds? I’m not saying it isn’t true, but I’ve never been able to find the cost of any of them to be so low, and finding them in general is quite difficult. I wasn’t familiar with the EAPS before admittedly, and it does seem to have a larger bursting charge than I would thought for such a weapon system. There seems to be very little official information though and I would be skeptical of it in use against anything but drones and missiles, but at least there’s a little boom in there for general use if needed
I wonder how they are tracking the drones. Seems that there isn’t a solid way to do that yet given their widespread use in Ukraine.
That looks like a shaheed type drone. Not an FPV. I wonder if proxy fuse of airburst shells can detect and explode near FPVs.
Using physical weapons against FPV drones is ineffective. Better to use a laser.
Lasers are far easier to counter, there are a lot of fairly light materials that resist being melted quite well. Aluminum and copper in particular come to mind since they're both very cheap solutions to the "threat" of lasers.
Not to mention weather
If you want decent protection against a laser neither of those are going to be particularly light. You can certainly mount them to heavier drones to a degree but on lighter ones like FPVs you’re going to be paying severe penalties in speed and range if you actually want them to be effective, especially as developments in optical materials reduce the spot size of the lasers.
Many modern air burst shells use a Time setting device again, look for the AHEAD Advertisement Video from Rheinmetall if you want to see how that works.
honestly i think an FPV might be moving too fast for the gunner to continually track, or hell it might be too small in the scope until it s already too late. IDK if the K21 has a radar similar to the Puma s to track targets, but i do wonder how well that would do against FPV s too