War in the Red Sea: American warship miraculously repelled a missile attack

The Phalanx Close-In Weapons System (CWIS) was deployed by the US Navy destroyer USS Gravely on Tuesday evening against what US officials said was a cruise missile that passed just 1 mile from the ship – and therefore beyond seconds before impact.

According to CNN, the automated Phalanx system is equipped with Gatling guns that can fire up to 4,500 20-millimeter rounds per minute, hitting projectiles or other targets at extremely close range.

“The Phalanx weapon system is a fast-firing, computer-controlled, radar-guided cannon that can engage anti-ship missiles and other close-in threats on land and at sea,” says manufacturer Raytheon on its website, titled “Last Line of Defense.”

US warships have repelled dozens of previous Houthi missile attacks using longer-range defenses, likely standard SM-2 missiles, standard SM-6 missiles and advanced Sea Sparrow missiles, analysts say. These defensive missiles engage their targets at ranges of 8 miles (about 12 kilometers) or more.

But that didn’t happen Tuesday night for reasons that weren’t disclosed.

Tom Karako, director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said it was “concerning” that a Houthi missile flew so close to a US warship.

“If you’re going at a pretty good speed, 1 mile isn’t a very long time,” Karako said.

Analyst Karl Schuster, a former US Navy captain, said the Houthi missile, traveling at about 600 mph (965 km/h), was probably about 4 seconds away from hitting the US warship when it was destroyed, likely , a 2-3 second burst from the destroyer’s automated defense system. He noted that destroying an incoming missile within 1 mile does not necessarily prevent debris from hitting warships.

“Missiles do not vaporize when destroyed, they scatter into thousands of fragments and parts of the rocket body,” Shuster said. “The good news is that the lighter pieces slow down quickly, but the larger pieces can fly up to 500 meters.”

According to Schuster, the closer an incoming missile is to a ship when destroyed, the greater the danger to the ship, since larger fragments can penetrate unarmored parts of the hull and superstructure from a distance of about 200 meters.

In the case of a subsonic cruise missile like the one Gravely encountered on Tuesday, “depending on whether the warhead explodes, the size of the debris, the angle of the missile and the altitude at the time the missile is destroyed, about 2% of the debris could reach the ship.” – said the expert.

Up to 70% of debris from missiles that travel at higher speeds, such as supersonic cruise missiles or ballistic missiles, are likely to hit a warship after being attacked by a Phalanx, he said.

Phalanx has a limited altitude range, so it might not even be able to hit ballistic missiles falling from above a warship, Schuster added.

Even with these caveats, the Phalanx is an important weapon for the US Navy, CNN notes. Since its introduction in 1980, the system is now installed on all US Navy surface ships, and at least 24 US allies also use it, according to Raytheon, which notes that a land-based version has already seen combat.

Whether this will be used further in the current fighting in the Red Sea remains to be seen. But the Iran-backed Houthis show no signs of slowing down in their attacks on commercial shipping and warships in the waters around their base in Yemen, which they claim are retaliation against Israel for its war in Gaza, CNN notes.

A day after the Gravely attack, U.S. Central Command said another U.S. destroyer, the USS Carney, had shot down incoming anti-ship missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles. And on Thursday, US troops shot down a Houthi drone over the Gulf of Aden and destroyed a surface drone in the Red Sea, it said.

Meanwhile, two ballistic missiles launched from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen failed to reach their targets in the Red Sea, Central Command said.

The attacks on ships in the Red Sea are just a few of dozens carried out by Iranian proxy groups in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq since the Gaza war began last October, CNN recalls. The deadliest yet for the U.S. military occurred last Sunday, when a drone strike on a U.S. outpost in Jordan killed three U.S. soldiers. The US believes a militant group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq was behind the attack.

President Joe Biden told reporters Tuesday he had made a decision on the U.S. response to the strike, but declined to provide further details. The Biden administration’s options could include strikes against Iranian assets in the region, but strikes inside Iran itself are highly unlikely, officials said, as Washington is not seeking direct war with Tehran.

US officials told CNN this week that there are signs Iran may be increasingly concerned that its proxies are going too far in attacks on US interests, threatening to undermine the global economy and significantly increasing the risk of direct confrontation.

But some current and former U.S. officials are skeptical that Iran will significantly change its tactics. One US military official based in the Middle East said Iran was “quite happy with the way things are going.”