The Army is developing its most lethal gun yet, modified M2

[Thor]

One gun that hits its target pretty much every time is better than a hundred that just get into the general area. Look at the success of the Kamikaze, they didn't get through every time but some did...with everybody shooting at them.

But as many have noted on INGO before, when it comes to warfare one gun is none and two are one. I guess if your one gun breaks you'd better have some backup.

 

[Spike Jones 5 2002]

Are you stating that the one gun ship would have been able to knock down all of the Kamikazes?
They attacked from all directions. One gun one direction at a time.

 

[Thor]

But one gun with range, accuracy, and rate of fire that make it the equal of many from WWII. The defensive rings start much further away now and include many tools beside guns, and the one gun on the Arleigh Burke you see is not there for aircraft anyway...the mod 4 5" gun has an effective range of 20NM and can fire up to 20 RPM is there for surface engagements. First up for aircraft is detection by the Aegis radar and missile engagements with the Evolved Sea Sparrow then the Phalanx 20mm for close in defense. Against ships, with the new Tomahawk anti-ship sensor the ship to ship range has been extended out to 1500NM. So, yeah, I guess I'm saying they could have knocked down all those Kamikazes and then sank their carriers.

 

[Spike Jones 5 2002]

When you have a hundred aircraft traveling at 250 MPH and dozens (at least) missiles traveling at 1000S of MPH WITH several warheads.
BIG difference. ONLY ONE source of protection. YEA that will do it.

 

[Thor]

It's not just one gun, one source of protection. AB class destroyers have 80 launch cells each cell can carry 4 ESS. The ESS is designed to counter supersonic and high g maneuvering targets, they recently engaged a couple of Chi-Com S-802 supersonic sea skimming missiles fired from Yemen and swatted them out of the sky at 20+NM from the destroyers. They then destroyed the launch sites and supporting radars.

A forest of AAA aimed by MK1 eyeballs might look satisfying but would they would be sitting on the bottom of the sea.

 

[INGarand]

Sounds ok for vehicles, need to also figure out how to supply ammo for such a beast.