re: Baghdad airport being attacked by rockets. Phalanx doing work

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I would love to know if those rounds explode dynamically depending on the threat range or if they are static.

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I don’t know the answer to that, but that’s a good question.

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They're just regular bullets or some other type of kinetic projectile. I'm not positive if they're standard ammo or some sort of saboted penetrator. I'm pretty sure that there are no timers, fuses, explosive, etc., though. It's just lots and lots of some kind of dense metal moving at several thousand feet per second radar guided onto target. The targeting system picks up the rocket, determines its position in space relative to the gun, and calculates its probable future path based on its velocity and current heading. It knows the average velocity of the bullets it is about to pour onto its target and atmospheric conditions and uses that to calculate time of flight and probable trajectory of the bullets. Then it calculates the direction it should shoot the bullet so the bullet and the rocket arrive at the same point in space at the same time. Then it fires an ungodly number of bullets at the target.

I'm pretty sure that its radar also tracks individual outgoing bullets and uses that information to continuously refine its firing solution until the radar returns determine that the rocket has been destroyed. Think of how a machine gunner uses tracers to see if he's firing at his desired target and can adjust his fire onto the target if he isn't shooting where he wants to. Same thing, but with radar and a Gatling cannon.