CIWS is not a “Machine Gun”. Come on CNN. Don’t Be Sloppy with Facts.

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smstachwick said:
*sigh*

I think we’re missing the point here. The story is about an attack on a U.S. Navy vessel that almost succeeded. The importance is explained in the article.

“The episode underscores the threat the Houthis continue to pose to US naval assets and commercial shipping in the Red Sea, despite multiple US and British strikes on Houthi infrastructure inside Yemen.”

That, the most essential takeaway, is correct. The details of the CIWS’s classification and caliber aren’t particularly important.

The article also goes on to explain the background of the conflict, how the cruise missile got so close, the implications of that, and the next steps that the Navy plans to take in light of this incident.

Overall grade: B+. Not perfect but all of the important bits appear to be in order.
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Your point is well taken. The Close In Weapon System (CIWS), which is this rotary 20mm cannon we have been talking about, is a “point defense” weapon. It is the last line of defense. That the cruise misse got that close to the destroyer is scary. I am glad the CIWS worked and that the crew of the USS Gravely is safe.
 
bjphoenix said:
Well there is a Gatling gun as a component of the CIWS. Current terminology seems to use "gun" for .50 cal and under, and "cannon" for 20mm and bigger except that aren't these rotary things called "miniguns"? I wonder what the manufacturer calls it. It seems that these rotary things blur the lines though. (Do we call it "engine" or "motor"?)
As far as "machine gun"- the definition set forth by congress in the 1934 NFA says something like fires multiple cartridges for one pull of the trigger. Does the rotary gizmo in the CIWS even have a trigger? I guess it has a solenoid maybe. I always wondered how a real Gatling gun was classified- it doesn't have a trigger and requires cranking of the crank to make it keep firing.
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Cannon vs Machinegun caliber is a blurred line with .50 cal/12.7mm being considered solidly a MG caliber and 20mm being solidly a cannon caliber. The largest MG calibers I know of are the 13mm MG 131 and the 13.1mm Hotchkiss, the smallest cannon caliber in standard use was the 15mm MG 151/15 which eventually was discontinued in favor of the MG 151/20 20mm.
 
To play Devil's Advocate here for a sec:

A machine gun is any weapon that fires more than one projectile per activation of the triggering mechanism. Note that this does not include bump stocks or Forced Reset Triggers (FRTs). While the more *precise* description of the CIWS is "auto-cannon" it is still reasonably accurate to describe it as a machine gun. We've gone all goofy over the anti-gunners' proclivity to name any weapon other than a bolt-action or lever-action rifle as an "assault weapon" and likening it to a machine gun, that we forget that "machine gun" is an accurate description of a "fully-automatic" weapon, regardless of its nominal caliber or mechanism.

Don't mud-wrestle a pig. You get dirty and the pig enjoys it.
 
Reporters are almost never experts in what they are reporting about. Splitting hairs on terminology that is not part of the main issue is not a reasonable response. At the very least, it is not worth getting angry about. Have yourself a chuckle about it and move on with your life. If they are wrong about the main issue, that MIGHT be something to be angry about. But don't post here. That solves nothing. Better to write the news organization and correct them on their error.

BTW, pretty much any and every story I see relating to maritime and shipping issues I see a few mistakes. Over 30 years working on ships around the world makes me an expert (but I still don't know everything). Reporters don't have that kind of time to learn their subject, and no one asked me to do the story. So it's an imperfect system, but it's what we have.
 
John Kemker said:
To play Devil's Advocate here for a sec:

A machine gun is any weapon that fires more than one projectile per activation of the triggering mechanism. Note that this does not include bump stocks or Forced Reset Triggers (FRTs). While the more *precise* description of the CIWS is "auto-cannon" it is still reasonably accurate to describe it as a machine gun. We've gone all goofy over the anti-gunners' proclivity to name any weapon other than a bolt-action or lever-action rifle as an "assault weapon" and likening it to a machine gun, that we forget that "machine gun" is an accurate description of a "fully-automatic" weapon, regardless of its nominal caliber or mechanism.

Don't mud-wrestle a pig. You get dirty and the pig enjoys it.
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You are correct that a auto cannon is technically still a machine-gun, due to its method of function. The differentiation between cannon and machine-gun is one of caliber more than anything else you could scale up a Ma Deuce to 20mm and it would be a auto-cannon not a machine-gun even though its just a big M2.

I did my time in the service and was qualified on most of the US Army's man portable crew served weapons systems that were not mortars or artillery that were in service during the late 1980s and mid 1990s as well as some experimental systems that never actually went into service due to my units location near Aberdeen Proving Grounds and a frequent need for soldiers to go test systems in the later stages of development. Thats why I like facts about weapons, I have lots of experience and a fair amount of knowledge about them.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/autocannon
 
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A small nuance. The A-10 Thunderbolt, perhaps the most awesome death dealing device ever invented, fires 30 mm shells out of its rotary canon. Typically DU or Tungsten. For those on the insta, there is a guy there under the profile of brrrrt_corp who has a lot of great A-10 footage. The war in the Ukraine would be over if there was a squadron of A-10s about during that massive armored traffic jam. Fun facts, the gun was designed first, and they then engineered a plane to fit around it. The pilot sits in a 1.5" thick titanium bathtub that is impervious to virtually any kind or ground directed fire. When I was a young lad wearing the green suit in Korea, I slept well at night knowing they were patrolling along the DMZ. Where I live in Ohio, they often fly over on memorial day or 4th of July. A few selected tidbits that some might enjoy:











https://www.instagram.com/p/C1FllltvpcI/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CvaRpe3NZ5F/
 
The original Gatling gun that uses a hand crank to fire is NOT classed by BATFE as a machine gun because you have to crank it--semiautomatic although a very fast firing flavor. Electric rotary multibarrel guns are classed as automatic weapons and I believe require both a certain level of federal license and a $200 tax stamp to transfer. The very high firing rate means they are expensive to consider firing although I have heard of scaled-down .22 Gatling guns.
 
Also consider that mass media writes at roughly a fourth grade reading level. A machine gun is likely in that range. Autocannon likely isn’t. That means they would have to spend another paragraph explaining it. If the story wasn’t really about the CIWS, it probably makes sense to call it a machine gun and move on to the rest of the story. It may not be technically accurate, but it’s close enough for the vast majority of the TV watching population.
 
How it goes. Breech-bolts slide on tracks.
Round bearing on the outside of the breech-bolt rides in angled channel on exterior casing.
Rotor spins and breech-bolts load and fire the rounds.
Rounds ejected.
Big mess made downrange.
On CIWS, empty rounds are not ejected onto the deck, they go back into the drum.
GE calls it an M61A1 or A2 Gatling Gun. I personally consider anything over .50 cal to be a "cannon."
I think that is WW2 terminology.

main-qimg-08311f35ac277fd3b66a04cb8fff673d.gif
 
RobertH3 said:
How it goes. Breech-bolts slide on tracks.
Round bearing on the outside of the breech-bolt rides in angled channel on exterior casing.
Rotor spins and breech-bolts load and fire the rounds.
Rounds ejected.
Big mess made downrange.
On CIWS, empty rounds are not ejected onto the deck, they go back into the drum.
GE calls it an M61A1 or A2 Gatling Gun. I personally consider anything over .50 cal to be a "cannon."
I think that is WW2 terminology.

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As was discussed up thread over .50cal is pretty much considered cannon territory, I once read somewhere that the official line was 15mm but I don't know where I read it just that I was many many sleeps ago....
 
Here’s another thing to consider: Naval convention is that even the big 16-inchers on the old battleships were called “guns”, not cannons or anything else. Would that apply to a modern rotary weapon mainly employed against aerial targets or is the 21st century so different that that convention is dropped?
 
smstachwick said:
Here’s another thing to consider: Naval convention is that even the big 16-inchers on the old battleships were called “guns”, not cannons or anything else. Would that apply to a modern rotary weapon mainly employed against aerial targets or is the 21st century so different that that convention is dropped?
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Gun has replaced cannon in artillery for the most part....and guns used for artillery are considered to be 20mm or larger. Artillery is split into 2 classes Guns and Howitzers with Mortars being their own class. Guns are high velocity flat shooting, howizters are lower velocity (generally) with a more arcing shot for better indirect fire. The Navy has little need for Indirect fire USUALLY, hence they would use more weapons that would be classed as Guns under modern terminology. Guns tended to have longer range than Howitzers bore for bore size due to ballistics and better armor penetration against other ships, the Army on the other hand tends to employ more Howitzers as they need the indirect fire capabilities to shoot over hills, over defensive postions etc hence they use fewer Guns, though they did employ a number of them during the WW2 to Vietnam eras including the Nuclear Cannon and the 8" Self Propelled Gun aka 203mm SP Gun.

I don't always find Wikipedia to be the most accurate but the first few paragraphs of the link below pretty well describes why Cannon has mostly fallen out of use except for auto-cannons
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon
 
Zbench said:
Important to note that the Army itself in the field manuals it puts out describes the .50 as MACHINE GUN, caliber .50, Browning M2

https://archive.org/details/TM9-1005-213-10/page/n1/mode/1up
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Indeed they do, just to muddy things up....the Mk19 40mm fully automatic grenade launcher is also referred to in its field manual as a machine gun, and its well over .50 cal. so the terms are pretty arbitrary.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-22-27/fm3-22-27.pdf
 
rharshberger said:
Indeed they do, just to muddy things up....the Mk19 40mm fully automatic grenade launcher is also referred to in its field manual as a machine gun, and its well over .50 cal. so the terms are pretty arbitrary.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-22-27/fm3-22-27.pdf
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I know it well, I had three Mark19s and 3 M2s in my smoke platoon when I was a platoon leader in Korea. I think as far as small arms goes, the key is that they are all belt fed to include the Mark 19. That’s the machine part of the gun.
 
rharshberger said:
I don't always find Wikipedia to be the most accurate
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True, there is variability.
But do look at the footnotes and then look up them before passing judgement on a Wikipedia page.
I have often, frequently, usually, found the Wikipedia pages I end up bothering to look at for my interests to be quite well footnoted.
 
Well, to further make things even less clear, the USN refers to large caliber projectile weapons as "Naval Rifles."
This term emerged when cannons went from smoothbore to rifled... o_O
Even more fun, the Navy uses caliber as a multiplier for barrel length.
Shooting the 5" 54 Caliber on my last ship (yes 20 years ago) was super fun. Best job on the ship IMO.
Standard missiles are stressful compared to boom, boom, boom!
So 5" x 54 = 270"
So a 5" 54 Caliber is 5" in inside diameter and 22 and a half feet long. o_Oo_Oo_O
The newer guns are 62 Caliber 🤪
 
Zbench said:
I know it well, I had three Mark19s and 3 M2s in my smoke platoon when I was a platoon leader in Korea. I think as far as small arms goes, the key is that they are all belt fed to include the Mark 19. That’s the machine part of the gun.
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Mk19 was my primary mounted weapon, I received a brand new one in cosmoline to replace my M67 recoilless rifle. Primary dismounted weapon for me was the M60 machinegun. I was an MP we also received M16A2's at about the same time to replace our triangular handgaurd M16A1s. Mk19 Mod3 is an awesome weapon system, with a good spotter it was easy to place the second or third round on target at over 1500 meters, then fire for effect, usually it was fire..adjust...impact...fire..adjust...impact...repeat or fire for effect. One of my spotters was good enough to call the adjustment long or short before impact and roughly how much and usually how much left to right was covered in the first round.
 

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