A Houthi Missile Was Seconds From Hitting a US Destroyer. One Gun Was Left

On January 30, 2024, a Houthi anti-ship cruise missile came within about a mile of the destroyer USS Gravely in the Red Sea. The last weapon between that missile and more than 300 sailors was the Mk 15 Phalanx Close-In Weapon System: a six-barrel, 20 mm Gatling gun with its own radars, designed in the 1970s, that can search, detect, track, fire and assess the kill on its own, and carries about 20 seconds of ammunition. Inside: the 1967 sinking of the Israeli destroyer Eilat that pushed navies toward point defense, how the Phalanx works (two radars, the M61 gun, tungsten sabot rounds, the 1,550-round drum and closed-loop spotting), the USS Stark in 1987, the USS Jarrett and USS Missouri in 1991, RIMPAC 1996, the land-based C-RAM, SeaRAM, the Red Sea campaign and the Navy's lasers. CHAPTERS 0:00 Red Sea, January 30, 2024 1:13 The gun with 20 seconds of ammo 2:20 1967: the missile that changed navies 4:07 Building a robot gun 5:11 How it works, from the inside 7:40 When it failed 10:52 How it evolved 12:34 The Red Sea math 14:24 Lasers and the last line Footage and photos: U.S. Navy, U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force and U.S. Coast Guard via DVIDS; Naval History and Heritage Command; U.S. National Archives; Wikimedia Commons (public domain files only). Public domain unless credited below. The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement. 3D illustrations, animated maps and data graphics are original and simplified; the animated recreations follow published accounts, and positions in them are approximate. Some archival footage is representative: it shows the same weapon or ship type, not the specific event described. Narration uses a synthetic voice. FOOTAGE (DVIDS, public domain) CIWS Night Fire, USS Mustin (PO3 David Flewellyn) · USS Mustin CIWS PAC fires (PO2 Timothy Dimal) · USS Nimitz (PO3 Gina Gallia; Tomas Valdes) · USS Sterett (SN Drace Wilson) · USS Ross (PO2 Claire Alfaro) · USS Princeton (PO2 Logan Kellums) · USS Theodore Roosevelt (PO3 Victoria Galbraith) · USS Hue City (Oscar Sosa) · USS Boxer (Jesse Monford, DMA) · USS Milius (PO1 Gregory Johnson) · USS Gerald R. Ford (CPO RJ Stratchko) · USCGC Kimball (CPO John Masson, USCG) · Launches, USS Gravely, USS Carney, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower · "USS Carney: A Destroyer at War" (K. Basharat, PO2 T. Lee, A. Rooney, DMA) · USS Carney CIC b-roll (Austin Rooney, DMA) · C-RAM at Kandahar (SrA Ryan Green, USAF), Al Asad (Sgt. Kalie Frantz) and Task Force Defender (SSgt. Matthew Roberts) · SeaRAM, USS Savannah and USS Jackson · Laser Weapon System, USS Ponce (MCPO John Williams/ONR; CPO Joshua Bruns) · USS Lassen (PO2 Corey Todd Jones) · USS Mason in the Red Sea, aerial (PO1 Christopher J. Krucke) · USS Bainbridge CIWS (U.S. Central Command Public Affairs) · USS Ashland CIWS (Sgt. Brian Knowles, USMC) · USS George H.W. Bush (SA Francisco Linares Guerrero; PO2 Christina Lewis) · USS Gonzalez (SN Jayden Howard) · USS Bataan CIWS (PO2 Christopher Jones) · USS America CIWS (PO2 Jonathan Berlier, PO2 Matthew Cavenaile) · USS Carl Vinson (PO3 Jeffrey Kempton) · USS Howard CIWS upload (PO2 Jason Isaacs) PHOTOS (public domain) DVIDS: USS Gravely in the Red Sea (PO1 Jonathan Word) · CIWS maintenance (PO1 Kristin Schuster) · Laser Weapon System (John Williams, U.S. Navy). Naval History and Heritage Command: "USS Missouri under Attack by Iraqi Silkworm", John Charles Roach, 1991, Navy Art Collection. Wikimedia Commons (U.S. government and expired Crown copyright): USS Stark 1982 and 1987 (U.S. Navy; Todd Pacific Shipyards) · HMS Zealous (IWM FL 7923) · Royal Navy, WWII (IWM A27537, D. W. Cooksey) · P-15 (U.S. DoD DN-SC-93-05863) · HY-2 Silkworm (TSgt David McLeod) · USS Missouri, 1991 (PH3 Brad Dillon) · USS Jarrett (DoD) · A-6E Intruder (PH1 David Tucker) · USS King and USS Bigelow (U.S. Navy) · M61 Vulcan (San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives) · M163 VADS (U.S. Army) · USS Wisconsin, 1988 · USS Mason and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, 2024 · SeaRAM aboard USS Porter · USS Preble · ADM Daryl Caudle (U.S. Navy). MAP DATA: Natural Earth (public domain). SOURCES U.S. Navy fact file, MK 15 Phalanx CIWS · RTX (Raytheon), Phalanx and SeaRAM, and contract release of Sept. 8, 2025 · U.S. Central Command, Jan. 30, 2024 · Navy Times, Feb. 1, 2024 · CNN, Jan. 31, 2024 · USS Stark (FFG 31) formal investigation, June 12, 1987 · Naval History and Heritage Command · U.S. Naval Institute, Naval History, Oct. 2008 · OSAGWI, Depleted Uranium in the Gulf (II) · NAVEDTRA 14145 · NavWeaps · U.S. Maritime Administration, Advisory 2026-013 · Military.com, Jan. 15, 2025 · Pentagon press briefing, Aug. 30, 2021 · USNI News, Dec. 10, 2014 · DOT&E FY2024 Annual Report · The War Zone, Feb. 2, 2026 Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... "Industrial Cinematic" · "Stay the Course" · "Stormfront" #USNavy #Phalanx #CIWS