Next fad for top-tier nations, or the next logical step in the weapon/counter weapon cycle?
This is something I've been scoping out for some time now, and I decided to make a go at putting together some sort of collection of the latest technological wonders that our engineers are tinkering around with.
With the advent of more and more precision weapons, let alone the current crop of unguided artillery, rockets, and mortars fired off in the target's general direction,
both precision inbound fire and unguided stuff (which for all intents and purposes the latter is more nuisance nowadays than anything, in theaters such as Iraq and Afghanistan where adversary forces have very little coordinated fire support to use against us, in the end doing little more than harassment even if damage is being done and lives are being lost... but it's not as if we're coming under massed artillery strikes with shells, rockets, and mortar bombs coming inbound by the dozens or hundreds on a daily basis...)
..(whew!), anyhow, there seems to be gaining interest, at least in western circles (read: "NATO countries") in adopting a nearly-quarter-century-old naval concept, the CIWS, or Close In Weapon System (used on ships to defeat anti-ship missiles primarily),
to be utilized as land-based deterrent against similar threats to land forces.
To follow are a number of links to pdf's (unfortunately, not everyone posts everything up in html format)
and various news articles on some of the latest land-based CIWS systems, either fielded or projected near-term or a few more years down the road.... |