Close-in weapon system

It's a very sophisticated radar.

It is linked to a SeaWiz, a close-in weapon system.

And so if you have an incoming surface-to-surface missile, that Aegis radar swings, sees the incoming missile, the CWIS weapon system slews and engages it, right? Well, a commanding officer has to make two decisions.

Is he going to have weapons tight or weapons free, right? So in a weapons tight situation, that means he, the commanding officer, has the final decision to make regarding whether or not he's going to engage that incoming threat.

Weapons free means, okay, he has decided that the system, and in the advanced case of AI, the system will make the decision.

Like, in the Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea, I think it was in December, uh, a Houthi Iranian-backed missile came at the Harry S. Truman.

I think it came within five seconds before the CIWS, close-in weapons systems, took it out, right? V- a very dangerous.

Yeah.

So when you're close in a, what they call a str- a, a choke point, like the Strait of Hormuz, like the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, the Bab el-Mandeb, you're very close to land, and the adversary can get a weapon on you, a drone or a, a b- a ballistic missile, in, in seconds.

Yeah

... was instantly deleted by the CIWS before.

Yeah.

They're like, "Okay, that's, that's not working as intended." So they, they, they made it, they buffed it.

Uh, then it took 12 seconds of continuous fire from a CIWS to tell, to kill it.

I'm like, that's insane.

It's a flying tank.

It slid deeper, then surged forward again.

Then the CIWS spun up.

The thing came close enough that the tracking system locked onto it.

The CIWS spat a stream of rounds, the whole ship shaking with the sound.

The impact tore into one of the creature's limbs.

Bits of flesh and glowing fluid splattered the waves.