That's a question that is way, way above my paygrade lol.

Well the BONGs were synthesized (sounds a lot like the general quarters alarm on a ship, now that I think about it), but yeah, the whole message was pretty ludicrous, other than the part where you might get your ass blown up.

What you should be more amazed at is the LPWS's ability to hit a nickel with its M61A1 at 2,000 yards.

Don't get me wrong, it can be a totally autonomous system, and on ships it's generally set up that way - if the ship is in general quarters and the CIWS mounts are running in kill mode, anything around the ship is fair game! The Tactical Action Officer (TAO) still has to order the firing of any weapons, but once…

210-837-5309.

As McMash (and I, earlier) said, the rounds only go for a certain distance before the explode themselves. I can't tell you exactly what that distance is, but if you're good with math and have a stopwatch you can probably figure it out pretty close.

We as operators didn't really keep records, but I know the biggest object we hit was on Christmas day, it was a 155mm rocket. That's a big rocket.

I neglected to answer your other question. The operator sits in a compartment right behind the gun. I forget the official term for this space but we called it the doghouse. It contains the control console for the gun, and communications equipment. I can't really say much more than that. You understand.

Additional funny story: That picture was taken during my unit's deployment (5-5 ADA, 31st AD Brigade), and I know the guy that's standing on top of the dog house!

Normally, two guns are connected to each other, and I can't quite recall what that pairing is called (been a few years now), but IIRC it's a battery. One or more batteries will protect areas. I don't want to say how many guns there were where I was, but it was significantly more than one. Few of them overlapped areas,…

The LPWS doesn't have IFF, which is the primary means of aircraft identification. It's only looking at three things - size, speed, and distance. An object has to meet all three parameters before the search radar will hand it to the track radar. These parameters, loosely defined, are "looks like a mortar". That's why…

Have you checked the fridge? I find lots of stuff there.

The system had a great many parts, and thus was prone to failure like most things that have lots of parts. No-warns were the C-RAM battery's greatest fear. Most of our efforts were put to avoiding those. False warns were also aggravating, but no worse than that. Consider it training.

It's not 2000RPM. The gun fires at 4500RPM. 75 rounds a second. It sounds like a fart for a reason.

See my post above for more info on the gun, but the round cylinder thing is what houses the radars. The search radar, which sits at the very top of the dome, looks like a smaller version of the FURUNO units you see on boats, except with two arms facing opposing directions. It spins constantly, scanning a large dome…

Very, very well, until it rounds out of rounds. It fires 4500 rounds/minute, but the drum only holds 1500. You do the math.

Some technical corrections, though the bulk of the article is generally correct:

Cool! You might notice that my avatar is, and has been for some time, an LPWS mount. That's because I operated one of these for a year in Baghdad. Ask me anything.

Reverse Raccoon.

He attempted to send off a frenzied email to his friends and allies, but McAfee was doing... something. He wasn't sure it was scanning anything, and he wasn't sure that it was updating itself, but whatever it was doing, it had taken such complete control of his computer that he couldn't even move the mouse cursor.