According to CNN and the New York Post on February 1, four U.S. ** revealed that on the night of January 30, a cruise missile fired by Yemen's Houthi forces into the Red Sea was too close to the U.S. ship, forcing the ship to use the CIWS system to shoot it down. According to the report, this is the closest Houthi attack to a U.S. ship.
According to the United States, the missiles launched by the Houthis in Yemen would have been intercepted at a distance of 8 miles or more from the US ships, and the missile on January 30 had already flown 1 mile (about 160 km), so much so that the Arleigh Burke-class missile destroyer had to use the close defense ** system. This is the first time that the US military has used this "last line of defense" since it began intercepting Houthi missiles at the end of last year. In the end, the missile was successfully shot down. The U.S. Command said there was no damage or damage to the incident.
The USS Graveley is an Arleigh Burke-class Type A guided missile destroyer commissioned in 2010 and is a relatively new one. The Arleigh Burke-class Type A missile destroyers are equipped with a 96-tube vertical launch system, which can be loaded with medium- and long-range anti-aircraft missiles such as Standard 2, Standard 3, and Standard 6, and can also be loaded with four Sea Sparrow short-range anti-aircraft missiles in one launch canister. In the end, it was the turn of the 20-mm Phalanx anti-aircraft artillery system to intercept. This time, the Houthi missile was shot down after about 1 kilometer, so will the United States be as lucky as this time?
So why is this happening? You must know that the Yemeni Houthis have issued several cruise anti-ship missiles, which are far from reaching the air defense limit of the Aegis system design. I think it starts with the power consumption of phased array radar. The power consumption of the phased array radar system is very large, taking the "Arleigh Burke" class destroyer as an example, this advanced ** is equipped with 4 SPY-1 phased array radar systems, each with a peak output of up to 1000-1500 kilowatts, and the total power of the four reaches 4000-6000 kilowatts. This means that if the four phased array radars are fully turned on, most of the power of the whole ship will be sucked by it, after all, the total power generation power of the whole ship is 7500 kilowatts. At the same time, phased array radar also generates high heat, and the heat dissipation system also consumes a lot of power. In order to save electricity and protect the combat effectiveness of the ship, even the US ** ships rarely turn on or only turn on 1-2 phased array radars in peacetime. At the same time, the phased array radar will produce a clear electromagnetic signal that exposes the ship's tracks, and in order to solve these problems, the usual air-to-sea search will be replaced by other smaller-power radars.
The U.S. ** ship is swaying near Yemen all year round, so it's no wonder if nothing happens.