The INSANE Cost of The Phalanx CIWS

How Much Does it Cost to Fire The Phalanx CIWS for a Minute

At its heart is the 20mmm M61 Vulcan autocannon that’s used on the F-16.

This beast replaced the Goalkeeper CIWS on British Royal Navy Ships and is used by 16 Naval Forces throughout the world. It’s designed to take out everything from aircraft, missiles, boats and drones before they have a chance at reaching the ship.

It’s boasts a bharmy 4,500 round per minute fire rate equating to 75 rounds a second.

The US Navy uses the uses General Dynamics 20mm enhanced lethality cartridge.

Now this ammo is not cheap, in the DoDs latest proposed budget for 2025 they cite intentions to purchase 372,000 of them for around $17 million at a cost of $45.84 cent a round.

The US median salary last year was around $60,000. So that would only take the phalanx 17.5 seconds to churn through in ammo.

In fact firing this thing for just one second costs $3,438 and firing it continuously for a whole minute would set you over $205,000.

But the whole system only has a 1,550 round capacity which would give you a little over 20 seconds of firing at a cost of $72052.