Airsoft enthusiast Tanikoma Kurata has built a scale model of the Mk 15 Phalanx close-in weapon system (CIWS), a naval point-defense system designed to protect against incoming missiles and aircraft. The miniature Phalanx is made with a CAW M134 airsoft machine gun, which fires BB pellets, housed in a tank that holds around 900,000 pellets. Kurata created the model in his garage, using hydraulics to allow it to rotate and move vertically, and installed a camera to resemble the side-mounted Forward Facing Infrared (FLIR) camera of the Block 1B variant of the Phalanx.
Kurata recently posted a video of his Phalanx airsoft in action, shooting at a target made of heavy paper material, which was easily cut in two by the BB pellets. The genuine Phalanx CIWS, developed by Raytheon, is armed with a variant of the M61 Vulcan 20 mm cannon and can fire 4,500 rounds per minute. It is found on a wide variety of naval vessels around the world and can attack targets either manually or autonomously.
Kurata’s Phalanx airsoft is around 2.3 meters tall, with its pedestal, compared to the actual weapon’s 4.7 meters. Kurata posted several tweets in March 2021, showing various stages of the model’s construction, and has said he will conduct more tests in a “wider place” in the future.
The Phalanx has long been a fixture in popular culture, and sailors have been filmed ‘talking’ to the weapon and tracking a Boeing 737 over a US Navy ship. Comparisons have been made with the fictional characters R2-D2 and Minions. Taiwan has reportedly been interested in the Phalanx for use at its mountain-side air force bases, and a terrestrial version called Centurion was introduced in 2004 to shoot down rockets and mortar shells in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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