
A United Nations report calling for a moratorium on autonomous weapons systems that emerged Thursday cites the Navy’s Phalanx Gatling gun for ship defense as a system that should receive greater scrutiny because of its ability to automatically fire on perceived threats. The Phalanx Close-In Weapons System (CWIS) is deployed on most Navy surface combatants and is designed to automatically detect, track and fire on anti-ship missiles or surface threats. The draft U.N. report submitted in early April and posted…