Well, I read a tom clancy book called Red Storm Rising and at one point the Russians launch a huge missle attack on a Carrier battlegroup from bombers and I was thinking along the lines of if that happened, then it would be helpfull to have a large number of close range fast firing cannons to decrease the number of missles.
Also not nitpicking on BlueEagle but in a modern conflict his ship did not have appropriate weapons. I means 12 12 in guns and one 64 cell VLS, a bunch of phalanxes, a classic sea sparrow and a couple of MK.45s. Really? But I do have to say that his ship is one of the most beautiful ships I have seen
<rubs temples>
Ok. Remember how they got into that problem in
RSR? The Phalanx mounts were a last resort. The book also predates the more rapid rate of fire, and higher magazine capacities of the VLS Ticos, and Burkes over the Mk-26 Ticos. The fact is, I can't think of any ships that were ever deployed with more than four Phalanx mounts. Also keep in mind that Phalanx has been superseded by RAM mounts, which offer longer range, and better PKs against supersonic missiles.
Keep this in mind - if you are the USN and you need a lot of CIWS fire, you've done several things wrong. The situation in
RSR is highly unlikely to occur for a very long time.
And for the record,
RSR was just as much Larry Bond as it was Clancy, as was
Hunt. Later books were not, and suffered for it.