Sentry gun
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The sentry gun is a gun that is automatically aimed and fired at targets that are detected by sensors. The earliest functioning sentry gun was the Phalanx CIWS, a radar-guided gatling gun platform that defended ships from missiles. In 2006, Samsung Group announced a 5.56 mm robot machine gun to guard the Korean DMZ (Samsung SGR-A1).
Fictional sentry guns have appeared in science fiction since the 1940s. Examples include Aliens (1986) and the television series Æon Flux (early 1990s). Video games have also provided a fertile ground for fictional visions of sentry guns.
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[edit] Military use
[edit] Phalanx close-in weapons systems
The earliest functioning sentry gun was the Phalanx close-in weapons system (CIWS), a radar-guided gatling gun platform that defends ships from missiles. There is a land-based version of the Phalanx CIWS, also used for missile defense. Similar to the Phalanx is the Goalkeeper CIWS, a more powerful version with the same purpose. According to the United States Navy,
Phalanx is the only deployed close-in weapon system capable of autonomously performing its own search, detect, evaluation, track, engage and kill assessment functions[1]
These guns perform sentry duty against missiles, but are not in line with the fictional versions of the sentry gun that are used primarily against humans in books, movies, and video games.
[edit] Samsung's robot sentry
[edit] DIY Sentry guns
Several home-builders have made diy sentry guns. Examples are the many DIY guns made by Alan Parekh.[2] Also, a commercial (paintball-gun) system is available from zero-op.[3] Some regular remote weapon systems have also been made by hobbyists in order to allow hunting or airsoft from a distance.[4]
[edit] In fiction
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Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (May 2009) |
[edit] Literature
A sentry gun is used to pin down a group of rebelling colonists in Robert A. Heinlein's 1949 novel Red Planet. Michael Crichton's version, in the 1969 novel The Andromeda Strain, fired tranquillizer darts at intruders in the underground facility. Later, in 1995, Crichton wrote about a more advanced vision of sentry guns in his book Congo.
[edit] Video games
Video games have provided a fertile ground for visions of sentry guns. In many games they are simply called "turrets", and it may not be clear whether they are manned or automatic. The Team Fortress mod for QuakeWorld arguably solidified the phrase "sentry gun" in gamers' vocabularies. Other notable examples include the Contra and Duke Nukem series. In Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 sentry guns are the basic defenses of Soviet bases.
[edit] Film and television
Fictional examples of automatic sentry guns also appeared in the Special Edition version of Aliens. In the film, marines who were surrounded by hostile alien creatures barricaded themselves into a sick bay facility, and deployed sentry guns to block access points to the sick bay. The weapons successfully repelled the alien adversaries until they ran out of ammunition. All references to this sequence were deleted from the theatrical print of the film, though Alan Dean Foster's 1986 novelisation of the movie contained this scene. The sentry gun sequence was reinstated for the extended Special Edition cut of the film, released initially on VHS in 1988 and much later on DVD.
As mentioned above, the film adaptation of Congo depicted a fictional laser-sighted remote sentry unit, which was used to repel the enemies. The science fiction television series Æon Flux depicted accurate sentry guns in multiple episodes. In the show, these guns, along with concrete walls, are depicted as a series of Fortifications separating two nations.
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[edit] See also
- Aliens
- Sentry guns in Half-Life 2
- Laptop guns in Perfect Dark
- Team Fortress
- Phalanx CIWS
- Goalkeeper CIWS
- Remote weapon system
- PROWLER
[edit] References
- ^ U.S. Navy Fact File Phalanx Close-In Weapons System. Retrieved on April 10, 2008
- ^ Alan Parekh gun 1, Alan Parekh gun 2
- ^ Zero-op sentry-gun
- ^ Remote hunting and plinkering
