US Embassy in Baghdad fires Gatling gun to defend itself VIDEO

The US Embassy in Baghdad has been protecting its facility from incoming projectiles with a Gatling gun that has been lighting up the night skies with streams of tracer rounds, CNN reports.

The sharp end of the C-RAM (Counter-Rocket, Artillery, Mortar) system is a 20mm Gatling gun capable of firing 4,500 rounds a minute.

It’s paired with radars, sensors and communications modules and mounted on a 35-ton trailer, enabling mobility and the ability to quickly acquire and destroy incoming targets, a report for the Missile Defence Advocacy Alliance (MDAA) says.

The gun’s 20mm rounds are both light armour and high explosive for versatility, attacking air and ground targets at a range of 2,000 meters, according to manufacturer General Dynamics. They also feature a self-destruct mechanism in case the target is missed, so rounds don’t do unintentional damage.

The system is a derivative of the US Navy Phalanx Close-in Weapons System, a gun that’s considered the last line of defence for warships against incoming cruise missiles or surface targets that make it past a ship’s longer-range defences.

The naval system made headlines in 2024 when the guided-missile destroyer Gravely used it to shoot down a Houthi missile that got closer than a mile to the warship in the Red Sea.

The land system has been used thousands of times to protect US forward operating bases in Iraq and Afghanistan since its first deployment to Iraq in 2004, the MDAA says.