The M167 Vulcan Air Defense System (VADS) is a towed, short-range

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

anti-aircraft gun Anti-aircraft warfare (AAW) is the counter to aerial warfare and includes "all measures designed to nullify or reduce the effectiveness of hostile air action".AAP-6 It encompasses surface-based, subsurface ( submarine-launched), and air-ba ...

designed to protect forward area combat elements and rear area critical assets. It was also used to protect

U.S. Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is one of the six United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Tracing its origins to 1 ...

warplane

airfield An aerodrome, airfield, or airstrip is a location from which aircraft flight operations take place, regardless of whether they involve air cargo, passengers, or neither, and regardless of whether it is for public or private use. Aerodromes in ...

s and

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...

helicopter airfields. The heart of the M167 is the M168 Cannon, a variant of the

M61 Vulcan The M61 Vulcan is a Hydraulic machinery, hydraulically, electrically, or pneumatics, pneumatically driven, six-Gun barrel, barrel, air-cooled, electrically fired Gatling gun, Gatling-style rotary cannon which fires 20 mm caliber, rounds at an e ...

20×102 mm rapid-fire rotary cannon. It was also effective against lightly armored ground targets. The M167 gun has now been withdrawn from service by U.S. military units, but is still used by other countries.

History

The two versions of the Vulcan Air-Defense System, the towed M167 and self-propelled M163 VADS, were developed by the United States Army Weapons Command at

Rock Island Arsenal The Rock Island Arsenal comprises 946 acres (383 ha) and is located on Arsenal Island, originally known as Rock Island, on the Mississippi River between the cities of Davenport, Iowa, and Rock Island, Illinois. It is home to the United Stat ...

in 1964. They were accepted as a replacement for the

M45 Quadmount The M45 quad mount is a towed anti-aircraft gun consisting of four .50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns mounted in pairs on either side of an armored open-top gunner's compartment with electrical laying. It was developed by the W. L. Maxson C ...

in 1965, and first production M167s were delivered to the U.S. Army in 1967. Starting in 1994, the M167 was replaced in U.S. service by the

M1097 Avenger The AN/TWQ-1 Avenger Air Defense System is an American self-propelled surface-to-air missile system which provides mobile, short-range air defense protection for ground units against cruise missiles, unmanned aerial vehicles, low-flying fixed-win ...

missile launcher and in 2005, by a ground-based version of the

Phalanx CIWS The Phalanx CIWS () is an automated gun-based close-in weapon system to defend military watercraft automatically against incoming threats such as aircraft, missiles, and small boats. It was designed and manufactured by the General Dynamics Co ...

self-defense gun which the

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft ...

uses on its ships. The Phalanx CIWS uses the same basic 20 mm rapid-fire Gatling gun as the M167.

Design

JASDF VADS1 Kai in Hamamatsu Air Base 20140928-01

The M167 VADS consists of a 20mm M168 cannon, linked ammunition feed system, and a fire control system in powered turret, mounted on an M42A1 towed carriage. The M167A2 VADS was modified with an improved fire-control subsystem. The improvement was obtained by replacing the disturbed reticle sight with a director reticle sight, the sight current generator with a digital processor, and the azimuth drive assembly with a harmonic drive. It also had an extra wheel put on each side which prevented flipping by providing a longer lever. Sudan and Yemen used M167 guns seated upon the Soviet

BTR-152 The BTR-152 is a six-wheeled Soviet armoured personnel carrier (APC) built on the chassis and drive train of a ZIS-151 utility truck. It entered service with a number of Warsaw Pact member states beginning in 1950, and formed the mainstay of Sovi ...

APC.

Operators

Current operators

* (7) * * (10) * (72) * (30) * * * (60) * (30) Used by the National Guard * (16) * (24) * (6) * - Used by Houthi forces

Former operators

* * (40, 42 delivered) *

References

External links

M167 VADS
at GlobalSecurity.org * {{commons category, M167 Vulcan Anti-aircraft guns of the United States 20x102mm