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Originally Posted by Wildcat
Well because you don't receive a warning until the missiles are much closer, which reduces the time you have to dedicate anti missile resources.
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There is the problem the auto lookout tends to give very good info: range, course, speed ... etc that's even better than the radar solution. It is unfair for them to give such precise data about something that far out, when all they can honestly say is that they saw a flash.
If you really wanna try, I guess you can, after seeing the flash yourself, rush to Nav, plot a manual solution where you THINK the missile will head towards and tell the gun to engage that. The gun should fire. Not that it will hit it, but that's realistic - the chances of hitting missiles are lousy enough with full radar tracking.
The point is, you won't be able to engage it anyway due to a lack of precise data. The only thing you can do realistically is launch decoys and activate your CIWS.
As for your missile illuminator, even if the lookouts see it, there may be no way to direct the illuminator manually at all. Even if it can be directed, the lookouts are NOT optronics and the illuminator is not slaved electronically to them. Which means the data about at LEAST elevation and bearing has to be transmitted orally and punched in manually.
The illuminator will attempt the acquisition with no range gate and no velocity gate because it never received the data from the search radar, which all the waves are even more in the way than usual...
And really, what makes you think the illuminator can pick out the target from the clutter when the main search radar hasn't yet, and even if it can, or maybe you decided to just send the missile out without a tracking solution and hope it'd somehow detect the SARH reflections, that the missile's even more simpleminded system will have a chance...
The point is, you stand no chance without electronic acquisition, either by radar or optronics.