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> Mach 4 missile that maneuvers with the engine shut down, does not experience compression heating from hypersonic flight

Well, if it's only Mach 4, it won't ever experience hypersonic flight, so that's pretty much a given.

> Phalanx CIWS was prototyped in 1973 and has been in service since 1980. Shooting down incoming missiles with machine gun fire has been viable for a very long time

Sure, if you are firing at much slower missiles and you've got a platform big enough to mount a rapid-rotating turreted Vulcan on, and even then it's not super reliable which is why it's being replaced or supplemented in newer deployments with systems based around the Rolling Airframe Missile.

Has Phalanx ever been tested against a supersonic missile?

Also, there is no way to install such a system on a fighter airplane.

Back when I was playing the game the Moskit and its derivatives made the CIWS obsolete. The short engagement range meant that the debris of the threat would impact and mission kill.

The larger 30mm and RAM were created to extend that range. We planned to engage when the thermal plume was detected on the horizon.

The higher speed of ballistic threats meant that the pK of the SM-3 was pretty low. Luckily finding ships at sea is hard.

In a fight against a first line threat it was best to be in a boomer.