There are, however, some details that I can talk about freely. The Phalanx system installed aboard ships has a theoretical arc of fire of 270 degrees, subject to cutouts from ship structure. The placement of the system aboard the FFG-7 class results in the system retaining most of its theoretical arc of fire. However, the lack of a forward firing arc is not serious in most cases, as I will show below. The effective use of chaff in missile defense depends on several factors - the speed and direction of the relative wind, the specific design of the ship's superstructure, and above all, detecting the missile as soon as possible.
All ships have a variable RCS, depending on the angle the ship makes with the missile's course.
The smallest RCS occurs with the bow or stern about 15-20 degrees off the line of the missile's course. If the ship is beam-on to the missile, in most cases, all the chaff the ship can fire isn't going to help. The relative wind is important because, first, the idea is to get the missile to follow the chaff away from the ship, and since the chaff moves at the speed of the relative wind, its movement is dependent on the wind, and second, the chaff launchers don't throw the chaff rounds that far away from the ship - a good relative wind is necessary to give the chaff enough separation to allow it to appear as a separate target for the missile to pick to track instead of the ship. Finally, the missile must be detected as soon as possible. The chaff rounds aren't immediately effective.