Although I've only been playing a short time, I've yet to see the flak cannons on my ships activate. I know they have an incredibly short range, but there are times I've had a corvette hovering right above me (and killing my ship in 5 seconds, but that peeve is another matter) and been practically nose to nose with another ship and I haven't seen the flak cannons fire at all. Am I missing something here?

You have fire them yourself; they're secondary weapons. Switch from your primary to use them.

You have to press Q to switch weapons to the flak cannons and fire them yourselves. If you're looking for an automated proximity defense system, look into autocannon modules.

Thanks for the info. I thought these were automated and not manual. I play on PS4 so I'll figure out which button switches; I don't believe it was in the tutorial since the Simurgl didn't ahve secondary cannons.

D pad left and right.

press right on the d-pad to swap to your secondary weapons. flaks have a max range of 800 metres

Thanks guys.