Missile Loadouts

The combat power of a modern warship is based almost entirely on the missiles that it carries. However, missile loadouts often change over the service life of a ship, as new weapons are introduced and old weapons are phased out. The increasing use of universal launch systems has also made missile loadouts more flexible and easier to change without extensive refits. While it is nearly impossible to know the exact missile loadout of any warship, it is possible to make some educated guesses.

All of these loadouts represent theoretical maximum wartime loadouts and do not include the training missiles that were often carried for arm launchers. They also do not account for the fact that ships often go to sea with far less than a full loadout of missiles and will sometimes deploy with specialized loadouts designed for particular missions However, when possible, I have attempted to determine number of missiles that were actually possessed at the time and avoid purely theoretical loadouts.

This is particularly difficult for many of smaller navies, as nations that do not produce their own weapons will often only procure enough missiles for a single loadout and any weapons expended in training or wartime might not be replaced. If a weapon system is nearing retirement, it is also likely the missile stocks will be run down, which can result in older ships not having enough missiles to go around. Conversely, new weapons are often in scarce supply for many years - ESSM for instance is often considered a game changer because it allows VLS ships to carry four times as many weapons, yet in reality there are only enough ESSM for each ship to have a handful.

All of the missile images are close to scale. However, detailed dimensions are generally unavailable and the art style forces some compromises. Missiles are color-coded by use, but multirole missiles such as SM-6, which can be employed against air targets, surface targets, and ballistic missiles, are only colored for their primary mission. Reloads of larger missiles such as ASROC and Sea Sparrow are included when information is available, but reloads of smaller weapons are not included.

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