Yeah, This is a Big Deal

One of the secrets to the US victory against Japan during WWII was vastly superior logistics.

The US could operate and resupply ships at great distances from their home ports, while the Japanese were far more reliant on getting supplies in port.

It was, and is, a big deal in any sort of naval conflict, and it remains a capability that is generally lacking in other naval powers at this time.

One of the advances in technology that has found its way onto warships, vertical launch cells, has thrown a bit of a spanner into this while logistics process, since reload loading the cells requires equipment that can only be used in port, or rather, it was, as the VLS reloading underway has been demonstrated recently.

The U.S. Navy has achieved a significant breakthrough in maritime combat readiness by successfully demonstrating the Transferrable Reload At-sea Method (TRAM) on a warship in open waters for the first time.

This innovative technology allows warships to rearm their missile systems while at sea, drastically reducing downtime and enhancing operational effectiveness.

The historic demonstration took place on October 11th, off the coast of San Diego, where sailors aboard the Ticonderoga-class cruiser USS Chosin (CG 65) used the hydraulically-powered TRAM device to load an empty missile canister into the ship’s MK 41 vertical launching system (VLS).

One interesting question raised is whether this is compact enough to operate on the far more numerous Arleigh Burke class destroyers, which carry a similar missile loadout.

It it does, it means that surface combatants won't have to be pulled out of an operation to reload.