US Navy Reloads Missiles At Sea: Is America Now Ready For A Naval War With China?

by John Konrad (gCaptain) Picture this: A hulking warship bobbing in the Pacific, its missile silos as empty as a politician’s promises. Until last week, that ship would’ve been limping back to port, tail between its legs. But on October 11, 2024, the USS Chosin pulled off a magic trick that would make David Blaine jealous – reloading its missiles at sea.

On October 11, 2024, sailors aboard the USS Chosin used the Transferrable Rearming Mechanism (TRAM) to load an empty missile canister into the ship’s vertical launch system (VLS). This marks a significant milestone for a military branch limited to pier-side missile reloading for decades. Yet, as impressive as this feat is, the Navy still lags behind commercial technology. Moreover, it faces a far greater challenge—a real-world strategic game unfolding off our shores, from the Red Sea to the South China Sea.

TRAM, developed by engineers at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Port Hueneme, California, where shoreside testing was resumed in July is meant to change the way the Navy fights. Historically, U.S. warships had to make time-consuming trips back to port to reload their missile silos. With TRAM, they can now do that while still steaming ahead, keeping ships in the fight longer. It’s a game changer. Or at least, it should be.

But here’s the rub: while the Navy is patting itself on the back for cracking open its first missile canister at sea, the commercial offshore industry has been doing even more complex operations for decades. Companies in the North Sea, for example, routinely use advanced cranes—built with precise positioning technology and heave-compensation tech—to transfer dangerous loads – and even people – between moving ships and workboats in seas much rougher than what the Chosin faced.

Also read: US Marine Corps Experiments Offshore

That’s right. Private industry has been handling multi-ton payloads – including explosives used in drillship well testing – in stormy waters for years, while the Navy is still testing systems designed to work in sea states with three-foot waves. Catch-up, meet the U.S. military.

In truth, the U.S. Navy—with its Military Sealift Command replenishment ships—remains one of the best organizations at underway replenishment during harsh weather. However, this old technology uses horizontally tensioned wires connected between ships to move supplies. What they haven’t mastered yet is swinging a missile packed with explosives across the gap, then lift and carefully lowering it vertically into a tight box.

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Why This Matters Now: Missiles and the Houthis

It’s not just about bragging rights, though. The need for this kind of capability is pressing, and nowhere more so than in the Red Sea, where U.S. warships are burning through missiles faster than the Houthis can fire rockets. The missile stockpile isn’t endless, and ships have been forced to return to Bahrain to reload—a trip that takes them out of the fight, leaving merchant vessels exposed. In a region where trade routes are vital, and adversaries have proven capable of striking critical targets, that downtime isn’t just inconvenient—it’s dangerous. A warship out of the fight for days, or even weeks, means merchant ships, oil tankers, and civilian supply chains are all hanging in the wind.

This scenario isn’t theoretical. It’s happening, right now. The U.S. Navy’s failure to reload at sea has already left vulnerable gaps in key maritime regions. TRAM aims to plug that gap, but only if it can be deployed quickly, effectively, and fleet-wide. And that’s still a big “if.”

The China Problem: Big Fleets Vs Small Missile Stockpiles

While the Navy focuses on filling missile tubes one at a time, a strategic nightmare unfolds in the Pacific. China’s navy now surpasses America’s in size, and its auxiliary fleets—including maritime militia, Coast Guard, and a vast armada of thousands of merchant ships—dwarf the roughly 80 ships of the U.S. Merchant Marine in international trade. In any future conflict, U.S. warships could deplete their munitions within days. A 2019 study estimated that in a high-intensity conflict with China, the U.S. Navy might expend over 360 missiles daily—approximately 10,800 a month. Currently, the U.S. doesn’t stockpile this number of weapons, lacks an efficient method to maintain this ammunition supply, has insufficient ships and aircraft to move it across the Pacific, and no way to reload warships if naval bases are damaged by enemy action.

” Rearmament needs would exponentially compound against a high-end adversary like the PRC,” wrote Tyler Koteskey in a recent Georgetown Security Studies report on reloading at sea. “Indeed, wargames conducted last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated that in a conflict over Taiwan, the United States could run out of several categories of vital munitions, such as Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles, in less than a week.”

Efforts to shift from missiles to guided deck gun rounds—precisely what the failed USS Zumwalt was designed to do—have fallen short. Other projects like electromechanical railguns and naval laser weapon systems have also stalled.

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TRAM doesn’t solve all these problems, but it’s an important step.

For a Navy that’s already outgunned, being forced to break off, sail to Japan, Guam, or Hawaii to reload, and then return to the fight isn’t just a logistical headache—it’s a losing strategy. Each reload trip means days out of action, leaving a skeleton force to face off against China’s rapidly growing fleet. And while the U.S. Navy has its advantages, firepower is finite. Once it’s gone, ships are sitting ducks.

Drones exacerbate this problem significantly. In a high-intensity conflict against a near-peer competitor like the People’s Republic of China, U.S. surface combatants would rapidly deplete their munitions designed to counter or strike land, air, surface, undersea, and ballistic missile threats but could also face swarms of drones. Even against the less sophisticated Houthis, this has become a major problem. On March 9th alone, they faced 28 drones in a single early morning attack. This was on top of at least 95 drones and missiles they had previously intercepted from Yemen, including “Greyhound Day,” the intense January attack targeting US Merchant Marine ships.

Anyone who says China can’t invade Taiwan because PLAN lacks amphibious ships or because the ports will be sabotaged or (enter reason) knows nothing about modern offshore construction.

Why invade a port when you can bring your own ? /1 pic.twitter.com/qWsaslVYW5

— John ? Konrad V (@johnkonrad) August 11, 2023

That’s why TRAM, and the broader concept of reloading at sea, should have been a top priority decades ago. In this new era of near-peer competition, the old approach of sailing back to port is obsolete. TRAM offers a partial solution, but it still feels like too little, too late when compared to the relentless pace of technological innovation happening in China—and even in the commercial world.

The Offshore Playbook: A Case of Catching Up

Here’s where the Navy’s lag becomes glaring. Offshore oil platforms, working in extreme environments like the North Sea, have been handling delicate crane operations under far more severe conditions for years. Using dynamic positioning systems, these vessels can stay perfectly in place without anchoring, while heave-compensated cranes ensure smooth, safe transfers even when waves are tossing ships around. This technology has existed for decades. The offshore industry didn’t just crack the code on managing relative motion between vessels—it built entire playbooks around it.

Also read: US Marine Corps Experiments Offshore

So why has it taken the Navy so long to adopt similar tech? In part, the problem is cultural. The military often views itself as the pinnacle of innovation, leading it to overlook advancements made by the private sector. The offshore industry has cultural problems too. After decades of being chastised by the media for environmental harm, is reluctant to publicize its new technology. Another issue is the cost of warships. While the Army can double down on innovation and partnerships with the private sector, the Navy faces higher stakes—it costs billions to build a single ship. Finally, while some of the latest offshore replenishment technology is being developed in Houston, much of the cutting-edge work is happening in nations like Norway and the Netherlands. As these countries have grown increasingly liberal, some private companies are less inclined to participate in the U.S. military-industrial complex.

But in this case, the Navy is learning the hard way that sometimes, the real cutting edge lies in the commercial world.

Also read: USS Coronado Fires Kongsberg-Designed Missile

Looking Forward: Will TRAM Make a Difference?

Despite its slow start, TRAM has the potential to redefine how the Navy fights. By allowing warships to reload at sea, it keeps them in the fight longer, reducing the time they spend away from the action. As Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said after the successful test, “TRAM offers us a powerful near-term deterrent that will disrupt the strategic calculus of those who would do us harm around the globe.”

But even with successful tests, the timeline for getting TRAM fully operational across the fleet stretches to 2030—and that’s assuming no setbacks. In the meantime, the U.S. Navy is still forced to rely on ports in Japan, Guam, Hawaii, and California to reload its missile stocks, a process that could take ships out of the fight for weeks in a high-stakes conflict.

For a Navy that’s up against a rapidly modernizing Chinese fleet, weeks of downtime isn’t an option. Del Toro is optimistic about the future, stating, “We’re going to get there faster than we think.” But even if TRAM is fully deployed within the next few years, the question remains: Will it be fast enough to meet the growing threats?

The Bottom Line

The successful TRAM test is a big step for the Navy, but it’s one that should have been taken years ago. The U.S. military has been slow to adopt commercial innovations that could have made a world of difference in how it handles replenishment and logistics. While TRAM will improve operational readiness and sustainment, it’s still only one piece of a much larger puzzle—one that China, with its vast fleets and relentless modernization, seems determined to solve first.

The future of naval warfare may very well hinge on the ability to keep ships supplied and armed in the heat of battle. Whether TRAM will be enough to tip the scales remains to be seen, but the Navy no longer has the luxury of time. The fight is already on, and the clock is ticking.

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