Question real life. Restocking / resupply missiles on navy ship

[Delle(DK)]

Hello.

Today there was an article in the news about a US ship colliding with an oil tanker and a thought hit me..
( USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) )
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_S._McCain_(DDG-56)

When i see a modern navy ship i was wondering how they actual resupply missiles.
Do they have some kind of internal automatic missiles loading system of the Horisontal missile bay, or do they manual have to do this from the inside or top of the ship?
Can they at sea restock/resupply the missiles onboard from the inside of the ship or do they need to return to port and use a crane to install new missiles. ?

Thank you in advance.

The USS john S. McCain
Armament:

1 × 29 cell, 1 × 61 cell Mk 41 vertical launching systems with 90 × RIM-156 SM-2, BGM-109 Tomahawk or RUM-139 VL-ASROC missiles
2 x Mk 141 Harpoon Missile Launcher SSM
1 × Mark 45 5/54 in (127/54 mm)
2 × 25 mm chain gun
4 × .50 caliber (12.7 mm) guns
2 × 20 mm Phalanx CIWS
2 × Mk 32 triple torpedo tubes

[The Inept European]

Resupply at sea is really hard and rarely attempted, though sometimes it has to be done.
Resupply at port uses a combination of cranes, men, special loading equipment and a degree of automation both on the ship and on the dockside.

[Wiz33]

originally, they designed a crane that would fit inside 3 MK41 cells that would allow ships to reload SM2 while at sea but the missile got heavier with each new version that it was beyond the cranes weight limit so they were all removed. Now all VLS reloading have to be done in port. There are talks about doing reloading from supply ships but ti would have to be a in very calm sea state. Read this article about forward VLS reloading:

https://blog.usni.org/posts/2015/07/30/vls-at-sea-reloading

Looks like they are taking another look at reloading at sea:

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/exclusive-cno-announces-the-return-vertical-launch-system-21425

[strykerpsg]

Originally posted by Wiz33:

Looks like they are taking another look at reloading at sea:

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/exclusive-cno-announces-the-return-vertical-launch-system-21425

Good points but was going to highlight the above article that the US Navy is indeed re-looking how to resupply VLS at sea...good find.

[Wiz33]

Originally posted by strykerpsg:

Originally posted by Wiz33:

Looks like they are taking another look at reloading at sea:

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/exclusive-cno-announces-the-return-vertical-launch-system-21425

Good points but was going to highlight the above article that the US Navy is indeed re-looking how to resupply VLS at sea...good find.

Yea, the current concept is more a forward supply base at an sheltered bay close by rather than actual reloading at sea on the move. That will post it's own set of security problem as you would have to try to mask it from detection and provide some sort of defense in case of discovery.