How US warships are shooting down Houthi drones in the Red Sea, and what might come next

And the Phalanx system can’t protect merchant ships the US destroyer may be watching over, sailing miles away from the warship. “To provide wide area air defense (as opposed to self-protection) vessels rely primarily on anti-air missiles,” said Sidharth Kaushal, research fellow for sea power at the Royal United Services Institute in London. Kaushal said US anti-aircraft interceptor missiles on US warships are fired from vertical launch system (VLS) cells on the deck. Each cell can contain a mix of armaments (exact numbers are classified), but the number aboard any one vessel is finite, Kaushal said.