BAE’s deck launcher is a mundane piece of kit with strategic promise. Whereas the Mk 41 VLS is basically a block of silos embedded in a ship’s structure, the ADL sits on the deck and disgorges missiles at an angle. The philosophy is the same one that drove the armored box launchers used to transform World War II-vintage Iowa-class battleships into Tomahawk missile shooters when the battlewagons underwent refits during the 1980s.