A U.S. Navy destroyer can fire dozens of cruise missiles within minutes. Reloading the deadly warship back in port can take two months. In a war against China, that could be a fatal weakness.

       To overcome the delay, Navy engineers pulled a 30-year-old crane out of storage, wired it up to computers, and used it to build a new prototype reloading system called the Transferrable Reload At-sea Method. TRAM, as it is known, promises to slash the time needed for missile reloading, potentially to just days.

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