One of the less intuitive results found in RAND wargaming is that no ship needs more than 4 anti-ship missiles when fighting against a foe that's roughly matche

One of the less intuitive results found in RAND wargaming is that no ship needs more than 4 anti-ship missiles when fighting against a foe that's roughly matched in quality. Either you have sufficient advantage that by the time you've spent 4 everything on the other side is sunk, or the enemy has sufficient advantage that you don't get to spend 4 before being sunk. The Navy took a look at these results, and doubled it to set the allocation of missiles per ship to 8. Similarly, ships carry more defensive missiles than they can expect to be able to fire. No defensive system anyone uses has a 100% effectiveness; Burkes have sufficient stock of ESSM and Standard that you can expect there to be leakage and the ship to be taken out before they run out. But all this assumes a fairly mirrored matchup, with both sides using weapons of similar quality. If one side uses a lot of cheap, attritable munitions, it might not work out the same.