Missile pod

The missile pod is a UNSC Navy ship-based weapon that can store and fire multiple missiles. Originally simply referring to a hull-mounted missile-firing pod that is externally reloaded (in the case of the Archer Missile pod, the term has been expanded to include an automated missile-firing platform that is either extended behind or released completely from the carrying ship prior to firing.

Design
The basic design of a missile pod consists of a cluster of missile launching tubes inside a shell with a targeting computer. Upon recieving a command from the firing ship, the targeting computer calculates the optimum firing solution on the target and fires its missiles either one after the other, burst (two or three tubes firing at once), or all at once to achieve a saturation attack and direct the maximum possible amount of destructive firepower onto the target. The pod can fire either in any direction. Missiles were originally hot-launched out of the tubes, but in modern designs, this has been replaced by an electromagnetic railgun system that cold-launches the missile at speeds that cannot be matched by chemical rockets, as well as saving the missile's fuel supply and extending tube life. Due to its position outside the ship, a pod cannot be reloaded by the crew once it has been fired, and must be removed and refilled at a spacedock to restore full firing capability. Pods mounted on ship hulls are typically covered by protective shrouds to protect against debris when not in use.

Missile pods deployed by arsenal ships differ somewhat from their hull-mounted counterparts. Pods are grouped together in circular five-pod "carousel" formations, that during combat, are flushed out of the ship through a stern-mounted bay door on an extendable boom capable of supporting a number of carousels. When one pod has exhausted all its missiles, the carousel spins on the boom and brings another pod in line with the target. This continues until the carousel had exhausted all its pods, and then it is discarded off the end of the boom. The carousels move on down the boom, being discarded as they are exhausted, and more are brought into position from the arsenal ship's hollow missile core. Originally purely broadside-firing weapons, arsenal ship-deployed pods can now fire missiles off-bore in any direction. Each pod, however, has the same basic design as its hull-mounted counterpart.

A recent development in the field of missile pods has been the invention of the "strap-on pod". These pods are electromagnetically attached to the firing ship's stern and dorsal and ventral surfaces, and so even a small warship such as a Frigate can still carry dozens of them. Prior to firing, they are jettisoned, and they use on-board reaction thrusters to orient themselves to the attack vector specified by the ship, before firing on command. This allows even small warships to fire a first salvo of missiles many times larger than their hull-mounted pods can allow, and so modern warships carry a large number of redundant fire control links in excess of the number of missiles they actually carry in order to handle the huge number of missiles they can fire with strap-on pods. In the case of the very largest warships, such as the UNSC's King Arthur-class, these pods can add an additional fifteen thousand missiles to the vessel's complement.

Mark XIV Missile Pod
The Mark XIV was the first arsenal ship-deployed pod developed by the UNSC. It consists of a cluster of thirty missile tubes, incorporating electromagnetic railgun launching systems, encased in a titanium carbide shell. Originally, the complement of a Mark XIV Pod was thirty missiles, but with the development of Gungnir