A blue bird on the rail is a practice missile on the launcher. However since most surface ships are now vertical launch this is becoming an obsolete term. The Scott carried Mk26 missile launchers. These were the main armament for surface ships built just before VLS became popular.

Blue rounds are for practice and contain no warhead. They are full of electronics which allows the operators to practice loading and launching a missile without the expense of using a live round. Blue rounds are also used in other services for handling exercises when live rounds might cause a problem.

It was a common site on Scott to see the gunners mates practicing with the blue missiles while underway. Some of what they did was for maintenance and other was to make sure they got it right when it was time to pull the trigger. We did fire a few live rounds but since those ran over $1million each back in the 90’s, it was better to practice. We did fire more ASROCs than missiles. Most of those had old warheads on them and we needed to get rid of them. It was rumored we were firing some let over WWII warheads on our ASROCs.

Almost all of our 5” ammo was from the Vietnam era. If at anytime you ever heard the bell on the launcher go off and a white bird pop out of the magazine, “RUN!!!” It was the real deal. There are stories that go around about some gunners putting up the wrong color bird from time to time in the wrong place, but I think those are mostly sea stories.

With VLS taking over and the remaining missile launchers on FFG’s, they days of seeing a blue bird on the rail will be over.