With people talking about some futuristic arsenal ship does arming it with stuff like harpoons and tomahawk seem backward thinking. I'm going to ask the more qualified people on here lets say a 2 ship order was placed for such a ship, would we be looking at least 10yrs before such a vessel would be operational by which time would either of the weapons be of any use against any credible foe. It must be debatable whether these weapons would be effective against the latest Russian/Chinese air defence systems that are on the market now let alone in 10yrs time. I know this is just a theoretical discussion but if you are going to think outside the box on a ship then the weapons that would arm it also need the same imagination
I'd echo Swerve's point, that the real meat of the capability is going to come from the VLS itself. There's missiles being developed right now that are VLS-compatible, such as LRASM (granted this is a standoff anti-ship missile rather than a true land attack cruise missile, but it shares some of the same DNA). And Tomahawk Block IV is still pretty capable for land attack, I understand it's not a silver bullet by any means but it has a good resume and most importantly is also compatible with strike-length VLS. Any future land attack missile will doubtless have the same compatibility. As to a next generation missile, you could perhaps look to the JASSM-ER as a possibility - this is the weapon that provided the basis for LRASM, so a navalised, booster-equipped variant could be a possibility.
Or you could look at the MdCN from Europe (though this isn't to suggest a foreign navy should procure this particular weapon), which is a ship-based cruise missile based on the Storm Shadow/SCALP air-launched cruise missiles. If I remember correctly its publicly stated range falls short of Tomahawk (with the caveat that public performance figures are by no means reliable), but it's the same kind of capability and the missile was designed to be compatible with Sylver VLS and torpedo tube launches.
That's the beauty of VLS, make them big enough and you can stuff whatever flash new weapons you like in them, the weapons just have to be designed for compatibility.
