In the last decade, in the field of merchant ships, a long harmonization process has taken place at IMO, resulting in the enforcement of the so called probabilistic SOLAS2009 for the residual buoyancy and stability assessment of a ship in a damaged condition. In the warships design process, the probabilistic methodology might represent a consistent approach to complement the fundamental overall ship survivability assessment. Nevertheless
among the most critical issues, while discussing the possible implementation of this innovative approach, are the lack of a damage database and the significantly different threat typology. In this perspective, significant damage cases in the field of warships are investigated and critically analyzed. The observed time period will regard the period from 1967 (sinking of the Eilat) to 2013
