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Fatalities on board military vessels are the result of different types of incidents, including both accidents and antagonistic attacks. The aim of this study is to identify aspects that determine the safety and operability of military vessels from a sociotechnical perspective. Safety is studied in relation to four different types of operations: the Falklands War in 1982, antagonistic attacks in situations other than war from 2000 to 2012, submarine incidents from 2000 to 2015, and severe accidents involving military vessels in Norway and Sweden from 1990 to 2015. For the incidents analyzed, the study identifies qualitative aspects that contributed to the outcome and consequences of the incident and, if possible, the risk level. The importance of organizational and management safety issues, personnel safety issues and design safety issues are analyzed. The study shows that different operational types have different risk levels but, to some extent, the same types of safety issues. In general, risk is high when the ship is not prepared and managed for war; the recoverability, i.e., the ability to limit consequences, is an important safety factor in all of the operational types studied. The probability of an incident occurring is governed by management decisions, and the recoverability is governed by the capacity for effective crew actions despite limited management. The presence of external threats leads to a need for extra levels of system understanding, for management and for personnel.