Keep Battleships In Service?


I'd argue that you're not being fair to the OPFOR here. A regiment of Backfires against an entire SAG and CVBG??? Northern Fleet only operates 35 Backfires in the 924th Separate Maritime Reconnaissance Aviation Regiment, and even with escorts the entire strike wouldn't cost as much as an Iowa and it's combat load, much less the rest of the SAG.
 
I'd argue that you're not being fair to the OPFOR here. A regiment of Backfires against an entire SAG and CVBG??? Northern Fleet only operates 35 Backfires in the 924th Separate Maritime Reconnaissance Aviation Regiment, and even with escorts the entire strike wouldn't cost as much as an Iowa and it's combat load, much less the rest of the SAG.


That and we are judging the missiles against their otl development curve (the shaddock happens to be big enough to destroy anything anyway) but the standard cruise missiles like the tomahawk or the exocet would probably have been built with larger payloads if it was expected they would need to engage battle wagons (note this is not necessary in anti carrier strikes because a carrier is basically one giant secondary explosion waiting to happen)
 
I'd argue that you're not being fair to the OPFOR here. A regiment of Backfires against an entire SAG and CVBG??? Northern Fleet only operates 35 Backfires in the 924th Separate Maritime Reconnaissance Aviation Regiment, and even with escorts the entire strike wouldn't cost as much as an Iowa and it's combat load, much less the rest of the SAG.

true, but even at the height of the Cold War the Soviets didn't have a lot of Backfire Regiments (and have alot fewer now), while the US Navy wasn't planning to go into the Barents without at least 2 CVBGs and a SAG, not to mention various other NATO task groups, and optimally wanted to go in with 4 CVBGS and maybe 2 SAGs (if it could get them there). Factor in land based air from Norway and the UK, and things look pretty ugly for Opfor short of nuclear weapons release (then of course it gets a lot uglier)

In the Pacific, the US would have a couple of CVBGs, 1 SAG, air cover from Okinawa, Japan and the Philippines (if going at Vietnam in the 1980s) while now against China or North Korea or Russia would have the same carrier strength, and more land based air... of course we don't have any BBs now, although this thread assumes they are still around (and not a floating museum or slated to become razor blades)

my main point of course is that capital ships don't operate alone, and you should compare operational plans and likely deployments and tactical doctrine, not individual ships, when you talk about naval power.
 
That and we are judging the missiles against their otl development curve (the shaddock happens to be big enough to destroy anything anyway) but the standard cruise missiles like the tomahawk or the exocet would probably have been built with larger payloads if it was expected they would need to engage battle wagons (note this is not necessary in anti carrier strikes because a carrier is basically one giant secondary explosion waiting to happen)

although a surprisingly survivable one... in spite of at times catastrophic damage, the US Navy hasn't lost a fleet carrier since 1942 (the Princeton was a converted light cruiser hull, while the others lost were converted merchant ships). Incidents in the 1950s-1980s that resulted in very serious damage and at times near or actual catastrophic casualties proved that damage control technology and training is actually more important in a lot of ways than armor.
 
although a surprisingly survivable one... in spite of at times catastrophic damage, the US Navy hasn't lost a fleet carrier since 1942 (the Princeton was a converted light cruiser hull, while the others lost were converted merchant ships). Incidents in the 1950s-1980s that resulted in very serious damage and at times near or actual catastrophic casualties proved that damage control technology and training is actually more important in a lot of ways than armor.


Again you don't have to sink the capital ship... a single exocet or tomahawk hitting the flight deck (and perhaps some ready aircraft) is going to render the ship a multi million dollar target incapable of defending itself
 

As far as I can tell, this debate is about whether battleships are practical at all or not, and specifically whether they're cost effective against missiles. The answer to that is a resounding definite no, because with all the bombers you could build with a battleship's cost, you could just kamikaze aircraft into a battleship and come out ahead. Exaggeration, but it gets the point across.
 
. But a Harpoon or an Exocet relies on going through the hull before detonating. And Carolina has a better chance of winning the Super Bowl than a Harpoon has of going through the belt on an Iowa. [/QUOTE said:
Why should an ASM bother to try and defeat the belt of an Iowa ? The belt of the Iowa was primarily designed to defeat heavy shells fired by other battleships over fairly predictable trajectories. ASM's don't have these constraints and can be designed to attack less protected parts of their targets at impact angles that will optimize the likley hood of defeating the armour (if any.)

Even before the advent of practical ASM's, large un guided bombs had managed to decisvely overmatch practical battleship armour schemes.
 
As far as I can tell, this debate is about whether battleships are practical at all or not, and specifically whether they're cost effective against missiles. The answer to that is a resounding definite no, because with all the bombers you could build with a battleship's cost, you could just kamikaze aircraft into a battleship and come out ahead. Exaggeration, but it gets the point across.

the cost is the big issue, they simply are not cost effective in manpower, firepower and flexibility. That I will definitely concede.

Besides, with all the talk of missiles no one has really talked about their biggest vulnerability

torpedoes and mines sank more battleships than any other cause, and the nuclear submarine is very effective at delivery of those weapons. Aircraft are good at delivering those in World War II but air defenses in a task force organized and armed to American levels made air delivery of torpedoes impossible.

So the modern nuclear submarine is the best way to kill a battleship or at least get a mission kill.
 
All the arguments against the BB are true; they are vulnerable if your going up against a 1st class opponent. If you’re going up against 3rd world AOs they can be very useful.
But “Air Power and/or Cruse Missiles can do the work of shells and with longer range”
Air Power is like Radios, they work fine at night and/or bad weather or till you need them. The more you need them the more they don’t work
Tomahawks? $750,000.00 per shot to do what? Support a Marine Company that hits a strong point? I don’t think so.
BBs in a grand ship-to-ship fight? Your right, not going to happen. BBs can and do scare the poo out of the bad guys (Beirut for ex.) The Political/Psychological effect of having the Big Gray Boat in your harbor is huge.

All Diplomacy is run on Credit. Sooner or later you have to pay up or get sold out. The BGB is a big stack of chips that people can see. And seeing is believing
 

Hkelukka

Banned
I would like to point out that you are all comparing a 1940's armored BB in capability to a 1980's or later designed missiles.

That is similar to comparing a 1900's dreadnought to 1860's monitor...

If you want to have a realistic evaluation of what a newly designed BB could do you would actually need to design a BB, including but not limited to using "more expensive than gold" armor as well as top of the line missile and torpedo defence systems. Either way designing and building a new BB without it being a CLASS of ships not just one ship is unlikely and designing a new class of BB's to be built is even more unlikely.

But yeah, assuming you started to design a BB right now and had unlimited funds to sink into it, lets say pres B decides that we need something that is big, black and shiny! you would end up with one hell of a ship that would not go down with one cruise missile, with the latest ballistic missile defence systems, especially the types shown here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V1pkTMCZ0M with a little bit of more power and dev could make it "one heck of a ship".

But then again, at the price of developing and building just such a vessel you could build hundreds of F22's or F35's so its unlikely to ever happen due to the financial constraints but there is a specific niche that it could fill. That niche is "cheap to use coastal bombartment and with modern weapons up to 50+ miles inland" the expense for supporting field units would be about 1-2% of what they are now and marines could literally order a shell for every opponent and with present cruise missile prices, they cant.
 
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