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I caught the orange man talking on the radio, as I am not american I knew it was going to be something stupid but this? I thought it was a joke, an onion like thing, but nooooo. What sealed it is when in the very speech about the new 100x battleships, trump stated that he did not know why the us stopped using battleships....
There's a very good reason why the Iowa class battleships, built during the second world war, were still firing their guns in anger during the Gulf War.
Batleships are no use against other vessels, at least not with the main guns, but they're absolutely fearsome as a shore bombardment weapon, and that's something the US may very well have a need for in the near future, particularly if China gets handsy with Taiwan or other nearby island nations.
Because Reagan wanted a 600-ship navy without having the capacity to build enough new hulls and Congress is full of nostalgia blinded boomers who wouldn't let the navy retire them no matter how much they begged?
Yeah, but even in that role they are just out done. Missile, plane or drone carriers are cheaper then maintaining, deploying and supplying a fucking battleship. If you look at the last time the Iowas fired their guns in anger you will see it was also even then found to be a massive waste of money. Also they can't be used in a place they could be sunk, so only beating up minor nations, in such case that they are not really needed.
Oh you can change the topography with 16 inch guns, sure. But bombs, missiles and now drones are better at mission kills at a fraction of the price.
I'm not so sure about that, aircraft carriers are phenomenally expensive to buy and run. Having a massive, fast vessel absolutely loaded to the gills with weapons is still a very useful thing to have.
Any modern battleship would certainly have substantial missile batteries in addition to the main guns.
Aircraft carriers are very expensive to run, about the same as a battleship actually. And the Iowas did have a modernization done that added:
And even then, they where still seen as a colossal waste of money, even vs an aircraft carrier (that can do more and is real "force projection") that was seen as more vulnerable then an aircraft carrier. That was in the 1991 and now? 34 years later? They would be the biggest waste of soon to be sunk money in modern warfare.
They can't safely do this within range of anti-ship missiles and they can't outrange those missiles with guns.
That's what your destroyer escort is for.
Ha, about that....
It's not gonna work, China can hit those ships with their hypersonic missiles.
They can hit an aircraft carrier too.
Besides, this is what a destroyer escort is for.
Suuuuure, those escorts