Should Battleships be reintroduced? (Karoliner vs the Black Prince)

[Karoliner]

Naval power has always been a strong arm of any advanced military. Whether used in ship to ship combat or ground support, there has never been any vessel more proven in combat than the battleship.

The United States Navy is (as far as I know) the only navy in the world that has two decomissioned battleships that can be recomissioned into service, and are always maintained to do so. These ships, the USS Missouri and USS Iowa, had recently participated in the 1991 Gulf War, providing support for troops on the ground with their large battery.

In this the Missouri performed remarkably well, firing over 100 rounds and over 40 Tomahawk missles. Her decomissioning has launched a naval debate as to the future of naval-ground support, and the role the battleship plays.

The new class of American destroyers, DD(X) USS Zumwalt, is being designed to replace the battleships as a land bombarding vessel.

Gen. Michael W. Hagee, former commandant of the Marine Corps, said on April 1, 2003, that loss of naval surface fire support from battleships would place his troops "at considerable risk."

The DD(X) has already cost $5.964 billion, as of January, already exceeding the original estimates, by 81%! The first ship will not even be in comission by about 2015.

Keeping the battleships in reserve only costs $250,000 a year, reactivating them $500,000, and modernizing a battleship at about $1.5 billion.

The main argument is in armament. The battleships could fire, with their 18 16-inch guns, 460 projectiles in nine minutes. The Zumwalt can only fire 70 missles, about $1 million a minute. It does include 2 155mm guns, but Marines claim they cannot reach the shore.

Former longtime National Security Council staffer William L. Stearman, now executive director of the U.S. Naval Fire Support Association, "In short, this enormously expensive ship cannot fulfill its primary mission: provide naval surface fire support for the Marine Corps."

Gen. P.X. Kelley, the renowned former commandant, said: "I would hate to see a premature demise of the battleships . . . without a suitable replacement on station. In my personal experience in combat, the battleship is the most effective naval fire support platform in the history of naval warfare."

In short, the battleship is still a reliable tool against surface targets. If we get rid of them now, ultimately, the soldiers in need of the big guns will pay the price.

[the Black Prince]

Of all the arguments to make in favour of the battleship, you chose that to lead off with?

OK...

The fact that DD(X) doesn't do what the USN wanted it do at a higher price than they expected is not a reason to keep battleships, its a reason to fire the development team on the DD(X) project.

Naval Gunfire Support is of course the main argument for keeping BBs in service, but its not an effective one. Decent modern Naval Guns can provide the same quality of shot, rapid fire and greater accuracy without mounting it on such an expensive weapons platform. Sure, the RN can't give you a decent answer, as far as Daring goes, we've stuck an old gun on a new warship and our Future Surface Combatant program is in an even worse state than DD(X) is. But once the RN roll out their new naval gun and upgrade all Dukes and Darings to use it, then we can provide the same, if not better, quality of fire support from a far more flexible platform.

Battleships look impressive, but in this day and age, smaller vessels can deliver the same impact at a fraction of the cost and with far less risk to expensive assets. Battleships are more vulnerable to submarines than other vessels, and submarines still pose the biggest threat to naval assets. The kinds of territory we need to send our battleships to to make use of their big guns is also the same littoral waters that are the playground of the SSKs. And when all you've got is a floating hydrophone and a torpedo, its not hard to pick out a ship that size shouldering its way through the seas.

The battleships biggest weakness today is that a much smaller much cheaper vessel can easily take out this floating fortress. The escort ships required to make it safe can deliver fire support (and indeed did so at Al Faw in 2003 for example).

Going back to costs, its hardly fair to compare the development costs of DD(X) to the cost of keeping a ship afloat and repaired. research and development for any new class of warship is always expensive, and the research would have to be done anyway. Regardless of the principle role of DD(X), you need a next gen surface escort ship to replace Arleigh Burke at some point. A better comparison is to compare the individual construction cost of a modern surface combatant with naval gunfire support capacity to the cost of modernising what is now a very old warship.

It simply isn't cost effective... there's a limit to how far the ships technology and systems can be upgraded. A warship is like a PC in that regard, you can upgrade and upgrade to a point, but eventually you need a new ship with a new and better baseline. The ships already utilise obsolete technology and the longer they remain and the older that technology gets the more costly it becomes to run them. Eventually you have to literally gut the ship and start over, an act which would almost certainly cost more than building a powerful missile and gun destroyer (like Daring should have been).

There's also the manning cost. These battleships, however much you modernise them, will never be able to make the full use of modern naval technology that other warships do. 1200-1500 men a ship is one hwell of a crew in todays terms, where a destroyer weighs in at no more than 150.

In the age of automation, better technology and more powerful explosives you can deliver the same capability from a lower baseline. A destroyer.

Better yet, because you're destroyer is smaller and more versatile, a true multi-role combat vessel, instead of laying it up when you're not blowing up desert, you can use it to do other things with too.

Personally, I think the best argument against the battleship is actually a ship that doesn't exist - but could. Bring back Monitors. Each ship can sport one of the Iowas turrets, but mounted on a modern small and stealthy hull, capable of getting much closer to the shore than a big battleship ever could. In the age of WWII its not hard to see why the RN gave up its monitor fleet, but we've come full circle and infantry support is a key role of the navy once again. Lets bring back the ships that were designed to do it.