# Bring back the battleships **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 4, 2015, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806 "2015-04-04T15:25:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/61 "2015-04-05T02:32:13Z")
Count me in the camp that calls the days of contested amphibious assaults nearly over. Missiles are simply too accurate, too long range, and too cheap to expect thousands of Marines not to be blown to bits while their lightly armored, slow swimming vehicles churn through the ocean for an hour or more in hopes of making it to shore. Uncontested amphibious landings can certainly happen in the future. But laying down cannon barrages for hours or days before sending the Marines in? It just isn’t going to happen. There is no point to battleships. One might as well advocate for high speed biplanes. “But imagine how much lift a jet biplane could generate!!!” Answer: who cares? ---
**Author:** ![the\_diego](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@the\_diego](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_diego)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/62 "2015-04-05T02:39:46Z")
As a positive for battleships, there was a 20-yr period beginning in the 80’s when it was the pteferred ship by the americans when coming within 20 miles of a hostile shore. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/63 "2015-04-05T03:01:08Z")
> [@XT](#): > > I don’t believe that will be the case, however. I suppose time will tell. If so, we are talking about years or even decades down the pike before that becomes a reality. Today you need to deploy your drones and their handlers in theater to have them be effective. No one is going to build a drone that takes a human out of the decision loop for firing a weapon. And drones with the capabilities of penetrating a modern defense, either on land or at sea are going to cost nearly as much as a conventional air craft (leaving aside the human cost of risking a human pilots life). Either they will be stealthy with advanced ECM and other penetration aids (which means heavy dollars) or you’ll need a metric butt load of them WITH advanced missiles at a minimum and you can expect to lose a bunch. Either way to increase range and capabilities enough to use the things against an enemy who has more than a couple of schmucks driving around with a cell phone in a truck it’s going to cost a lot, and today even the US doesn’t have that capability…and as I said, we’ve been doing this longer and have invested more in it than anyone else has as yet. So, I don’t think we need to start scrapping the carriers just yet (in fact, my WAG is that we will leverage our carriers and probably build new ones with mixed wings of humans and drones for different missions). I’m not sure why you’re talking about money. This is the American military we’re talking about. They’re not going to switch to drones because they’re cheaper. They’re going to switch to drones (eventually - the technology isn’t there right now) because a drone could pull g-forces that would turn a human pilot into raspberry jelly. At some point, we’re going to have either an autonomous or remote-piloted drone that’s going to be able to literally fly rings around any contemporaneous piloted craft. And if you can launch that drone off the back off a cruiser, it makes more sense to build twenty cruisers each carrying five drones, than a single aircraft carrier with a hundred. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/64 "2015-04-05T03:18:34Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I’m not sure why you’re talking about money. This is the American military we’re talking about. They’re not going to switch to drones because they’re cheaper. They’re going to switch to drones (eventually - the technology isn’t there right now) because a drone could pull g-forces that would turn a human pilot into raspberry jelly. At some point, we’re going to have either an autonomous or remote-piloted drone that’s going to be able to literally fly rings around any contemporaneous piloted craft. And if you can launch that drone off the back off a cruiser, it makes more sense to build twenty cruisers each carrying five drones, than a single aircraft carrier with a hundred. Unless you are going to posit we’ll be fighting ourselves money is certainly a barrier to the kinds of capabilities you were getting at. Yeah, I think we will have drones one day that have capabilities close or even superior to those of manned air craft today (where ‘one day’ equates to a decade or two down the pike wrt development AND production/deployment), but they will cost nearly as much as the current generation of fighters which is going to put them out of the price range of most countries…which means we won’t be looking at drones making our current carriers obsolete for quite a while yet (which was the theme of the discussion were were, um, discussing ;)). As to your point about building cruisers to fly and fight the drones of the future, it makes more sense to re-purpose vessels we already have, especially if they haven’t been shown to be obsolete than to build new cruises solely to fly drones off of. I’m not sure about distributed verse concentrated capabilities…this would be a similar argument to why we built a few very capable (and very expensive) super carriers as opposed to a bunch more smaller and less capable pocket carriers. The US tried both and hit on the bigger carriers, but other countries went the smaller pocket carrier route so I guess it’s a debate. Perhaps in the future with ever dwindling defense budgets we will go that route, but you’ll need a new generation of admirals to think in those terms and give up their carriers (just like you needed a new generation of admirals to finally give up the battleships as THE prestige command position). At any rate I think, getting back to the subject of the OP, that there could be a place for a modern battleship in the fleet, though I concede we are unlikely to ever build one. Like I said, this is more due to budgets and attitudes than to the realities of how useful such a ship would be. I think they could be VERY useful, basically larger and more capable Ticonderoga. I think they are being dismissed in this and other threads because people have it in their heads the image of the Iowa (though even THOSE were useful not to long ago, and were retired more because they were so costly to maintain than because they were useless) and they aren’t really thinking about what a modern ship would or could be or how it could be employed. No point in beating this dead horse anymore from my perspective, since it’s hard to check it’s teeth when you are changing dead mounts in mid-stream to ensure it’s a good gift. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/65 "2015-04-05T03:20:29Z")
Why would drones fly off a cruiser? How are they going to land at sea? ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/66 "2015-04-05T03:26:12Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Why would drones fly off a cruiser? How are they going to land at sea? VTOL I would assume is what Miller was thinking of, sort of like the F-35 Navy variant. Either that or they would have magic anti-grav and be pony powered with neural links using blackhole tech that allows for full real time anywhere in the solar system. It’s probably one of those. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/67 "2015-04-05T04:15:51Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Unless you are going to posit we’ll be fighting ourselves money is certainly a barrier to the kinds of capabilities you were getting at. Yeah, I think we will have drones one day that have capabilities close or even superior to those of manned air craft today (where ‘one day’ equates to a decade or two down the pike wrt development AND production/deployment), but they will cost nearly as much as the current generation of fighters which is going to put them out of the price range of most countries…which means we won’t be looking at drones making our current carriers obsolete for quite a while yet (which was the theme of the discussion were were, um, discussing ;)). I think there’s some confusion here over the word “obsolete.” I regard something as obsolete when there’s another option that is significantly superior at its function in nearly every way. You seem to be using it to mean, “No longer able to fulfill its intended function.” (Which, admittedly, is probably the more correct usage.) I agree that we’ll continue to use aircraft carriers and manned aircraft for the foreseeable future, because for the foreseeable future, there’s no one who’s really a serious threat to our conventional military strength. If option A is better than option B, but everyone else only has option C, then we’re not likely to upgrade to option A. “Obsolete” may not be the best term to describe option B, but that’s the scenario I’m getting at. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/68 "2015-04-05T05:02:24Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I think there’s some confusion here over the word “obsolete.” I regard something as obsolete when there’s another option that is significantly superior at its function in nearly every way. You seem to be using it to mean, “No longer able to fulfill its intended function.” (Which, admittedly, is probably the more correct usage.) In a military context where what matters most is relative effectiveness (one faction relative to another), your use is more useful. Otherwise, we would have to conclude that swords are not obsolete in wars since they’ll chop up a man just as they did 500 years ago\*. Or that towed anti-tank guns aren’t obsolete even with the widespread use of ATGMs and RPGs. Or that battleships aren’t obsolete. \*But hey, sword are really great in melee, much better than bayonets or rifles. We should issue swords to soldiers in the field; better have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Melee doesn’t happen often but when it does, we want the very best for it, just like shore bombardment. We could make titanium swords and maybe we could research nanocarbon and laser swords. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/69 "2015-04-05T09:39:34Z")
> [@Dissonance](#): > > The problem with the arsenal ship is it fills a niche that doesn’t exist. The idea of the [arsenal ship](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_ship) to have 500 or so vertical launch cells filled with cruise missiles being controlled remotely by an Aegis cruiser is rather silly; the Aegis cruiser itself has 144 vertical launch cells and there is nothing preventing all 144 of them from being filled with cruise missiles and having it escorted by a second Aegis cruiser. More importantly, the limiting factor in the use of Tomahawks has always been their cost, not the availability of launch platforms for them. The Pentagon has never been faced with the situation where if only it could mass fire another 500 Tomahawks at once but lacked the launch platforms to do it. The question on the use of Tomahawks has always been if the target is worth throwing over one and a half million dollars at. Doesn’t have to be all cruise missiles; they could be SM-2/SM-3s, Harpoons, etc. in the VLS cells or any other variety of missile. In the antiterrorism/counterinsurgency era, there might be little use for many missiles, but against a major conventional foe like Russia or China, an arsenal ship could quickly enable a U.S. saturation attack on an enemy fleet or boost up the number of SM-2s/SM-3s against a saturation attack on a CVBG, but then again, Russian or Chinese arsenal ships might just as easily negate that advantage. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/70 "2015-04-05T09:42:07Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > How much longer are even air craft carriers going to be a thing? You can launch a drone off a much smaller ship, AIUI, and we’re likely not that far off from being able to replace all our combat aircraft with drones. Saying, “The same argument applies to aircraft carriers,” isn’t an argument in favor of battleships, it’s an argument against aircraft carriers. I doubt that VTOL drones will approach the firepower of a carrier’s complement of Super Hornets and Lightning IIs. If based on smaller warships, those drones would be smaller and pack less weaponry, and you’d have fewer of them than fighters on a carrier. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 9:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/71 "2015-04-05T09:42:38Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Why would drones fly off a cruiser? How are they going to land at sea? Drones are expendable. They don’t have to land. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 9:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/72 "2015-04-05T09:48:38Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Drones are expendable. They don’t have to land. Depends which kind of drone. With limited resources, I don’t think a warship could throw away drones every time. A few sorties and it would run itself out of drones. Any drone packing serious firepower might cost millions of dollars. Whereas reusable drones could perform hundreds of sorties. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 10:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/73 "2015-04-05T10:50:14Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Count me in the camp that calls the days of contested amphibious assaults nearly over. Missiles are simply too accurate, too long range, and too cheap to expect thousands of Marines not to be blown to bits while their lightly armored, slow swimming vehicles churn through the ocean for an hour or more in hopes of making it to shore. It’s not so much that the Marines will be churning through the ocean for hours in slow swimming vehicles; it’s that they’ll be hitting the beach at over 100mph. The USMC was pioneering the concept of [vertical envelopment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_assault#History) using helicopters in 1948 and the component coming from the sea won’t be in slow moving LCVPs making 8kts on a good day unloaded from thier parent ships a mile or two off the beach, an [LCAC](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landing_Craft_Air_Cushion) carrying a full load of 60 tons will still do over 40kts and deliver it 200nm from its parent ship. In the event we ever do see contested amphibious assaults against prepared fortifications in the future there’s nothing a battleship’s guns can do that a plane dropping a laser guided fuel-air explosive can’t do better. ---
**Author:** ![Habeed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a587f6/32.png) [@Habeed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Habeed)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/74 "2015-04-05T11:11:14Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > In a military context where what matters most is relative effectiveness (one faction relative to another), your use is more useful. > > Or that battleships aren’t obsolete. > > But hey, sword are really great in melee, much better than bayonets or rifles. We should issue swords to soldiers in the field; better have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Melee doesn’t happen often but when it does, we want the very best for it, just like shore bombardment. We could make titanium swords and maybe we could research nanocarbon and laser swords. Nice analogy. This actually neatly explains the reasoning. Sure, battleships are really great at blowing stuff up at close range. Shame it’ll be over one way or another before it comes to those ranges. And it’s not an efficient use of money for the Navy to haul around a battleship for that “one time” it actually comes in useful any more than it is useful for infantrymen to carry swords instead of carrying more water or more radio batteries or ammo. ---
**Author:** ![Chopsticks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cab0a1/32.png) [@Chopsticks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chopsticks)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/75 "2015-04-05T14:20:39Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Drones are expendable. They don’t have to land. I think I’ve heard of these expendable armed drones. Aren’t they called… cruise missiles? 😃 Given nets and a landing area the size of a helicopter pad, you could land drones without significant damage. No idea what drone size that stops being practical. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/76 "2015-04-05T14:50:55Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Drones are expendable. They don’t have to land. If youwant one that does anything worthwhile, yes, they have to be retrieved. The camera on a Predator costs more than a million dollars. Even if it cost one tenth the price, even disregarding the cost of the airplane, it is unaffordable to spend $100k on hardware that’s thrown away every mission. Besides which, let’s say a ship launches five drones and none come back. The ship then has to go back to port to get more drones. That’s a huge waste of resources. The idea of drones literally being disposable - as opposed to it not being as big a deal if they crash since there’s no pilot - doesn’t make much economic sense at all. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/77 "2015-04-05T14:57:20Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Drones are expendable. They don’t have to land. Not really, the advanced drones are meant to fly many missions. It is preferred they land but with VTOL added in and/or no mushable human inside they will require a lot less deck to land. Thus Carriers will be phased out though not for at least 20-30 years is my guess. Drones like the [Northrop Grumman X-47B](http://www.northropgrumman.com/Capabilities/X47BUCAS/Pages/default.aspx) still requires large flat decks but many other designs are in the works. The next Big ‘E’ CVN-80 will not even be in operation until 2025. These CVNs are all expected to have a 50 year operational life. The Enterprise (CVN-65) successfully completed her 50 year mission and is currently being scrapped and she was the first of the CVNs. So the Gerald Ford class may possibly be pressed into longer duty. (CVN-80 the next Enterprise, will be the 3rd of the class). ---
**Author:** ![MichaelEmouse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/michaelemouse/32/101_2.png) [@MichaelEmouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelEmouse)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/78 "2015-04-05T14:58:43Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > The camera on a Predator costs more than a million dollars. What does 1 000 000$ get you, camera-wise? ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/79 "2015-04-05T15:02:51Z")
High definition video with quite a bit of detail that can be seen from 5-7 miles away. Infrared capability to see at night. And a frikkin’ laser. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2015, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806/80 "2015-04-05T17:50:20Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > I think there’s some confusion here over the word “obsolete.” I regard something as obsolete when there’s another option that is significantly superior at its function in nearly every way. You seem to be using it to mean, “No longer able to fulfill its intended function.” (Which, admittedly, is probably the more correct usage.) I agree that we’ll continue to use aircraft carriers and manned aircraft for the foreseeable future, because for the foreseeable future, there’s no one who’s really a serious threat to our conventional military strength. If option A is better than option B, but everyone else only has option C, then we’re not likely to upgrade to option A. “Obsolete” may not be the best term to describe option B, but that’s the scenario I’m getting at. Ok, so, today, what option is more effective in doing the job we are asking the carriers to do? I can’t think of any. There MIGHT be one down the road in a decade or two…or, there might not be. It’s hard to project military tech and trends into the future, just as it’s hard to project other tech into the future. Even if there were another option (for the US) it wouldn’t make carriers ‘obsolete’ except in the most obscure torturing of the term, since until and unless the potential enemies the carrier MIGHT be called upon to fight would have to have this more advanced capability as well, otherwise we are back to presuming we’d be fighting ourselves. [QUOTE=MichaelEmouse] In a military context where what matters most is relative effectiveness (one faction relative to another), your use is more useful. [/QUOTE] Funny…I’d say the reality is just the opposite. If all we are going to be engaging is guys with fire hardened spears then bronze swords and armor are good enough. If they get copper swords, well, bronze is still going to be good enough. Once they start developing bronze and have the potential to put it in the field, well, THEN you might want to ramp up that iron sword and armor production project you’ve had on the back burner and get it ready to go. In military matters, context and relative effectiveness means you produce a weapon or weapons system for the mission, or for the expected mission, not simply toss something out that will still be able to do the mission every time you get a better option. If we did that all we’d have today are a handful of F-22s and maybe some F-35s (to give one example) because it’s far superior to everything else WE have (thus superior to everything everyone else has as well). Would suck, though, if we needed a squadron of fighters deployed to, oh, say Eastern Europe and one needed somewhere else though. And would suck when the mission really only needed some F-16s since we got rid of those, them being ‘obsolete’ and all. Of course, I suppose we could buy enough of them to ensure that since we are getting rid of all the other USAF air superiority and attack fighters and just build a bunch of F-22s and F-35s (until we develop something better then we can toss those out)…you guys would all be on board with that, right? Would mean instead of the continual cutting of the defense budget we’d need instead to expand it, but that’s cool…right? :dubious: > [@](#): > > Otherwise, we would have to conclude that swords are not obsolete in wars since they’ll chop up a man just as they did 500 years ago\*. Or that towed anti-tank guns aren’t obsolete even with the widespread use of ATGMs and RPGs. Or that battleships aren’t obsolete. A modern battleship wouldn’t be analogous to either a sword (which is totally ridiculous) or towed anti-tank field guns (which is a better analogy…to the 70 year old version of the battleship most folks in this thread are fixated on). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bring-back-the-battleships/716806.md?page=5)