If large caliber naval gunfire support of land forces is important...

If large caliber naval gunfire support of land forces is important, and the reason for retaining battleships according to their advocates, wouldn't it make more sense just to build monitors to do the job for vastly less money and displacement?

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And how exactly are you planning on getting your comedy riverboats across an ocean?

gunfire support is not important

while multiple destroyers isnt as effective as a battleship, they have the advantage of being an existing platform that already does the job adequately

and naval gunfire happens so infrequently that you dont need a dedicated ship just to do it

I think the last time naval gunfire was used in a time of war was during the Gulf war for no reason other than for the lulz.

ANGLICO nowadays pretty much does FAC work for foreign units that don't have any organic JTAC capability. The Navy focuses more on Tomahawks for inland fires, since they have CGs, DDGs, SSNs and SSGNs that can fire them, and if there is a contested environment it is more important to gain air superiority anyways, at which time standard land-based arty can be sling loaded with CH-47's or MH-53's.

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>while multiple destroyers isnt as effective as a battleship,
Actually, one destroyer is many times more effective than a battleship would be.

for ground bombardment, a destroyer only has a single 5in gun
the missiles are effective and accurate, but expensive and without capability for prolonged fire

multiple 16-in guns would theoretically deliver a higher amount of ordnance and for a much longer period of time
and the missouri was given missiles in case they needed more range

>large caliber gun support is important
Yeah thats why it hasn't been used since fucking Vietnam by literally anyone

They did bombardments in the Gulf War.

More is almost never better when you can fire single shells to hit your targets. Even as accurate as the Iowa's guns are, they can still deviate as much as half a kilometer at 23 miles from whatever they're aimed and don't provide much of a real advantage over smaller, more accurate guns in the close support role.

>If large caliber naval gunfire support of land forces is important

Naval bombardment is important, but it doesn't have to come from a gun.

>the reason for retaining battleships according to their advocates

The actual reason people "advocate" for battleships is because they're big and make huge noises which proves you have a big dick with a deep voice loud noises and you take up lots of space like an alpha male gorilla motherfucker. This is called the "presence mission".

As an added bonus, if you're a navy officer it means the ship you're commanding is bigger and has more people on it which strongly implies that you, yourself, are bigger and more important than the guy commanding dinky cruiser or, God forbid, a destroyer. Nobody ever commanded a destroyer that didn't want to command a battleship. Now that battleships aren't around, nobody wants to command a destroyer, which is why the surface warfare "community" is a gigantic garbage fire and everyone who doesn't just want a cushy job where you get saluted while wearing a snappy uniform for 20 years before getting a nice pension is either an aviator or submariner.

>wouldn't it make more sense just to build monitors to do the job for vastly less money and displacement?

It's called a guided missile destroyer ("monitors" generally can't cross the ocean reliably) and they've been around for a while, you might have heard about them.

>the missiles are effective and accurate, but expensive and without capability for prolonged fire

Who cares about "prolonged fired" when you can't hit what you're aiming at? Nobody.

>They did bombardments in the Gulf War.

The gun bombardments in the Gulf War were essentially done to expend the last gun shells in the naval inventory, and they were wildly inaccurate (i.e. ineffective) compared to the TLAM.

One single modern destroyer would completely cripple all four Iowas in their prime. Without even taking fire.

the fuck are you talking about?
1980s refit Iowas would destroy just about any other single ship

It's cute you think that.

You don't bring a gun to a missle fight

80s Iowas have 16 Harpoon ASM on them
most US destroyers might have 3 at most
Chinese carry ~8

>range of 16”/50 Mk 7: 24mi
>range of RGM-84: 77mi
GG no re. It’s almost like one is of a completely different generation of warfare compared to the other.

>Iowa has 16 RGM-84 and 4 Phalanx CIWS
what now?

The real issue with the refitted Iowas is that their guns and armor just uselessly took up space, not that they were ineffective.

1v1 I think the armor still has a use, even if its not worth the investment on future ships
if CIWS manages to keep the destroyer's 2 RGM-84 from crippling the ship, then the anti-torpedo systems and hull armor are what would keep it alive while it pursues the destroyer (presuming the destroyer manages to stay afloat after 16 RGM-84 launches)

>1v1
Good thing 1v1s don't happen ever unless they're the last two seaworthy ships in existence.

not saying it would ever happen
just saying that is a flaming retard

OP statement is objectively false.
Examinations of ship fire support during ww2 proved that destroyers with multiple 5” guns were far more effective.
The ability to close near shore and provide high volume accurate fire is far more useful than huge shells at random.
It’s why nobody uses high level saturation bombers against military forces in the field anymore either.

At Anzio and Normandy destroyers literally saved the day by closing to point blank and expending the entire magazine in a few minutes, smashing german strongpoints and counter attacks.

naval gunfire is not important

>nobody uses high level saturation bombers against military forces in the field anymore
Not disputing your point. I agree with what you wanted to say but during Gulf War I, the US carpet bombed the retreating Iraqi forces. Granted that the US had total aerial superiority.

The armor is probably close to useless, and would be rendered completely useless (i.e. a simple liability) via comparatively trivial modifications to anti-shipping missiles if someone were dumb enough to waste money building a bunch of new ships with it. Armor (versus more general survivability features like bulkheads, torpedo defense, ammo isolation etc) was only questionably useful even in the heydey of battleships (viz. the comparative combat records of battleships vs lightly armored battlecruisers).

Again, the issue isn't the Iowa's refitted weapons and active defense. The problem is that for the cost of running a refitted Iowa or -- God forbid -- actually building a new one you can build several destroyers. Which not only could collectively sink your battleship but can be in multiple places at once when they're not ganging up on obsolete dick displayers.

Big if true.

There's a pretty good argument that the "prime" of the Iowas was WW2, and their service afterwards was mostly as a solution in search of a problem and/or "presence" as referred to.

Reminder that laser anti missile defenses will make missilefags cry and will signal the return of the battleship and sustained mass bombardment.

To counter the destroyerfags; one big ship has an easier time managing one very big powerplant (especially nuclear) than several smaller ones, so power hungry equipment that also needs endurance will prefer a big boat.

This is clearly a big guy.

And the Arleigh-Burke can load up to 384 RIM-162 to shoot down that whopping sixteen RGMs. Iowa-class cannot sustain a modern naval engagement.

This probably has more to do with how Iraqis created the perfect target for expending as many munitions as you like on the highway of death
I'd imagine a far simpler solution to a kill all laser death sphere are missiles that submerge themselves in the terminal phase to avoid CIWS, big guns aren't useful if the smaller ships can just run away indefinitely

It will happen eventually, but it hasn't yet and won't for at least ten years. Destroyers will become smaller and stealthier, filling the role of a fast-moving, hard-to-detect ship that launches ambush attacks with torpedoes or hybrid attack platforms as describes

Honestly I see torpedoes returning to dominance rather than massive naval cannon.

>missiles that submerge themselves
Bad news for torpedoes and wannabe versions: Nammo recently made supercavitating cannon rounds (APFSDS-T
MK 258 Mod 1) so a battleship and its escorts can now have a cheap and spammable option to shoot them down (sink them?) as they close. Relatively easy since they will be much more sluggish in the water than in air. Not to mention that such hypothetical diver missiles would have even less space for a warhead with all the additional equipment it needs, which means a heavily armored big ship will be more resilient to such weapons.

If an enemy nation actually tries to send hundreds of such expensive diver missiles to overwhelm a big ship's defenses, they would probably be bankrupt within the week.

>big guns aren't useful if the smaller ships
If they run away they can't defend the port they're supposed to defend and get resupplied from. Then the battleship group levels the whole place. Also railguns.

Breastwork monitors are ocean going, user

Arleigh-Burke only carry 2 AGM-84
after that all it has are torpedoes and a 5" gun
both of which have a shorter range than the Iowa's main guns

24 mile max range of a battleship gun is for ship2ship engagement using AP shells. In WW2 the navy thought the max range for shore bombardment was about 20k feet.

Pretty unique situation. Masses of vehicles stuck on a highway in the open desert.

Again going back to WW2, high level mass saturation bombing was used the morning of June 6th 1944. It mostly missed the beach defenses and was generally ineffective against dug in defense.
It was used several times during the Normandy campaign and the breakout from France. Generally to little effect for the end result.

The same point was proven over and over again in WW1. Massed heavy bombardment is not effective. Precision targeting with smaller ordinance offers a better return on investment.

Missiles outclass naval cannon for surface warfare. When direct energy point defense becomes fully realized in the future, there will be countermeasures and tactics developed to increase the missile survival rate. A 16” shell is a huge target and can be seen on radar so there’s no reason to say such a projectile is immune to interceptions.

Also one large expensive target is inherently more vulnerable than multiple smaller ones, the cost and capabilities are distributed around meaning a critical hit doesn’t remove the entire asset in one blow

>Also one large expensive target is inherently more vulnerable than multiple smaller ones
Which applies both ways and is precisely the cannon is for. Cannon spam is far cheaper than missile spam and certainly a whole lot less than whatever fancy technomagic you have to come up with to protect them from defensive lasers.

If a dumbfired cannon projectile is inert then there is little for a laser to do except make it somewhat less accurate due to surface deformation and the evaporating material. However, if it has no explosive charge and relies on KE to deal damage, then it better be going pretty dang fast.

Hence, railgun spam is the true answer. Surface vessels with railguns and lasers. To power all of that, it is easier and more efficient to centralize around a very large power source. Then if the power source is really big and expensive, might as well spend a bit extra on armor to protect it from lesser threats. Thus the final result is a battleship.

fuck armor
the true path is speed
thus, battlecruiser

Kongou, Iowa, all the WW2 lot were fast battleships. Nuclear reactors will make them technically even faster overall due to unlimited endurance, kind of like how current aircraft carriers are also considered "fast".

armor is going to be fucking useless against railgun slugs

“Something wrong with our bloody ships today”
-T. Commander of only battlecruiser fleet to ever engage in fleet to fleet line combat after three of his ships took hits and detonated all within several minutes.

Then 20 years later there was this ship called HMS Hood...

Cannon spam is not cheaper because you'll spend 100 times more money and still not hit anything.

>.08 yuan have been deposited in your account

Iowa’s were useless in ww2. USN would’ve been better off with light cruisers.

>stating facts is shilling now

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>there's even the smallest possibility of neo-dreadnoughts existing
Fuck boys I just want to rule the waves. Get me some railgun action.

Falklands, Gulf War

A hundred times less accurate?
Good joke. Firing a hundred rounds and hitting something is still better than firing all your missiles and seeing every last one of them go poof.

multi-role missile cruisers are GOAT
the pacific theater already taught everyone that air-superiority is king.
>aircraft carriers
>mine-sweeper helicopter cruisers
>missile boats
>comms ships
that's literally all you need.

>torpedos returning to dominance
LOL
>anti-torpedo netting teleport between the ship and the torpedo
>heh nothing personal kid

Care to explain this outlandish claim?

How do you propose this is in anyway realistic?

>target is 20 miles inland
what now?

While your monitor idea is utterly retarded, I have always wondered why missile battle-ships was never a thing.

The Russians came the closest, but for some reason no one ever built a battle-ship sized vessel with heavy armor and a fuckload of VLS tubes.

forgot a couple important things there

>I have always wondered why missile battle-ships was never a thing.
Battleships need to be big because they have to able to handle the weight and recoil of 16-inch gun turrets. For a missile boat, no such requirement exists. It makes more sense to keep your missiles distributed among multiple ships than putting them all in 1 basket.

no I didn't

SLBMs desu senpaialam baka

Heavy armor is retarded and Zumwalt is pretty much battleship sized.

any submarine could wreck that shit

>15000 tons
>battleship sized

1. For enemies with no ability to make laser weapons: A supplementary battery of cruise missiles here and there in the fleet.
2. Railguns can technically launch missiles if you really wanted them to. Just have to be small enough to fit inside the sabot; gets the initial boost from the gun and glides a lot of the way.
2a. To take that to the logical conclusion, have a few "artillery ships" that are basically boats built around gigantic spinal railguns with enough range to reach any non-landlocked country's capital.
3. For enemies who have wizened up to lasers: Disembark Marines who will travel inward until their towed cannon spam solution can reach the target.

>Battleships need to be big because they have to able to handle the weight and recoil of 16-inch gun turrets. For a missile boat, no such requirement exists.

t. LtGen Van Riper

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The idea of a battleship is that it uses it's big guns for anti-surface combat and also land bombardment.

If you just need land bombardment from the sea you build an artillery boat with a single heavy gun on it for less, if you just need anti-surface combat you build a destroyer.

Literally in all forms of warfare you want a tank; something hyper-specialised to doing it's job just well enough that it's also cheap enough to field lots of them.

Sea battleships are as ridiculous as land battleships, but that won't stop people advocating for them out of nostalgia, no different from the cavalry nerds who tossed horse mounted lancers into charges against machine gun positions during ww1.

horses are very good at going places

Dragoons were about getting around fast on horseback to flank and then shoot dudes in the side. Many of them often dismounted before engaging, then got back on to relocate. It helped that horses have legs and could get around easily where early vehicles would have never been able to traverse.

>saved the day by closing to point blank and expending the entire magazine in a few minutes

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Close to battleship-sized by volume, not weight.

Four "modern destroyers" couldn't even fend off a shitty Argentine F-4 squadron of the type that Iowa's AA battery would shred into aluminum confetti.
Destroyers are used because they're cheap and cheaper to risk than submarines, not because they're in any way shape or form an effective combatant. Nobody wants to captain them because they're floating graveyards.

relevant

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>Iowa's AA battery
CIWS is not an AA system, it's a last-ditch missile defense system that cannot function at a typical ASM standoff range. Post-refit Iowas have guns, Tomahawks, Harpoons, and CIWS. That's it.

Honestly, the armor belt of the Iowa could stop an ASM.

If I remember right, the reason the Brits used torpedos to sink the Belgrano instead because they thought the armor belt could hold up against Harpoons.

He means pre-retrofit. A fuckton of Pom-Poms, 3-inch, and .50s.

So he literally thinks a bunch of shitty WW2 AA guns will "shred" F-4s?

The real answer is MLRS.
For a 227mm rocket compared to 16" cannon:
>greater HE payload
>longer range
>can be guided
>no need for a fuck huge turret
>much faster fire rate

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>entire Iraqi garrisons surrendered because of them
>i.e. ineffective

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