Maybe for blowing up Somali pirates, but what else?

My feeling is that battleships became obsolete even during WWII.

The only useful vessels these days that I can see are submarines and aircraft carriers.

Happy for anyone to prove me wrong.

The nemesis of the battleship was the torpedo bomber. If you look at the second world war submarines didn't have much success sinking battleships that were on the move, and the most modern battleships were well armoured against bombs. Torpedo bombers were slow though and the type quickly disappeared after WWII.

However, the fate of the Roma probably says as much as there is to say about the post war future of the battleship. It was and Italian battleship that defected to the allies - and was subsequently sunk by German aircraft using air-to-ground missiles. MB. might disagree with me and say that an entire class of warship shouldn't be written off by the fate of a single vessel, but I'd say that the anti-ship missile supplanted the torpedo bomber in making sure battleships were too much of a risk to continue with. That is that they are so expensive, it really is putting all your eggs in one basket.

In their heyday naval artillery was the ultimate weapon, but today that has been surpassed by missiles that can be carried by much smaller, less expensive ships. It should be noted though that the modern concept has not really been tested in a large naval battle between two comparable powers. The Falklands war though did demonstrate the drawbacks of relying on un-armoured ships.

I guess there is a use for ships that can launch missiles - but as you say it doesn't have to be massive battleships.



I would assume that in this age, air and submarine support provides the best protection for a fleet. That is their armour. And really, is the best armour in the world going to make much difference against modern day torpedoes and missiles?

I'm not familiar with matters naval, but weren't pirates/commerce raiders/privateers/whatever generally countered with larger numbers of small patrol boats? It seems to me that while the battleship would win all the fights, it couldn't cover enough area to catch the raiders.

The aircraft carrier really is the battleship of today. The principle is the same: deploy ordnance over range using a large surface platform to contest control of sea-lanes of communication. What made the battleships so vulnerable in the first half of this century were radical improvements in seaplane or carrier launched airplane capability in conjunction with improvements in torpedoes and eventually missiles. Recent developments have however mitigated some of the advantages the airplane held at the end of the Second World War, for example, the improvement of point defense fire control and the miniaturization of RADAR and anti-missile kit. A modern warship bristling with defenses and properaly armored *should* be capable of holding its own against aircraft and missile attack, especially if competently escorted and defended.



The question is; what country are you and who are your enemies?

Aircraft carriers are less useful than you might think, thunderhawk. Indeed, compared with small agile expendable missile ships they are as 'obsolete' as the battleship, maintained in most fleets purely for reasons of tradition (the Admiral can't fly his flag from a little destroyer), and power projection ('Well if the US has carriers, we must need carriers!').

Submarines are certainly a crucial fleet auxiliary (and essential for a nuclear deterrent), but a battlefleet they do not make. Submarines can contest lines of communication but they cannot protect them.

On the topic of battleships and missile boats, what do people think of the Kirov? Yes, I know it's technically a battlecruiser, but bear with me here.

I would have said that the aircraft carrier was the battle-cruiser of today. Unlike battleships it can't take punishment as well as give it. But given your comments on anti-missile defence, perhaps one might take that line. The question is though, would it really work in a real war? Like the battle-cruiser, good on paper...



Bomb magnet? The Russians were not big on aircraft carriers, so grandeur of the flagship? Pride?



That depends how you define battle-cruiser. Conventionally it's a lightly-armoured dreadnought. Kirov is not a dreadnought, but if missiles are the modern equivalent of heavy naval artillery then it is effectively the same thing. So although it might not be technically, it is probably the easiest way to pigeon-hole it.

The Kirov (Admiral Ushakov) is so big because it uses a pirated (unminiaturized) version of the AEGIS guided missile control system.

Or it might be that the pirated version requires a nuclear energy source to operate. Anyway the point is there is no real reason for the Kirov to be so large besides poor soviet engineering.

The Soviet surface fleet was pretty incredible considering what an enormous waste of money it was.



A wise classification. I suppose I mean the carrier as well it's battle group are really the 'battleship' that is to say, the business end of the fleet's firepower. I think re-armoring requires a fundamental shift in naval affairs commensurate with a titanic surface fleet clash.