The reason Battleships became a weak force

[Xannari]

EDIT: Topic is hidden until I get confirmation that everyone knows what they're talking about. Get out of today as what you see around you, and imagine how today would be if history was different.

[RagingArmadillo]

The other reason battleships are irrelevant today is the same reason carriers are the next on the chopping block. Submarines and stand-off ordnance means that no asset you put forward must be safe from loss. And carriers are now so large and so expensive that the loss of one is an irreparable harm to the Navy in manpower and funds. This is the economic side of war. If a cheap diesel-electric sub can sink the world's most expensive aircraft carrier, there's no real reason to use the carriers. 

[Guest]

The other reason battleships are irrelevant today is the same reason carriers are the next on the chopping block. Submarines and stand-off ordnance means that no asset you put forward must be safe from loss. And carriers are now so large and so expensive that the loss of one is an irreparable harm to the Navy in manpower and funds. This is the economic side of war. If a cheap diesel-electric sub can sink the world's most expensive aircraft carrier, there's no real reason to use the carriers. 

 

Makes me wonder what Carriers can evolve to, to make sure it remains the dominant force in naval warfare, or atleast relevant in modern combat, perhaps something that could better counter submarines? 

Though in the future, I could see the development of more effective railguns bringing back a small era of gun-based combat, due to the vastly improved range of railguns over conventional gun-based weapons.

[DEFCON115]

kinda makes you wunder if CV's get chopped off like the battleships. what will replace them (if anything does)
and after they get off'd what would the next class be?

As for our nuclear tin cans (nuke subs) I see them as being untouchable for the forseeable future. Also makes you think what the future of naval and

airieal warfare is going to look like in the next 100 or 200 years.

[robert_111]

 

Makes me wonder what Carriers can evolve to, to make sure it remains the dominant force in naval warfare, or atleast relevant in modern combat, perhaps something that could better counter submarines? 

Though in the future, I could see the development of more effective railguns bringing back a small era of gun-based combat, due to the vastly improved range of railguns over conventional gun-based weapons.

 

They'll remain until air-superiority fighters can't be manned.  Even diesel subs, or any sub quieter than ambient noise, can be easily discovered and removed if you have total battlespace dominance, which carriers are at the heart of.  

 

Lasers appear to make defense dominant over large and small drones and any missile.  Again that is contingent on good total dominance of an airspace or at least good sensing.  It appears the USNs emphasis on power generation has more potential for lasers than it does railguns, IMO.  They want to continue fielding missile boats.  Railguns could have been mounted on barges but the whole idea of having a Zumwalt style model is because you are increasing the sophistication of defensive weapons.  It's still worth it to have a big, integrated package and that includes each ship in the group like CVs and the whole group itself.  

 

Their thinking is that you either have dominance or you do not.  That's the basic difference between combat today and the kind of warfare in WoW.  In WWII you could invest an enemy-controlled area either tactically or strategically and take pounding and contest it that way.  Today you have to have total dominance or you had better not even attempt to contest.  That's the underlying philsophy of the US military.  CVs are the heart of that equation even today.  

 

It's easy to expect a change from vessel to vessel in wars.  But people overlook that BBs dominated industrial age naval warfare for the entirety of the Industrial Age itself until the Information Age, which began at the end of WWII.  That paradigm hasn't changed so CVs will remain.  We also don't appear to be even at the peak of the Information Age so I don't see an end yet.  Of course it will come and we have to keep an eye out for it.  

 

[ArmouredCarriers]

Like my sig says, battleships did not become useless because of vulnerability.

It was because they became useless.

• Even at 32kts - it took a long time for these ships to get into a position where their big guns could do anything.
• And usually when they got there, the enemy had long since gone.
• And to get there, they had to expose themselves to longer-ranged countermeasures (aircraft).
• To be protected, they needed air support to move with them.
• That same carrier-based air support could react faster and reach further than the battleship... 
• So the battleship became hugely expensive carrier escorts

 

The CV looks as though exactly the same thing is happening to it now.

• Its current and next-generation of aircraft have shorter ranges than previously
• Which means the carrier has to get closer to the target
• Which puts them under the enemy umbrella of missiles and drones before they can act themselves
• Which makes these vulnerable ships more vulnerable.

[Xannari]

Like my sig says, battleships did not become useless because of vulnerability.

It was because they became useless.

• Even at 32kts - it took a long time for these ships to get into a position where their big guns could do anything.
• And usually when they got there, the enemy had long since gone.
• And to get there, they had to expose themselves to longer-ranged countermeasures (aircraft).
• To be protected, they needed air support to move with them.
• That same carrier-based air support could react faster and reach further than the battleship... 
• So the battleship became hugely expensive carrier escorts

 

The CV looks as though exactly the same thing is happening to it now.

• Its current and next-generation of aircraft have shorter ranges than previously
• Which means the carrier has to get closer to the target
• Which puts them under the enemy umbrella of missiles and drones before they can act themselves
• Which makes these vulnerable ships more vulnerable.

 

There are things Battleships can do better than other classes of ships:

1. Though they may be relatively slow at getting there, they can go to pretty much anywhere in the world.

2. Send your Battleships at target like a cell door; bait them with cracks in it, then shut it. If they don't buy it, you can keep moving unopposed to your destination.

3. Aircraft's anatomical weakness even today is that they're more fragile. You may not be able to use ordinary bullets, but impact bullets can wreak havoc on any aircraft.

4. The assistance if allied aircraft is no longer required with today's autotracking AI guns, such as the Aegis mentioned before [can shoot with precision up to 5km]

5. A group of aircraft can give a single bombing each before going back to refuel and reload. A Battleship can stay and fight for much longer, and ultimately cause much more damage.

6. With modern anti-air technologies, put a few Battleships together, and they can become unstoppable. Slow and steady wins the race, after all.

 

I-401 is the future.

[NGTM_1R]

Battleships are irrelevant because armor is irrelevant.

 

Armor is irrelevant because the instrument of decision isn't the weapon, but the guidance; a process already well underway by the end of WW2. You can't armor your sensors. They're fragile and vulnerable to shock, but without them you're just a punching bag, not a weapons platform.

[kb01]

The philosophy back when huge boats had sails was that bigger is better, and for the most part, that was true. It wasn't until specialized anti-ship weapons, like the torpedo and naval mine, were invented before Battleships started becoming a weaker force. Of course, they were still being built, more advanced and powerful than ever.

 

Then naval aviation became a thing. Anti air was pretty weak back when carrier forces were just being invented, but over the time, it became quite powerful. But, just after carrier forces started to evolve, there were two major limiting factors that halted the evolution of Battleships, and incentivized further evolution of carriers; the Washington and London naval treaties.

 

Everyone that wanted to be the first to adopt and own the strongest of the new naval air forces was even further pushed down that route by not being able to build their huge Battleships. The development of highly sophisticated carriers without any sort of surface-borne opposition is the reason why carriers became the strongest force in all of WWII, with the US even taking some of their Clevelands in 1941 to be Independence class carriers.

 

Fast forward to now: We have guns like the Aegis that can lock onto a moving target and shoot it with deadly precision, and homing missiles that can travel at "not-quite-reentry but still fast" velocities. These are the torpedoes and mines of the air. You could take a Battleship built today and give it some of these; no aircraft would even think about touching it. Of course, you could argue that flares [heat countermeasures] are a thing, and you'd be right, but the point here is that no ship is redundant. There is always going to be something that one force has that can beat the other. Evolution of Battleships was halted until the mid 1930s, while carrier forces had pretty much no restrictions. Any nation that didn't pursue naval aviation in these years was at a fundamental disadvantage. If there were no treaties, we would have things like the Lexington class and Amagi class battlecruisers, and the development of Japanese cruisers would have been faster, and Zao may have been a real thing.  

well the ww1 nations all save the US wear broke and could not afford BB that is the main reason for the "29 5:5:3:1.7:1.7 ratio based treaty.  there would not have been any arms race like preww1 in capital ships.  the us would have been the only one able. thats also one reason why carrier development stagnated for those many years

[Guest ArdRaeiss]

You can't armor your sensors.

Yet you can't aim for sensors. Missiles are aimed at waterline in the middle of the ship at the fastest possbile speed - to increase the chances to hit before the missile is destroyed by target or missed the target. "Before" instead of "if".

By some weird coinscidence(well, by design) the armor usually is located in the same position to stop incoming projectile and block the explosion energy from reaching inside the armored space.

Summary: the armor is not completely "gone", is not "useless" agains missiles(far from it... in fact, missiles are useless) and it is returning(surprisingly - Zumwalt). It's just hard to produce, the battleship grade armor production plants are no more and it would cost a lot to rebuild them from the scratch.

 

As for "subs are the answer/tool for anything"... well, it's the false statement too.

[kb01]

 

They'll remain until air-superiority fighters can't be manned.  Even diesel subs, or any sub quieter than ambient noise, can be easily discovered and removed if you have total battlespace dominance, which carriers are at the heart of.  

 

Lasers appear to make defense dominant over large and small drones and any missile.  Again that is contingent on good total dominance of an airspace or at least good sensing.  It appears the USNs emphasis on power generation has more potential for lasers than it does railguns, IMO.  They want to continue fielding missile boats.  Railguns could have been mounted on barges but the whole idea of having a Zumwalt style model is because you are increasing the sophistication of defensive weapons.  It's still worth it to have a big, integrated package and that includes each ship in the group like CVs and the whole group itself.  

 

Their thinking is that you either have dominance or you do not.  That's the basic difference between combat today and the kind of warfare in WoW.  In WWII you could invest an enemy-controlled area either tactically or strategically and take pounding and contest it that way.  Today you have to have total dominance or you had better not even attempt to contest.  That's the underlying philsophy of the US military.  CVs are the heart of that equation even today.  

 

It's easy to expect a change from vessel to vessel in wars.  But people overlook that BBs dominated industrial age naval warfare for the entirety of the Industrial Age itself until the Information Age, which began at the end of WWII.  That paradigm hasn't changed so CVs will remain.  We also don't appear to be even at the peak of the Information Age so I don't see an end yet.  Of course it will come and we have to keep an eye out for it.  

 

 

subs are harder to detect then you think. 2 years ago at the main NATO fleet wargames the diesel powered and HTP(not 100%they use HTP) yet the Swedish sub pair penetrated all US defenses and were rated the quietest sub even when compared to the seawolfs and virginia classes (of course also the LA  class).  they had a confirmed kill set up against our super carrierss.  Also, the new stealth smart multi-supersonic anti-ship rockets area a high threat. skim the waves at 3-5 times the sound barrier stealthy while making multiple position and speed changes as you near the target is not easy to shoot down, plus the ciws take about .75-1.5 secs to id lock on fire and track to kill (thats a static attack pattern time estimate and not a moving target) also over whelming ciws is easier then one thinks b/c there are few such systems on each ship and can only attack single targets at a time. Plus a wave skimming weapon at mach 3 (russia has a mach 5 missile) is covering about 3/4 mile/sec and radar will not see it beyond 15-25 miles depending on how high the radar is, you also have jamming. you could set up a 727 plane with 6-8 missiles easy and fly "of course by accident" toward the CV and launch.  or subs can do it, wo torps, the ohio class boommers are being slowly rebuilt 4 already at 500 million each, removing all trident missiles from the 24 silos, replacing 22 of them w/ 7 tomahawk or harpoon missiles and leaving the other two or seal underwater access and supply storage for them.  One could sail to a few hundred miles away and launch so many that it would be impossible to shoot them all down. (granted tomahawk is to slow yet if loaded w/ missiles for anti shipping then that changes everything.  The US has 11 CVN yet only 2 or 3 are at sea at a time (1 is a trainer only) the marines have 8 wasp's cv's (actually i think there classified as LHA or something, landing helo assualt ship) (diesel electric), that are more active then the big boys. Even the number of aircraft the CVN carry now has been reduced to around 60-72, and for long range mission more the 1/3 are fuel browsers plus a few are electronic warfare which reduces the number of sorties capable as well as weaking the CAP significantly. Yes i think we need them b/c even in their weaken state they still have more planes then any third world nation.  Yet they are becoming more of a liability every day.  If they are patrolling in the mideast and are close to shore and attacked and sunk, so many live would be lost and the public out cry would not be directed only at the attacker, they would demand a change, and that change will come sooner then you think.  Most likely the new ford class super carriers w/ electro-cats and mag-trap system will be the last of their kind.  In 10 year drone will be on small helo type ships or landing craft dock type (japan has 2 new landing craft that is really a small carrier yet they are still not allowed to have CV and its pissing of china and N. Korea)  they will be equipped w/ the F-35 most likely when they get them, yet (thats f-35 a mistake) drones are get better by leaps and bounds and are cheaper.  Anywayss to make a short message way to long.....as long as now one fights us the cv will stay once war starts that will be the start of their end.  take it light  __KB

s 

[kb01]

 

There are things Battleships can do better than other classes of ships:

1. Though they may be relatively slow at getting there, they can go to pretty much anywhere in the world.

2. Send your Battleships at target like a cell door; bait them with cracks in it, then shut it. If they don't buy it, you can keep moving unopposed to your destination.

3. Aircraft's anatomical weakness even today is that they're more fragile. You may not be able to use ordinary bullets, but impact bullets can wreak havoc on any aircraft.

4. The assistance if allied aircraft is no longer required with today's autotracking AI guns, such as the Aegis mentioned before [can shoot with precision up to 5km]

5. A group of aircraft can give a single bombing each before going back to refuel and reload. A Battleship can stay and fight for much longer, and ultimately cause much more damage.

6. With modern anti-air technologies, put a few Battleships together, and they can become unstoppable. Slow and steady wins the race, after all.

 

I-401 is the future.

why were DD made???? B/c the BB could not protect themselves from PT boats (DD original name was patrol torpedo destroys). that was before subs. the ciws can only engage 1 target at a time. It takes .75-1.5 sec to activate train it weapon fire and adjust fire for a hit and thats a straight none smart weapon, then need 1 sec to locate and train it gun on the next one, still needing time to fire and adjust.anti ship missiles are fast mach 3+ (china and russia have mach 5). even at mach 3 thats more then 1KM a sec.  I need not go further.  BB's are best for intimidation not battle.  One Major problem is the ammo. they have only around 100 round per gun and you  need to keep that in mind,during the end of ww2 the admirals wanted much long shore bombardment of the islands yet could not bc of the time it took to ship the ammo.  during iwo supply ships had to leave 27 days prior to when there cargo would be needed bc of travel time.   even with all the smart tech the round fall is not pin point they have no gps or laser guided shells for them.  the copperhead in the 80s was a 5" shell with that stuff plus base bleeding and rocket assist giving it a predicted range of 120km with 20m cep(they hit within 10m over or under the target) yet the original planed purchase of 600000 dropped to 120000 then 80k then 60k then 30k and finally 4500 were all that were made b/c cost and was stopped, they tried again in the late 90s yet again failed (the copperhead was better).  shell fire is dying out, it was and still is king of battle (infantry the queen of battle FYI) yet the MLRS and aircraft do it better more accurate.  the cluster round originally viewed as the best way to go for shell fire is still on the shelves in massive numbers, with plans to service some and use them for training and blow up the rest, b/c gps and lasers designate systems for bombs reduces damage to the target area,...im drifting of topic sorry...BB's are very costly just to operate, and the cost to bring them out of mothballs with all new electronics, engines, comms and refurbish them from the damage of age would cost many billion per ship.  The firepower of a missile cruiser armed with 96 vls cells is many times that of a BB.  the BB would not even know that attacker had fired b/c the range of those weapons.  The US did keep 1 5inch gun on DD and 2 on some cruisers for the sole purpose of gun support for landing troops.  the gun armed ship will never use that gun against another naval vessel during a time of war. The BB had their glory days, and they fought and shined brightly serving their countries.  They answered the call to arms when they were needed, and we should honor that, yet as with all things time has passed them by, and we should let their memory of glory in battle stay also in the past.  I would hate to see such majestic and power projecting ships to be forced onto todays battle field only to be defeated in a dishonorable and shameful way.  If you ever seen an Iowa sailing at full speed its impressive, they called it  sailing with a bone in their teeth  b/c of how the water splashing in front of them look like a dog bone.

[ArmouredCarriers]

 

There are things Battleships can do better than other classes of ships:

1. Though they may be relatively slow at getting there, they can go to pretty much anywhere in the world.

2. Send your Battleships at target like a cell door; bait them with cracks in it, then shut it. If they don't buy it, you can keep moving unopposed to your destination.

3. Aircraft's anatomical weakness even today is that they're more fragile. You may not be able to use ordinary bullets, but impact bullets can wreak havoc on any aircraft.

4. The assistance if allied aircraft is no longer required with today's autotracking AI guns, such as the Aegis mentioned before [can shoot with precision up to 5km]

5. A group of aircraft can give a single bombing each before going back to refuel and reload. A Battleship can stay and fight for much longer, and ultimately cause much more damage.

6. With modern anti-air technologies, put a few Battleships together, and they can become unstoppable. Slow and steady wins the race, after all.

 

I-401 is the future.

 

Aiircraft dont need to get closer than 5km to sink a battleship. So the gun accuracy is redundant.

 

F35 rpo-offs excepted, you can still buy a lot more aircraft for the value of a ship - and that vulnerable battleship takes a long time to get to only one place. In that time a cost-equivalent squadron(s) of aircraft can cover a lot more ground, and a lot more targets, repeatedly.

 

slow and steady gets you nowhere. Yamato case in point.

[Xannari]

 

Aiircraft dont need to get closer than 5km to sink a battleship. So the gun accuracy is redundant.

 

F35 rpo-offs excepted, you can still buy a lot more aircraft for the value of a ship - and that vulnerable battleship takes a long time to get to only one place. In that time a cost-equivalent squadron(s) of aircraft can cover a lot more ground, and a lot more targets, repeatedly.

 

slow and steady gets you nowhere. Yamato case in point.

 

Any aircraft that does not get within 5km of a Battleship wouldn't be able to see it very well optically. Any sort of weapons they can bring with them can be destroyed long before the crew even knows they're under attack. Once the crew of said Battleship gets to where it needs to go, there's not a lot you can do to stop it. Aircraft may be faster at delivering a single attack that causes more damage over a wider area, but if you're looking for constant attack, Battleships are the way to go, because they can carry a lot of ammunition. Support ships can help to supply it as well.

You have to start thinking about modern Battleship design, not conventional. Faster, more powerful guns, missiles, autotracking anti-air guns and countermeasures, as well as satellite data.

 

Slow and steady gets you places. North Carolina will tell you that.

[RagingArmadillo]

 

They'll remain until air-superiority fighters can't be manned.  Even diesel subs, or any sub quieter than ambient noise, can be easily discovered and removed if you have total battlespace dominance, which carriers are at the heart of.  

 

Lasers appear to make defense dominant over large and small drones and any missile.  Again that is contingent on good total dominance of an airspace or at least good sensing.  It appears the USNs emphasis on power generation has more potential for lasers than it does railguns, IMO.  They want to continue fielding missile boats.  Railguns could have been mounted on barges but the whole idea of having a Zumwalt style model is because you are increasing the sophistication of defensive weapons.  It's still worth it to have a big, integrated package and that includes each ship in the group like CVs and the whole group itself.  

 

Their thinking is that you either have dominance or you do not.  That's the basic difference between combat today and the kind of warfare in WoW.  In WWII you could invest an enemy-controlled area either tactically or strategically and take pounding and contest it that way.  Today you have to have total dominance or you had better not even attempt to contest.  That's the underlying philsophy of the US military.  CVs are the heart of that equation even today.  

 

It's easy to expect a change from vessel to vessel in wars.  But people overlook that BBs dominated industrial age naval warfare for the entirety of the Industrial Age itself until the Information Age, which began at the end of WWII.  That paradigm hasn't changed so CVs will remain.  We also don't appear to be even at the peak of the Information Age so I don't see an end yet.  Of course it will come and we have to keep an eye out for it.  

 

 

Easily? No. If you don't have someone following them on passive sonar (very hard to do) you have to use active sonar very constantly, which isn't sustainable. It takes too much effort in a very big ocean to drop enough sonar buoys to get a ping on one submarine. Also you're overstating the utility of lasers, they have a crippling physics problem, namely that to carry destructive energy in it that laser will heat surrounding air and that will deviate point of impact. It's not currently what you'd call 'usable.' Torpedoes are. 

 

Beyond the track record, as mentioned by another poster here, that shows our carriers are very vulnerable, you have to also understand the doctrinal shift. US carrier doctrine is based around forward force-projection. Increasingly all potential enemies are opting for area denial. Some amount of stand-off munitions and low cost disposable assets are going to get through, and when they do you just lost a floating city of people that you can't afford to replace. 

 

The old axiom is correct, command prepares to fight the last war. We're not over cold war ideas. 

[CombatBoss]

I thought this was going be a discussion regarding the battleships in WoWS.  LOL.  Silly me.

 

There is a reason that the last battleship was laid down over SEVENTY years ago, Air Power.  This includes drones, satellites, and Airborne munitions which are guided by lasers, GPS, IR 'heat-seeking', etc.  These airborne weapons systems can eliminate a target with minimal collateral damage.  They can do so soon after acquiring the target.  They can eliminate targets as small as a single person, to as large as a city.  Anytime.  Anywhere.  Try that with a battleship.

 

 

[Nhi_Vanye]

 

Any aircraft that does not get within 5km of a Battleship wouldn't be able to see it very well optically. Any sort of weapons they can bring with them can be destroyed long before the crew even knows they're under attack. Once the crew of said Battleship gets to where it needs to go, there's not a lot you can do to stop it. Aircraft may be faster at delivering a single attack that causes more damage over a wider area, but if you're looking for constant attack, Battleships are the way to go, because they can carry a lot of ammunition. Support ships can help to supply it as well.

You have to start thinking about modern Battleship design, not conventional. Faster, more powerful guns, missiles, autotracking anti-air guns and countermeasures, as well as satellite data.

 

Slow and steady gets you places. North Carolina will tell you that.

 

Aircraft don't target optically any more.  They use radar homing cruise missiles.  Also, you can actually spot something the size of an Iowa from the air, with modern optics at well over 20 miles, and hit it with a laser, for laser guided munitions.  The reality is that if BB's were a cost effective way of projecting power in the modern threat environment, the USN would build and deploy them.  However, they are not.

[Xannari]

 

Aircraft don't target optically any more.  They use radar homing cruise missiles.  Also, you can actually spot something the size of an Iowa from the air, with modern optics at well over 20 miles, and hit it with a laser, for laser guided munitions.  The reality is that if BB's were a cost effective way of projecting power in the modern threat environment, the USN would build and deploy them.  However, they are not.

 

Optics and radar may be very different in delivering information, but they both have their weaknesses. Radar can be reflected by using acquired radio signals to send out false information, thereby not allowing the radar to get a fixed read on you. If done right, you can actually send back misinformation telling your position somewhere you want a missile to hit, but I don't think that technology exists yet.

Optics can be blocked either a physical object [surprise surprise], or misled by the temperature of the air. Pretty self explanatory on this one.

 

The actual reality is that Battleships are assumed obsolete because their development was halted for more than a decade, and the only way to figure out what can work is to experiment, and I don't think some nations would like the US experimenting with a titanic unstoppable Battleship that can nuke any part of the world and destroy any opposition.

[Lonewolfpj]

I see what you guys are saying and I kind of agree with some of your points. the Primary Missions for the CV in recent wars has been Air support for combined military combined operations. Also in the sense of Armor I have seen the missile test against the old WW2 style armor and you would be supposed how well it holds up. The main reason we don't use it is ship cost.

[10T0nHammer]

The main reason we don't use it is ship cost.

 

Which makes sense. Which fleet do you think is more powerful, the one that has 2-3 BBs at the cost of 300 million dollars or the fleet that can have 30 DDs for the same cost? 3 BBs would never be able to hold any form of dominance in the ocean but 30 DDs would be pretty damn flexible fleet in the ocean. Of course this is an over simplified example but it illustrates my point.

[Harkonen_siegetank]

After the world witness the most powerful ship torpedoed to death, everyone knew BBs were done.

 

Expensive to build, expensive to run, takes a lot of logistics and manpower. 

[Guest ArdRaeiss]

Which makes sense. Which fleet do you think is more powerful, the one that has 2-3 BBs at the cost of 300 million dollars or the fleet that can have 30 DDs for the same cost?

The problem arises when "30 DDs" turns into the "2, maaaaaybe 3" with the bigger cost for each unit than any of BB's they were supposed to replace proposed upgrades.

[Xannari]

The problem arises when "30 DDs" turns into the "2, maaaaaybe 3" with the bigger cost for each unit than any of BB's they were supposed to replace proposed upgrades.

 

Not to mention this is talking about conventional Destroyer and Battleship design, when you have to think outside of what you know and think of what would be possible today, rather than what was back then.

[FlashTX]

Very interesting topic.  Let me add my 2 cents.  All air flying weapons are in danger of being made obsolete on the ocean by ship borne lasers.  Able to quickly and precisely destroy any incoming munition.  And until then we have the SM-5's, phalanx and rail guns.  But we still don't have an effective deterrent to the torpedo.  IF battleships were brought out of retirement no air borne munition could hurt them except nuclear weapons and torpedoes.  The new torpedoes do not impact the ship, they detonate under the ship creating a steam bubble to form and then collapse.  This causes the ship to break in half, no way you can make torpedo blisters big enough for that!  So, the submarine is the ultimate weapon at the moment in the oceans.  So, what will replace a CVN, a SSCVN!  DARPA is already working on this concept, so, it could happen. 

As for Nuclear subs being at the top of the totem pole..................no.  Diesel electric and AIP subs are, they are quieter than nuke subs.  The US Navy has a Dutch AIP sub on loan working out of Hawaii for the US Navy to battle against in war games.  The Navy extended their stay by another year!  You don't do that if your submarine force is dominating the encounters. 

Diesel electric and AIP submarines are the most dangerous ships in the ocean.  I don't see that changing unless the plan to create swarming underwater drones for each Nuke sub comes true.

[vak_]

Yet you can't aim for sensors

 

You don't need to hit the sensor per se. Much like with hand grenades, "close enough" counts here. An HE explosion within the vicinity of the radar dish, or active phased array will wreck it. And you can even home onto electronic transmission for increased accuracy (using something like the AGM-88 HARM guidance system). Sure, you can have redundant radars that you can cover with armor, and activate after the enemy destroyed the first radar set -- but that doesn't solve the problem.

 

That's why BBs are no longer viable, unless we use them as modern-day monitors. You can armor the ship's citadel against the existing anti-ship missiles, and let's for a second forget that making a missile that can defeat a modern-day dreadnought is cheaper than actually building that dreadnought. But the sensors are relatively easy to be destroyed, and then a blind dreadnought can be bombed, for example, by GBU-28 -- you can't protect a ship against something like that.

 

The problem arises when "30 DDs" turns into the "2, maaaaaybe 3" with the bigger cost for each unit than any of BB's they were supposed to replace proposed upgrades.

 

Are you comparing the cost of today's guided missile destroyers with the cost of WWII BBs?

 

Yes, the ships are getting more expensive. Which also means that a modern BB would also cost a few thousand metric tons of cash.