Battleships are from a bygone age when men were men and lobbed high explosive shells
at each other instead of hiding behind computer screens and turned war into a video game.
So why would the US want to bring these relics of war back?
To be fair, the battleship may have once ruled the seas, but the inherent limitations of
ballistic artillery made them obsolete first with the wide adoption of the aircraft carrier
and with the final nail in the coffin being the perfection of the anti-ship missile.
When it comes to missiles and a battleship's main guns, there's just no comparison- most
anti-ship missiles pack less explosive power than the big 16-inch guns of an old US battleship,
but they make up for that lost firepower with extreme precision.
Even with modernization upgrades done to the USS Iowa, America's last battleship to ever
see combat, getting shells on target was more a game of “good enough” than actual precision.
On the other hand, a missile will strike exactly where it can do the most damage, making it
an obvious upgrade for 'dumb' artillery.
But is it an upgrade?
As war evolves, the US Navy has discovered a pressing need to take a significant step
backwards- maybe even back to the age of the battleship.
And it all has to do with the evolving technological capabilities of adversaries like China.
But why did arguably the most awesome ships ever to be created really go extinct in the
first place, and why couldn't we have just kept upgrading them to remain viable through
the missile age?
Historians argue about when the age of the battleship truly started, but from our point
of view, the moment someone realized they could put a big gun on a boat and shoot other
boats with it, the battleship was born.
It wasn't until the late 1880s though that the term 'battleship' was used in the modern
context, when it was used to describe a growing fleet of ironclad warships.
Today they're known as pre-dreadnought battleships, but back in the day, they cut an imposing
figure.
When most ships still utilized sails, ironclads featured hulking plates of armor, large guns
with more in common with field artillery than traditional ship cannons, and steam power.
Sliding right on past the fact that we all took the blue pill on the whole 'steel floats
now' thing, dreadnoughts became the premier form of naval firepower by 1900, and were
used as a measurement of a nation's might.
They were today's supercarriers, extremely expensive to build and operate, and you absolutely
did not want one showing up off your coast one day.
The number of battleships a nation had directly impacted international diplomacy, as in: I
have more battleships than you, so do what I say.
These ships were so powerful that they prompted the first modern arms race, leading to a series
of naval treaties to limit how many battleships each nation could have.
Despite its official obsolesce still being decades away, the Battle of Jutland in 1916
was the last naval engagement where battleships were used as the primary combatants.
In fact, the actual usefulness of battleships was being questioned even during their heyday-
sure, they were impressive and certainly intimidating weapons of war, but these big ships rarely
proved decisive in naval engagements.
Rather, smaller, more agile ships were often the deciding factor.
To make matters worse, the growing proliferation of things like torpedoes and naval mines increased
the vulnerability of these hulking behemoths, to the point that by 1920 many were asking
if it was even worth it to continue spending vast sums of money building and maintaining
these huge ships.
In World War II, the battleship's disputed reign as king of the seas came to a decisive
end thanks to the aircraft carrier and its ability to launch more and more advanced and
capable aircraft.
Now a carrier could send out swarms of dive and torpedo bombers that were far more accurate
than any battleships, nimbler, and had greater range.
They were also cheaper to build and maintain.
Shortly after the war, navies around the world began to decommission their surviving battleships.
The time of the aircraft carrier had arrived.
Despite this, the United States maintained several battleships in its reserve fleets,
ready to be reactivated in case of emergency.
During the Korean and Vietnam wars, the US would reactive battleships to provide naval
gunfire support, with the last combat tour of a US battleship taking place during Desert
Storm with the USS Iowa.
By 1964 though, all but four of these mighty ships had been stricken from the registry
and sent to be scrapped or sunk, and the US kept these four battleships ready for combat
long after other nations had gotten rid of theirs.
It wasn't really the Navy's choice though, but rather congress, which mandated that the
navy should maintain the big armored ships ready in case of war to provide fire support.
In the aftermath of Vietnam, the United States saw a buildup of the Soviet naval and air
force, prompting President Ronald Reagan to propose that the navy should be grown to 600
ships.
As part of this naval buildup, all four remaining battleships underwent modernization upgrades.
However, when the US won the Cold War global championship belt, this huge navy suddenly
had no strong enough opponent to oppose it, and plans to scrap all remaining battleships
were made.
Congress intervened however, forcing the navy to maintain two battleships ready for combat
at all times.
Their chief concern was providing adequate fire support for Marine amphibious operations,
and until the Navy convinced congress it could provide that support through conventional
means, it was forced to spend money keeping the USS New Jersey and Wisconsin ready for
combat.
They remained combat-ready until the late 2000s for one key reason.
When it comes to battleships, one thing sets them apart from modern crafts: firepower.
And the amount of pain a battleship can bring isn't easily matched even with modern weapons.
The USS Iowa, the last US battleship to ever see combat in Desert Storm, was equipped with
nine 16-inch guns, which it could fire once every 30 to 40 seconds, and twelve 5-inch
guns with faster rates of fire.
After modernization upgrades, it was also equipped with 32 tomahawk cruise missiles,
as well as 16 Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
She was the best of both worlds, but it was those big 16-inch guns that prompted congress
to keep two battleships ready for combat well past their retirement age.
The main concern plaguing military planners recently has been providing adequate firepower
during a contested amphibious operation, and while missiles and aircraft are nice, they
have significant limitations- limitations which have reared their ugly heads again and
now have the US Navy reconsidering the need for big guns once more.
Both missiles and aircraft can deliver precision firepower to hit the enemy exactly where it
hurts most, a capability that even guided artillery shells can have difficulty reliably
executing.
They are also far more flexible tools than artillery, and have greatly extended range-
a modern cruise missile can fly for hundreds of miles before striking its target, while
a battleship typically has a range of 24 miles- well inside the threat envelope of modern
anti-ship weapons.
Both missiles and aircraft are expensive though, and as the Ukraine war has shown, modern conventional
war chews through inventory at a truly terrifying rate.
A US precision bomb- the Joint Direct Attack Munition- can run between $21,000 and $36,000
per unit, and that's not the cost of the bomb, but rather the strap-on kit that's added to
a 'dumb' bomb to make it smart.
Each ‘dumb’ bomb can cost several thousand dollars each on top of that.
Meanwhile, a Tomahawk cruise missile will set you back about $2 million for the latest
and most advanced model.
Each salvo of Tomahawk strikes is like throwing two dozen suburban homes at the enemy, because
we live in an absolute nut house of a world.
The cost of a modern 5-inch shell used aboard guns across the US surface fleet though, is
only a few hundred dollars, and that price point is becoming incredibly attractive to
Navy leadership.
After seeing the blistering rate of weapon consumption in Ukraine, the US has realized
that first of all, its existing stockpiles are not realistically deep enough for a prolonged
conflict, and second, in any confrontation against the second-richest nation on earth,
China, the US would find itself hard pressed to outspend it in a near-peer conflict.
Rather than hurling three-bedroom-two-bath homes at a target, a capable 5-inch gun could
deliver the same amount of pain for a few hundred bucks instead.
But there are other reasons why big naval guns are becoming the talk of the town again,
and that has to do with technology.
As naval technology advances, the Navy is finding out that the best way to beat future
tech is to... go retro.
The problem with modern weapons is that they're so smart that they rely on sophisticated sensors
and a network of assets to hit their target, and those sensors and networks can all be
attacked directly or indirectly.
It's known as a 'kill chain,' and it's the reason why the US is pretty confident that
despite China's vast arsenal of anti-ship ballistic missiles, it's still a safe bet
to spend billions on supercarriers.
By knocking out a node or two in a kill chain, you can bring the entire thing down and render
an enemy's weapons useless- or at least force them to employ them in ways that make their
delivery platform vulnerable.
The US has invested heavily in redundancy to the point that its kill chains are now
termed 'kill networks,' but these can still be vulnerable to attack.
A kinetic attack could physically destroy observation and reconnaissance assets needed
to locate and track targets, while electromagnetic warfare could interrupt data transmission
or mess with an incoming munition, or plane's sensors.
Cyber attacks could corrupt a kill chain and make it inoperable, or even worse, ineffective,
thus wasting any munitions fired while the kill chain is disabled.
The beauty of a big, 16-inch shell is that it's impossible to hack.
Precision-guided shells rely on GPS to strike their targets, but even if you interrupt that
signal, you've still got a significant amount of explosives screaming through the air and
inbound on your general location.
With enough of them being delivered in short order, accuracy becomes redundant- so rather
than using expensive missiles to complete this saturation attack, why not use dumb munitions
that will end up costing the taxpayer a fraction of what the ‘smart’ option would?
Shells also take up significantly less room than aircraft or missiles- the Iowa class
battleships carried 1200 rounds for their 16-inch guns.
By comparison, a guided missile destroyer will typically carry about 90 to 96 missiles-
though some can be quad-packed, and not all are meant for anti-ship or ground-attack purposes.
The sheer number of rounds a battleship could carry versus their contemporaries is yet another
reason they remained attractive for so long.
This was precisely the thinking of the US congress in the early 2000s, as it pressured
the Navy to come up with a better way to provide fire support for amphibious operations than
simply relying on aircraft or missiles.
While using naval guns for this purpose would put the ship in more danger by forcing it
to be closer to the action, there's yet to be an alternative to the sheer volume of fire
that its massive guns can provide.
Faced with this complex problem, the Navy set to work developing what it would call
Extended Range Guided Munitions for their 5-inch guns.
These projectiles would have a range of 40 nautical miles and be precision guided, but
ultimately the program was canceled in 2008 due to poor results.
A sister program, the Ballistic Trajectory Extended Range Munition, would meet a similar
fate, also being canceled in the same year.
Back in 1994 though, the Navy had initiated a program to fulfill the need for naval fire
support.
The DD(X) program would evolve into the Zumwalt destroyer program, which would carry the brand
new Advanced Gun System and sport the fancy Long Range Land Attack Projectiles.
These rocket-assisted shells would reach out and deliver democracy to someone as far as
60 miles away, and unlike other projectile programs, actually worked quite well.
The Zumwault however, was doomed almost from the start, along with its fancy new gun and
projectile.
As more funding poured into the program, the Navy cut a planned order of 32 down to 24.
Then as concerns began to reverberate across Washington that the Zumwalt was sucking up
funds from other priority programs, that order was further cut down to seven.
Eventually, it would only result in the acquisition of three ships of its class at a staggering
cost.
The Zumwault is an impressive design, including stealth features that reduce its radar signature
to that of a small fishing vessel.
Its Advanced Gun System combined with the Long Range Land Attack Projectile could put
precision pain on targets at a range that kept the ship at an acceptable range from
potential threats.
And it could do so cheaply- at least until the cancellation of the program drove the
cost of each individual shell to over a million dollars.
Without the benefits of economy of scale, each slashing of the total number of hulls
the navy would acquire skyrocketed the cost of the Long Range Land Attack Projectile-
which only the Zumwalt could fire.
However, the ship was deemed too expensive given its capabilities and potential vulnerability.
The Zumwault couldn't fire RIM Standard missiles, and thus couldn't provide adequate air defense
coverage for US fleets.
An enemy missile attack might leave a Zumwault unharmed, believing it to be a harmless fishing
vessel, but that wouldn't matter much when the rest of its accompanying fleet is sunk
instead.
There was also significant concern that the Zumwalt was not well suited to a specific
threat that remains classified today.
The navy instead believed existing Arleigh-Burke destroyers were better suited for this mysterious
threat.
With no projectile, the Zumwalt's fancy Advanced Gun System is literally useless- a fun little
expenditure of several billion dollars total in research and procurement costs that is
currently being torn off the decks of the three existing Zumwaults and turned to scrap.
However, the problem of naval gun support is still one that a growing part of the US
navy believes needs addressing.
Currently, the navy utilizes a 5-inch cannon as a backup armament and against small boats,
but this isn't enough to provide adequate fire support in an environment that is being
electronically denied or where aircraft are under significant threat- which perfectly
describes what a war with China in the Pacific would look like.
To fix this problem, in 1996, the Navy proposed a simple but brilliant solution- if volume
was the biggest concern, why not just put more missiles on a ship?
The arsenal ship program was aimed at producing ships with as many as 500 vertical launch
cells, and the Navy believed each ship would only cost about $450 million.
However, Congress would wind up cutting funding for the program.
Instead, the Navy ended up modifying four of its oldest Ohio-class ballistic missile
submarines, replacing launch tubes that previously held Trident nuclear missiles with tubes capable
of launching the Tomahawk cruise missile.
Each of these four submarines carries 154 Tomahawks and has the benefit of being completely
submerged and thus very difficult to locate and destroy.
In 2013 though, the idea was resurrected in response to the rising threat of China.
Huntington Ingalls Industries proposed modifying the San Antonio class of amphibious transport
docks into arsenal ships which could carry 288 vertical launch cells.
These ships would tag along with the rest of the fleet and provide a mix of air and
ballistic missile defense, as well as precision strike capabilities.
The idea was never followed through on, but recently there has been renewed interest with
one additional feature being focused on: an arsenal ship that's fully automated.
With the Navy admitting it cannot keep pace with the Chinese navy in the Pacific due to
its global commitments, it has focused on developing unmanned surface and subsurface
platforms.
Currently, the Navy is still experimenting with what roles these unmanned vessels are
best suited for, but one is very obvious: being used as a missile truck.
An unmanned arsenal ship would be cheap to operate given it would have no crew, and could
be built to be fully or even partially submersible to improve its defense.
These ships would tag along with a surface action group or carrier strike group and lend
their firepower to the fight, using battle links to strike at targets or intercept incoming
threats.
While it's unlikely we'll see a return of giant battleships, one thing is clear: naval
artillery is not dead, and there's no telling what new form it might take in an increasingly
denied environment where good old 'dumb' weapons might be the most effective yet.
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