The battleship has no remaining role. Blanket heavy shore bombardment really isn't needed much.
Every other capability - over the horizon engagement, force projection, command of the high sea could be handled better by the carrier. Thanks to the surface and underwater defence provided by the carrier group, a carrier is not yet as vulnerable as the battleship of old.
If the carrier within a group becomes too vulnerable, it sure as heck won't be replaced by battleships, vulnerable and increasingly obsolete since the 1930s. Just as certain to be underwater as any newly vulnerable carrier, even with a full scale carrier-like protection group.
What unique capability do you see they could bring?
What's the difference between a Battleship and a Destroyer? Are these defined per Country? Here in Australia we have the "Air Warfare Destroyer" but what exactly does that mean? Is it actually any different, or just a fancy name to obscure the fact that nothing has actually changed?
At its simplest, displacement. A WW2 battleship was only a little less than a modern carrier at around 4-5x the displacement of a destroyer, and around 10x the displacement of a frigate, with even larger multiples of crew complement.
The least manoeuvrable ship of the fleet, typically the flagship of the pre-WW2 battle group with escort of destroyers sometimes also cruisers, frigates and support depending on what it was up to. A role that has been with the carrier in the post-WW2, increasingly missile world. I don't think any navy now retains any battleships, though most kept them around decades past their sell-by date.
The battleship (group) was the power that was used to project, and could be sent to far flung locations to bombard an inland target 25 or 30 miles away from the ship, conduct a naval battle or blockade a port well over the horizon. This is the doctrine of the late Victorian era and lapsed in the inter-war years. WW2 and Pearl Harbor very clearly put power projection with the carrier group. The job of the dozen 16" (18" in WW1, and Japanese WW2) and dozen or more 6" guns has been replaced post-war by air, and increasingly cruise and anti-ship missiles in the arsenal. A modern destroyer gets just 1-4 6" pea shooters with range only around 10 miles, but a decent selection of missiles, submarine and air defence that more than makes up for lack of gunnery.
Heavy shore bombardment is far cheaper by 16" capital guns than by missile, the last real instance being Desert Storm. In this role a battleship has no peer, it's less accurate than missile whilst flinging an awful lot more weight, but more accurate than heavy bombing. The modern era prefers precision by very expensive munitions. :)
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It used to be that these categories had very different roles. Nowadays, NATO defines these categories based on size. Well, technically the water displaced by the hull. The main difference is in how many missiles a given category can carry and how much a ship of that size costs.
Battleships only exist as mothballed reserves. A battleship was one of the largest ships in the fleet with massive guns and super thick armor. It was meant to fight in the major fleet vs. fleet battles. The name stems form "line of battle ship", because these ships were typically arrayed in a line starting back in the late middle ages. When WW2 showed that airplanes and missiles had made big guns and armor redundant, battleships were relegated to being giant anti-air plattforms that escorted the aircraft carriers. No one built any new ones since then, though "missile battleships" were studied for a while.
A massive step down in size are cruisers, who used to be ships that operated independently form the fleet. There are very few of those around nowadays and they tend to be the core of a fleet instead of cruising alone. You will often see them armed with hundreds of anti-ship missiles nowadays.
The next step down are destroyers, which are still fleet escorts (mostly against aircraft, hence Air Warfare Destroyer) in the major navies and have also taken up the role of going on independent operations. This is because smaller navies tend to not have any destroyers or bigger ships, so sending one destroyer armed with say 64 missiles can be sufficient. A destroyer used to be a relatively small ship that had the job of defending the fleet against other small ships like torpedoboats or submarines. The name stems from "torpedoboat destroyer".
The next smaller categories is frigates. These are the most numerous and are the workhorses of modern navies. They do convoy escort, but also defend bigger fleets from submarines. Many navies also send them on independent missions. They will tend to have 16 or 32 missiles, but won't typically have the big anti air radar a destroyer would. "Frigate" was the name used for sailing ships that couldn't stand in the line of battle. I.e. in say 1750 there would be only two categories: line'o'battleships and frigates.
Those categories are the major ocean-going combat ships. There are lots of smaller ships below that and a lot of support ships, too.
I'm not trying to tout battleships. I'm just pointing out the insanity of investing heavily in carriers in this day and age. In a war against a real opponent, they're $20 billion target practice. I don't think the decision to continue developing and building them is based primarily on their effectiveness.
It is based on their effectiveness as a resupply station which you are completely ignoring.
They still have their place as there's little substitute for 50 aircraft brought to theatre. With increasing missile and sub effectiveness they may need to be kept back until the latter stages of a war, or used judiciously with an equivalent opponent. But that's been a discussion around capital ships that's come and gone ever since HMS Dreadnought brought in the very idea of a capital ship, and continued through WW2.
> In a war against a real opponent,
...defined in a way in which all the opponents we've fought real wars against in the last 7 decades are not “real opponents”...
The strategic nuclear triad tends to ensure that the opponents you consider “real opponents” are not our real opponents in the real wars that happen in the real world.
He's rather saying that in the asymmetric wars of the last decades the carrier did its job, and will continue to do so. However facing a symmetric opponent, whether its likely to happen or not, means that carriers aren't as useful, at least until you've ensured that you have accounted for all their subs as well as high speed missiles and rockets.
I generally think you are right, but them fancy footwork there comparing the whole carrier group to a battleship
A battleship didn't typically travel alone either. It generally had an escort of destroyers, sometimes cruisers and support vessels. Tirpitz had between 4 and ten destroyers escorting, yet was still mainly kept back.
Facing a symmetric opponent that isn't holding back (e.g., to maintain deniability about their actual involvement), the US’s entire conventional arsenal is irrelevant (and, heck,even the tactical nuclear arsenal is mostly irrelevant.)
Of course, the same is true of the symmetric opponent, that is the way symmetry works.
I'm rejecting the idea that, for analysis of the utility of US military forces outside of the strategic triad, “real opponents” = “symmetric opponents”, and even casting doubt on the idea that, in the same context, “real opponents” ⊆ “symmetric opponents”.
The US hasn't fought any "real opponent" with anything approaching economic parity since WWII. As long as the US is beating up on countries like Iraq, Panama and Libya, its carriers are safe, as are its aircraft, etc.
Even against these weak opponents, however, it's still a big question as to why the US needs 10+ carrier fleets. Again, I strongly suspect the answer comes down to bureaucratic inertia and capture of the government by industry lobbies.
> Even against these weak opponents, however, it's still a big question as to why the US needs 10+ carrier fleets.
Because the Earth is big and ships are slow (and sometimes out of service), and also because deterrence can be necessary in a lot of places in close temporal proximity. (Whether this is the optimal use of resources considering non-military needs is another question, but there is a real purpose to the size of the fleet.)