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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 exactl

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?

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
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. :)
deleted 7y ago
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skgoa 7y ago
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.
- blackflame7000 7y ago
  It seems you have a lot of knowledge of Naval ships and I was wondering if you could explain the practical difference between a Guided Missile Destroyer like the Arleigh-Burke class vs a Guided Missile Cruiser like the Ticonderoga class?
  - skgoa 7y ago
    The difference was almost entirely the size. The US used to have very few cruisers during the 70ies, but the Soviet Union had a lot of ships that were much smaller than US cruisers, yet designated as cruisers. So the US simply redesignated all large destroyers (i.e. the entire Ticonderoga class) as cruisers, arguing that the larger size enabled them to e taskforce flagships. But the difference in size between the Ticonderogas and the first Burke's (build 15 years after the Ticos IIRC) was only roughly 1000 tons and by now the 3rd generation of Burkes is as large as the Ticos were.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

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. :)

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

skgoa 7y ago

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.

blackflame7000 7y ago
It seems you have a lot of knowledge of Naval ships and I was wondering if you could explain the practical difference between a Guided Missile Destroyer like the Arleigh-Burke class vs a Guided Missile Cruiser like the Ticonderoga class?
- skgoa 7y ago
  The difference was almost entirely the size. The US used to have very few cruisers during the 70ies, but the Soviet Union had a lot of ships that were much smaller than US cruisers, yet designated as cruisers. So the US simply redesignated all large destroyers (i.e. the entire Ticonderoga class) as cruisers, arguing that the larger size enabled them to e taskforce flagships. But the difference in size between the Ticonderogas and the first Burke's (build 15 years after the Ticos IIRC) was only roughly 1000 tons and by now the 3rd generation of Burkes is as large as the Ticos were.