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Backfire wrote:
Various attempts to combine functionality of a carrier and surface combatant have been made, and at best results have proved mediocre.



This is even before we consider usefulness (or lack of it) of gun-armour warship today.

Apart of this Kiev class Battlecarrier, what was/were another attempts to make such warships?

Well, as stated, the early WWII era carriers often mounted mid sized guns. Of course, most of them were repurposed cruisers anyway. They're just not practical, for the many, many reasons stated here.

Naval big guns are super cool, and everybody wants to make them work, but they really don't have a place in modern warfare. It's easy to forget how much a 16" gun costs to build, maintain, and provide ammunition for. Cruise missiles aren't cheap, but they are the better bet 99% of the time. Sure, people like to point out that the Iowa Class did shore bombardment in the Gulf War, which could happen because Iraq didn't have anti-ship missiles.

And the reality is that there was enormous political pressure to keep the Iowas in combat status. The actual Navy was pretty lukewarm about it, and that was almost 30 years ago!

 Ketara wrote:
That is the primary flaw with the concept of contemporary battleships.

No, the primary flaw is that they're utterly useless dead weight in modern combat. You're making the mistake of assuming that just because they're difficult to build that must be the primary reason nobody builds them. But there are a lot of things that are clearly difficult and expensive to build that are also utterly pointless. The primary reason that nobody is building a giant sculpture of Peregrine on the moon isn't the difficulty, it's the fact that nobody wants one. And, in the case of battleships, the proof is in the fact that even once the difficulty of building new ones was replaced by the much easier task of upgrading existing ones there was still minimal interest in keeping them around. The entire world collectively decided that having no battleships at all is just fine. Meanwhile there are countries investing in obsolete and discarded aircraft carriers despite the difficulty of keeping them in service, because even flawed aircraft carriers are better than no aircraft carriers at all.


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 Polonius wrote:
Sure, people like to point out that the Iowa Class did shore bombardment in the Gulf War, which could happen because Iraq didn't have anti-ship missiles.

And this is the key point. Battleships are fine for shore bombardment against helpless opponents, but how much is any sane country willing to invest in weapons that are only useful against an enemy you can't possibly lose to? How many are willing to do it when even in the best case, against that helpless target, the benefits over more generally useful weapons are marginal at best?

the USSR did it quite well with their "Heavy-Aircraft Carrying Cruisers" like the Kiev class, so I don't see why it couldnt work again

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
the USSR did it quite well with their "Heavy-Aircraft Carrying Cruisers" like the Kiev class, so I don't see why it couldnt work again

A carrier that trades some of its hangar space for missiles is not a battleship as the OP specifies.

No.

It's partly a don't put all your eggs in one basket issue, energy and expense issues limiting the maximum size of a ship, and that technology has reached the point where traditional 'gun' ships are obsolete. Planes, submarines, and missile ships are all more effective ways to take out a target now. The strength of a carrier is force projection. I'm not sure what the exact max range that carrier based planes have, but I know it's significant enough that you can effectively plant a modern supercarrier in a given spot and have air control over that vicinity against basically any nation on Earth.

Edit: Also, battleships were somewhat useful in the European theatre during WW2, but the Pacific theatre exposed their lack of range.

The day anti-air and anti-ballistic capability will become more widesprayed, maybe we will see a return of traditionnal cannons on ships. Right now, the only possible use of a battleship would be to provide fire support to a mass amphibious assault. it's the only thing that missile armed ships and aircraft carriers can't do better. As you can imagine, the launching a mass amphibious assault against any enemy is extremely unlikely.

As for a Battle-Carrier, the only nations who would benefit from such a thing would be one that cannot afford an aircraft carrier and its necessary escort ships, but needs helicopters and aircrafts deployed over seas and doesn't need missile systems as main weapon on its ships. Maybe, maybe, a poor nation that has to somewhat deal with a lot of well armed pirates and desires to project force to intimidate said pirates. Then, such ship could be useful, but that's a very specialised and limited scenario. Maybe battleships could be useful on large lakes and rivers and used in a similar fashion then armored trains were used in the past (and could still be used now).

 Peregrine wrote:

 Ketara wrote:
That is the primary flaw with the concept of contemporary battleships.

No, the primary flaw is that they're utterly useless dead weight in modern combat. You're making the mistake of assuming...

You're misreading. Stop and look at what I'm actually writing instead of what you think I'm writing.

I'm saying that sitting there arguing about whether they're useful enough to warrant deployment or not is like arguing whether cheese tastes bad on Mars. i.e. pointless because whilst you can debate it all day and could theoretically get it there to find out if you cared enough; the expense and effort involved in doing so renders it an utterly meaningless argument over nothing. Nobody builds battleships first and foremost not because they are 'utterly useless dead weight' as you put it (an artillery piece is always useful tool to have in a military arsenal - we haven't phased out the Royal Artillery yet and ships still have guns on them if smaller). But because it's not useful enough to warrant the massively expensive and complex production chain involved.

The exact extent of its usefulness in a war setting can be argued over until the cows come home. But it's a meaningless abstract discussion devolved from reality, because so long as we know the one above fact (namely that it isn't useful enough to justify the mind-bogglingly large expense and production chain involved); it simply doesn't matter.

 Ketara wrote:

 Lone Cat wrote:

You could convert a carrier to mount a 12" gun I suppose

1. With more armors, that's the return of Pre Dreadnoughs as well. What do you think?

Errr...pardon?

Pre-dreadnoughts describe the class of vessel laid out without turbines and no interlocking field of fire from a specific turret layout. It's a not a term used to describe ships with one gun turret mounted.

The term pre-dreadnought was coined after the arrival of Jackie Fisher's HMS Dreadnought in 1905; which was generally held to be a much better battleship design than those which predated it. So all battleships after that time are 'dreadnoughts' because they followed on from the general design tenets put into play then.

Peregrine wrote:And this is the key point. Battleships are fine for shore bombardment against helpless opponents, but how much is any sane country willing to invest in weapons that are only useful against an enemy you can't possibly lose to? How many are willing to do it when even in the best case, against that helpless target, the benefits over more generally useful weapons are marginal at best?

Ketara wrote:The exact extent of its usefulness in a war setting can be argued over until the cows come home. But it's a meaningless abstract discussion devolved from reality, because so long as we know the one above fact (namely that it isn't useful enough to justify the mind-bogglingly large expense and production chain involved); it simply doesn't matter.

(trimmed quotes to address point)

The niche role of bombing lesser powers is something we actually do a reasonable amount of. Not that long ago we dumped a chunk of cruise missiles into the Middle East. With the price tag on those, I cringed about if the cost was worth it. Each one of those missiles was over a million bucks IIRC. Battleships might have a much lower cost per shot when you are actually dumping ordinance on a target, but as Ketara points out, is is worth developing/maintaining/retaining the infrastructure and support to keep those big guns afloat? That kind of investment will buy a lot of tomahawks. If the cost of getting those guns to sea was a lot lower, I suspect we’d see battleships again. Shore bombardment to support operations is still something the navy needs to be able to do. Right now it’s not cost effective to have a dedicated platform to do that, when the role can be filled with missiles and air power.

Coastal bombardment ships would be very different from dreadnought battleships though. Guns are part of what makes a battleship, but armor and speed are also critical elements, and are not necessary for simply shelling the coast of a nation without harpoon missiles.

As Ketara argued, even the very upper end of utility of shore bombardment isn't nearly enough to justify the cost of keeping even cruisers, much less proper battleships.

 Lone Cat wrote:
For countries that can afford to maintain a diversified fleet, like the USA, UK, PRC, Russia. this is not a problem,
What are a possible or viable solutions to those who can't afford a large fleet and often found themself at risk with such naval bullies or invasions? If not battlecarrier then what?

Small ships: AA missile corvettes, ship-to-ship missile frigates, mine layers, torpedo boats. The big guys can easily crush anyone except one of the other big guys if they want to, smaller powers just can't go toe-to-toe with them. They have to equip themself to be too much trouble to be worth it. If the victory is expensive in ships damaged/lost and brave servicemen shipped home in coffins there won't be a fight unless the reason is incredibly good.

 Polonius wrote:
Coastal bombardment ships would be very different from dreadnought battleships though. Guns are part of what makes a battleship, but armor and speed are also critical elements, and are not necessary for simply shelling the coast of a nation without harpoon missiles.

As Ketara argued, even the very upper end of utility of shore bombardment isn't nearly enough to justify the cost of keeping even cruisers, much less proper battleships.

It's easier just to kit out monitors or modern equivalents of the 'Staunch' class gunboat if you really want naval fire support. Sure, they might be easy to sink, individually put out less firepower with smaller guns, and have far more trouble co-ordinating that fire. They're also far more reliant on fleet protection.

But their great joy is that they're cheap, disposable, and you can put them together on the quick if you ever really think you'll need them; with just the resources of an average shipyard combined with a skilled general engineering firm and whatever old guns you've got laid up in storage. Knowing that you have that option in reserve really diminishes the utility of battleships even further. Sure, monitors might not do the job as well as a dedicated battleship, but they'll probably do it 60% as well. And that's good enough when comparing the cost vs utility ratio combined with the proliferation of alterntive long range missile weapons.

Economics and logistics are cruel mistresses.

 Peregrine wrote:

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
the USSR did it quite well with their "Heavy-Aircraft Carrying Cruisers" like the Kiev class, so I don't see why it couldnt work again

A carrier that trades some of its hangar space for missiles is not a battleship as the OP specifies.

Would it kill you to sound a little more polite?

I think most of the posters hit the big points as to why its a fething stupid concept, and historical precedent of current and past "mixed use" designs further reinforces that, but the one thing I didn't see anyone mention is the risk involved.

Aircraft carriers exist to put planes up in the air. Planes are very expensive and very fragile. Flight crews are also very fragile and take an average of 2 years and several million dolalrs to train until their considered basically competent at their jobs. The absolute last thing you want to do is to put those planes and those flight crews onto a ship designed to purposefully close within weapons range of enemy surface warships and engage in a gunfire exchange - and you're certainly *NOT* going to be launching aircraft while firing guns - so you're spending a hell of a lot of money to put a lot of expensive assets in danger aboard a ship that can only really operate at 50% of its theoretical capability at any given time. For a bit more you could just buy 2 individual ships that are much more efficient and offer much greater utility and flexibility by focusing on their separate and distinct roles as a surface combatant and a carrier.

Soon enough carriers will be obsolete themselves. Anymore they are a liability and unneeded. Planes are flying faster and farther and pretty soon will be able to hit what they need to and go home without refueling. And with the ever increasing use of land-based missile systems or even new technologies like the Russian Navy's nuclear drone they become a giant bullseye.

As I have mentioned in the past, Battleships likely will come back into primacy. However that will require a few things.

1) Proliferation of high powered AA lasers capable of shooting down aircraft and missiles with good reliability(I'd say above 50% effectiveness)

2) Practical Railguns.

Both of these are pretty much inevitable. Its just a question of how soon.

Once most major military powers have AA lasers, both missiles and aircraft will become significantly less valuable. Aircraft will be reduced to reconnaissance and maybe high altitude bombing. Fighters and CAS will become non-existent when their airfoils can be melted from hundreds of miles away. This is what will make carriers obsolete as they will have no purpose anymore. The only aircraft left in common use will be small spy drones, and those will be able to be launched from any ship. Likewise, missiles will also be made obsolete by lasers and other anti-missile tech. This advancement will also lead to ICBMs becoming obsolete as well, which could result in less worldwide stability as mutually assured destruction would no longer exist to keep a stalemate in place. Oddly enough, railguns would themselves be a potential anti-ICBM weapon.

Railguns will give a future battleship the ability to replace Carriers as long range force projection. The US navy railgun program is projecting ranges of roughly around 400 miles. Instead of insanely expensive missiles and aircraft, we would have relatively cheap railgun shots that cannot be intercepted, shot down, and just as accurate.

Other implications for these advancements would be a refocus on tanks and other armored vehicles for ground combat because missiles and aircraft are no longer there to ruin their day.

@Grey Templar

I think you are overly optimistic about laser and railgun technology. Both of these are, according to your own assessment, are completely dependant on radar technology to locate their targets and destroy them before its too late. It's probable that once more highly performant AA laser defense will appear, they will be met by more stealth technology and decoys in missile and aircraft or laser armed aircrafts for example.

PS: How does a railgun deal with the curvature of the Earth at long range? I was under the impression that railgun power came from the speed at which it shoots a projectile since they are just a solid shell. A fast projectile tend to follow a straight trajectory and will only curve as it decelerate. At that point wouldn't a projectile fired by railgun have lost most of its kinnetic energy and become no deadlier then a dud cannon shell?

epronovost wrote:
@Grey Templar

I think you are overly optimistic about laser and railgun technology. Both of these are, according to your own assessment, are completely dependant on radar technology to locate their targets and destroy them before its too late. It's probable that once more highly performant AA laser defense will appear, they will be met by more stealth technology and decoys in missile and aircraft or laser armed aircrafts for example.

PS: How does a railgun deal with the curvature of the Earth at long range? I was under the impression that railgun power came from the speed at which it shoots a projectile since they are just a solid shell. A fast projectile tend to follow a straight trajectory and will only curve as it decelerate. At that point wouldn't a projectile fired by railgun have lost most of its kinnetic energy and become no deadlier then a dud cannon shell?

1) Stealth technology is a bit of a fools gambit at this point. It makes the aircraft ridiculously expensive, and severely limits the payload. And thats even assuming it actually works. Stealth technology doesn't actually make the plane invisible on radar, it just reduces the signature to a level where the radar operator might mistake the plane for a flock of birds and ignore it. And even then, you are banking on the operator missing that the "birds" he just saw are moving very very fast. It also doesn't stop a visual acquisition of the plane, or detection of the plane's heat signature. If the radar operator is alerted that stealth aircraft are in the area they can detect them. Stealth planes only work if the enemy is not looking for a stealth plane OR there are a bunch of non-stealth planes to serve as a distraction.

2) Railgun slugs will have ballistic trajectories. Meaning the projectile travels in a parabolic arc. Railguns could fire over the horizon at their chosen targets and, depending on the distance, the rounds would even leave the atmosphere before they began falling back to their target. The curvature of the earth is no more an issue for a railgun than it is for any artillery.

In theory, you could make a railgun large enough to launch a projectile into an arc large enough to hit anywhere on the planet. Or just into orbit.

Spetulhu wrote:

 Lone Cat wrote:
For countries that can afford to maintain a diversified fleet, like the USA, UK, PRC, Russia. this is not a problem,
What are a possible or viable solutions to those who can't afford a large fleet and often found themself at risk with such naval bullies or invasions? If not battlecarrier then what?

Small ships: AA missile corvettes, ship-to-ship missile frigates, mine layers, torpedo boats. The big guys can easily crush anyone except one of the other big guys if they want to, smaller powers just can't go toe-to-toe with them. They have to equip themself to be too much trouble to be worth it. If the victory is expensive in ships damaged/lost and brave servicemen shipped home in coffins there won't be a fight unless the reason is incredibly good.

That means these small countries should avoid buying AC at any costs and considers Missle Frigates as an alternative to the two.
RTN choices of their AC does NOT worth the prices though, as by then (1997) Harrier is about to leave production lines. (This carrier is designed for Harriers and copters, now converted to royal pleasure ship,), the best choice to date was a new, made in Korea Destroyer named after the late king.
Chinese Subs definitely not though.

Tell me about how the definition of Frigates changed since the inception of Ironclads. Which evolution parts they take? form a kind of 'Battleship' in the age of broadsides and sails, Frigates get Ironclad upgrades by the time of American Civil War (AFAIK the US Navy of the 1860 even evaluated the Anglo-French naval arms race that resulted in the introduction of Ironclads (La Gloire by Imperial French navy, and HMS Warrior by British Royal Navy respectively), and with steam powered iron warship began to be entirely runs on steam and not sails (and heaviest Ships of the Line became 'Battleship (Pre Dreadnoughs). how 'Frigate' definition goes ?

and so when did the term resurfaced and refer to smaller battleship of sort? how big modern frigates be? compared to Battleships and sail era (included those with steam engines).

 Lone Cat wrote:

Apart of this Kiev class Battlecarrier, what was/were another attempts to make such warships?

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 Peregrine wrote:

A carrier that trades some of its hangar space for missiles is not a battleship as the OP specifies.

No, but in its timeframe it is example of a same concept: combining surface combatant and aircraft carrier.

The thing is, whenever you try to combine two very different functions in one piece of hardware, you tend to get a forced compromise which makes either function less effective than it would have been when deployed in a single-purpose hardware unit.

So why not just build two different designs, each of which will beat the "twaddle-baffler" design at their specialised function?

 Grey Templar wrote:
Railgun slugs will have ballistic trajectories. Meaning the projectile travels in a parabolic arc. Railguns could fire over the horizon at their chosen targets and, depending on the distance, the rounds would even leave the atmosphere before they began falling back to their target. The curvature of the earth is no more an issue for a railgun than it is for any artillery.

In theory, you could make a railgun large enough to launch a projectile into an arc large enough to hit anywhere on the planet. Or just into orbit.

The advantage of artillery is that the projectile doesn't need insane speed to damage its target like its the case for a railgun projectile. It carries an explosive payload. A dud artiellery shell that is shot in a parabollic trajectory seldom cause serious damage since its terminal velocity and its weigth aren't enough to pierce or damage an heavily armored ship like a Battleship. The same would go for a railgun shot in a similar fashion. Shure, you could create a railgun powerful enough to hit things hundred of miles away, but would the payload, which is a solid shell probably a fraction of the weight of a naval cannon shell, have enough kinetic energy to cause significant damage once it has lost enough of its original kinetic charge to start nosediving and reached something close to its terminal velocity? Like all projectile, as it looses energy and start to nosedive, it will reach a maximal speed that is significantly inferior then that of barrel exit. Why not design faster missiles to both hit targets further away or move too fast to be targeted at that point? They do not lose velocity as quickly, they can be guided, they can carry a payload, we could equip them with stealth tech to mess with automated radar systems. That's a tough bird to shoot down. It seems like a wiser investment to me.

I think in space carrier class ships - (if they exist at all) - will almost undoubtedly be covered with guns - You might even call them battle carriers.


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epronovost wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Railgun slugs will have ballistic trajectories. Meaning the projectile travels in a parabolic arc. Railguns could fire over the horizon at their chosen targets and, depending on the distance, the rounds would even leave the atmosphere before they began falling back to their target. The curvature of the earth is no more an issue for a railgun than it is for any artillery.

In theory, you could make a railgun large enough to launch a projectile into an arc large enough to hit anywhere on the planet. Or just into orbit.

The advantage of artillery is that the projectile doesn't need insane speed to damage its target like its the case for a railgun projectile. It carries an explosive payload. A dud artiellery shell that is shot in a parabollic trajectory seldom cause serious damage since its terminal velocity and its weigth aren't enough to pierce or damage an heavily armored ship like a Battleship. The same would go for a railgun shot in a similar fashion. Shure, you could create a railgun powerful enough to hit things hundred of miles away, but would the payload, which is a solid shell probably a fraction of the weight of a naval cannon shell, have enough kinetic energy to cause significant damage once it has lost enough of its original kinetic charge to start nosediving and reached something close to its terminal velocity? Like all projectile, as it looses energy and start to nosedive, it will reach a maximal speed that is significantly inferior then that of barrel exit. Why not design faster missiles to both hit targets further away or move too fast to be targeted at that point? They do not lose velocity as quickly, they can be guided, they can carry a payload, we could equip them with stealth tech to mess with automated radar systems. That's a tough bird to shoot down. It seems like a wiser investment to me.

While I agree that missiles are probably the most effective weapon in space. The advantage of a railgun in space is you don't lose velocity. So if you impart very high velocity to even a small projectile - it carries enormous energy and doesn't need a payload to deal high damage. This makes railguns very efficient weapons in space. It also makes them efficient terrestrial weapons too for intermediate ranges.

Combined ships may make more sense in sci-fi worlds were faster than light (FTL) drives are very bulky, expensive, or both. If FTL is a large enough share of a ships cost, than combining a dreadnought with a carrer might make sense, especially if the physics allow the ship to both engage with guns and launch smaller craft simultaneously.

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
the USSR did it quite well with their "Heavy-Aircraft Carrying Cruisers" like the Kiev class, so I don't see why it couldnt work again

A carrier that trades some of its hangar space for missiles is not a battleship as the OP specifies.

Would it kill you to sound a little more polite?

The 'ignore' button makes conversations with him go much more smoothly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:

epronovost wrote:
@Grey Templar

I think you are overly optimistic about laser and railgun technology. Both of these are, according to your own assessment, are completely dependant on radar technology to locate their targets and destroy them before its too late. It's probable that once more highly performant AA laser defense will appear, they will be met by more stealth technology and decoys in missile and aircraft or laser armed aircrafts for example.

PS: How does a railgun deal with the curvature of the Earth at long range? I was under the impression that railgun power came from the speed at which it shoots a projectile since they are just a solid shell. A fast projectile tend to follow a straight trajectory and will only curve as it decelerate. At that point wouldn't a projectile fired by railgun have lost most of its kinnetic energy and become no deadlier then a dud cannon shell?

1) Stealth technology is a bit of a fools gambit at this point. It makes the aircraft ridiculously expensive, and severely limits the payload. And thats even assuming it actually works. Stealth technology doesn't actually make the plane invisible on radar, it just reduces the signature to a level where the radar operator might mistake the plane for a flock of birds and ignore it. And even then, you are banking on the operator missing that the "birds" he just saw are moving very very fast. It also doesn't stop a visual acquisition of the plane, or detection of the plane's heat signature. If the radar operator is alerted that stealth aircraft are in the area they can detect them. Stealth planes only work if the enemy is not looking for a stealth plane OR there are a bunch of non-stealth planes to serve as a distraction.

While you are bang on about how stealth works... it's not quite as easy to defeat as you portray.

Radar powerful enough to pick up a RCS of .01 square meters - say, the B-2 - is going to pick up EVERYTHING in the air. Birds, windblown debris, rainstorms, snow, hail, even large insects. Ground contacts - which might also be aircraft trying to evade radar - can include cars, trains, ships, or even large waves in the ocean. This pretty much makes the raw data unusable for the human operator. There's far too much of it coming in too fast for the human brain to comprehend. Thus, the data is filtered through a computer which filters out things it's programmed to filter out. There's generally some leeway in those parameters for the operator to make adjustments, but... well, Garbage in, garbage out.

The speed issue is a real problem.Yes, you can set radar to ignore returns from something flying less than 200 mph (for example). What the computer then does is compare the location of a contact a sweep, and then look for where it is along the expected vector on the next sweep. If that object has not traveled a set distance established by your 'ignore' setting, it gets ignored. If it has, the computer displays it on the screen as a contact.

The trick is, if it picks up a new and different contact in exactly the right spot and loses the original contact (say, one bird lands and another a few hundred yards away takes off) it gets displayed as a contact too. Repeat this... for all the birds that might be within the radar's range and fall within the RCS of the target you're searching for.

This sort of thing is why the U.S. military is so big on ELINT operations. If you know how an enemy's radar functions, you have a much better idea of how to defeat it. Tom Clancy gives a decent, if HIGHLY fictionalized, example of how this would work in Debt of Honor.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The thing is, whenever you try to combine two very different functions in one piece of hardware, you tend to get a forced compromise which makes either function less effective than it would have been when deployed in a single-purpose hardware unit.

So why not just build two different designs, each of which will beat the "twaddle-baffler" design at their specialised function?

So no navy should try this experiment ever again ??


Automatically Appended Next Post:

epronovost wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Railgun slugs will have ballistic trajectories. Meaning the projectile travels in a parabolic arc. Railguns could fire over the horizon at their chosen targets and, depending on the distance, the rounds would even leave the atmosphere before they began falling back to their target. The curvature of the earth is no more an issue for a railgun than it is for any artillery.

In theory, you could make a railgun large enough to launch a projectile into an arc large enough to hit anywhere on the planet. Or just into orbit.

The advantage of artillery is that the projectile doesn't need insane speed to damage its target like its the case for a railgun projectile. It carries an explosive payload. A dud artiellery shell that is shot in a parabollic trajectory seldom cause serious damage since its terminal velocity and its weigth aren't enough to pierce or damage an heavily armored ship like a Battleship. The same would go for a railgun shot in a similar fashion. Shure, you could create a railgun powerful enough to hit things hundred of miles away, but would the payload, which is a solid shell probably a fraction of the weight of a naval cannon shell, have enough kinetic energy to cause significant damage once it has lost enough of its original kinetic charge to start nosediving and reached something close to its terminal velocity? Like all projectile, as it looses energy and start to nosedive, it will reach a maximal speed that is significantly inferior then that of barrel exit. Why not design faster missiles to both hit targets further away or move too fast to be targeted at that point? They do not lose velocity as quickly, they can be guided, they can carry a payload, we could equip them with stealth tech to mess with automated radar systems. That's a tough bird to shoot down. It seems like a wiser investment to me.

What happened in Syria? did Syrian civil war proved that a solution towards menacing cruise missiles like Tomahawks? (how to successfully intercepted these).

They are all obsolete once we can train sharks to sit still long enough for us to put friggin lazer beams on them.

The argument for a single class being able to do both is steeped in this romantic notion of a ship operating on its own, which doesn't really mesh with the way naval operations work these days.

Your hypothetical battle carrier wouldn't be operating alone, but as part of a battle group with a number of ships of different classes carrying out different support functions, but if this battle group was, hypothetically, consisting of 10 such battle carriers, it would not, by the necessity of compromise, be on even footing with an enemy battlegroup consisting of 5 dedicated carriers and 5 dedicated fighting ships at the same level of economic investment and technological sophistication.

The only real path I see to carrier functions being reintegrated into fighting ships would be some future scenario where hypersonic missiles, rail guns, and more likely, lasers, have completely redefined the role of combat aircraft to the point where the numbers supplied by carriers are no longer necessary.

Well here is the real question for space ships...will we even have fighters? What can a fighter do that a missile can't? Essentially a fighter is just a missile that holds more missiles. So these "battle carriers" I think are really going to be missile barrage carriers - probably working in tandem with highspeed disposable spotting drones.

From undetectable distance - the missle ships will launch their payload from guns/launchers and when the missles get close enough they will engage their own rockets (to avoid detection). Defensively I imagine these ships will have a large array of high ROF projectile weapons and or laser and railguns to intercept incoming missiles.

The game will be about putting the most missiles on target from outside of detection. Compared to who can throw out enough accurate lead/lasers to knock it all down.