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1. What are Battleships. Definitions that distincts ones from Ironclads, Cruisers, and Destroyers.
- Pre Dread
- Dreadnoughs onwards
2. If a warship has the same thick armor but doesn't have the same number of mainguns or armed with smaller mainguns (those of generic artillery pieces) and not specially designed ones (like the 50 inches thing Yamato has), can it be called 'Battleship'
3. Why didn't Zumwalt classified as Battleship. but rather a destroyer. can a battleship being as small as destroyer? (And why it has TWO turrets rather than three?)
4. Will there be warship redifinitions as the warship trends tend to be smaller and smaller. and it is said that modern 'cruisers' were too small to fit the existing definitions (Except the Carriers which became bigger and more diverse maybe)


^ Size comparisions between Zumwalt and Ticonderoga.

 Lone Cat wrote:

1. What are Battleships. Definitions that distincts ones from Ironclads, Cruisers, and Destroyers.
- Pre Dread
- Dreadnoughs onwards

My definition of a battleship; a heavy, ocean-going warship armed with the heaviest guns available, armoured against the same calibre of guns and designed primarily to destroy other warships.

Ironclads are (initially) wooden hulled ships with added armour. The term is then used to cover metal-hulled ships of the line, which eventually evolved into the battleship, cruiser, etc. (so it’s a precursor term).

Destroyers were originally “torpedo boat destroyers”; they were specifically designed to be more manoeuvrable with lighter, fast firing weapons to destroy fast attack craft that threatened the main battle line. Subsequently they also took on anti-submarine duties, as well as being equipped with torpedoes to act as attack craft themselves.

Cruisers were main line warships (I.e. intended for fighting other ships) that are lighter armed and armoured, but also faster than battleships. Essentially scouts and skirmishers.

The key innovations Dreadnought introduced were all-big main gun armament, which significantly increased weight of fire at range and steam turbine propulsion, that made it much, much faster than previous battleships.

 Lone Cat wrote:

2. If a warship has the same thick armor but doesn't have the same number of mainguns or armed with smaller mainguns (those of generic artillery pieces) and not specially designed ones (like the 50 inches thing Yamato has), can it be called 'Battleship'.

No. I don’t know that anyone ever actually did that, generally navies went the other way, sacrificing armour for speed and fire power, resulting in the battlecruiser, pocket battleships, etc. The closest equivalent would be a Monitor, which is a heavily armed and armoured ship that is designed for short-range, coastal operations.

 Lone Cat wrote:

3. Why didn't Zumwalt classified as Battleship. but rather a destroyer. can a battleship being as small as destroyer? (And why it has TWO turrets rather than three?)

Zumwalt is designed for land attack and shore bombardment, rather than ship to ship warfare and is certainly not armoured in any meaningful way. Bear in mind modern navies (particularly the US) don’t seem to have particularly rigid definitions for when to use ship designations; most ocean going vessels are frigates or destroyers and the only real consistency is that destroyers are bigger than frigates. No-one really uses the term “cruiser” anymore (existing ones are all legacy classes from the 80’s), I think because it has more aggressive (and expensive) connotations.

 Lone Cat wrote:

4. Will there be warship redifinitions as the warship trends tend to be smaller and smaller. and it is said that modern 'cruisers' were too small to fit the existing definitions (Except the Carriers which became bigger and more diverse maybe).

I don’t think so, because the general public (which I would say includes politicians) have stereotypes based on WW2 era ships and the military are more interested in giving new ships whatever designation is most likely to get them funded and built; as mentioned above, as far as public opinion goes, cruisers are big, expensive and aggressive, whereas a destroyer is a smaller, cheaper, defensive ship. So call your huge, expensive ship a destroyer and much fewer people will question it.

Personally, I think the designations should be redefined as follows:
Frigate - smallest main warship, designed to undertake a single role with limited secondary capabilities. E.g. an anti-submarine warfare ship with only point defence anti-air capability, like the current Royal Navy type 23 frigates.

Destroyer - mid-size warship with a single primary role, but reasonable secondary capabilities. E.g. the Royal Navy type 45 is primarily an air defence warship, but was designed to also have a land attack missile system, high end sonar (both not fitted due to budget cuts) and can carry two anti-submarine helicopters, which would give it significant secondary capability.

Cruiser - heaviest modern warship with well-balanced all round capability; the US Navy Arleigh Burke’s should really be in this category; they have excellent air defence and land attack capabilities as well as anti-submarine and some anti-surface capability. They can pretty much do any mission the US navy requires, without any preparation. The reason I say “without preparation” is that a lot of navies are now looking at smaller warships with “plug and play” systems; today they’re anti-submarine, but next month they can be land-attack, after you switch out the weapon modules. But they can’t do everything at the same time.

So Zumwalts aren't actually have the same armor Battleships (Iowa or even the biggest.. the Yamato) has nor having Abrams composite armor are they?

And this means Battleships are actually seagoing abrams?? If the navy trend swing back to giants and if Battleships will make a reteurn, If they don't reactivate the retired ships and upgraded them with 21st Century techs and instead build a new one. (I personally don't think this can happen within this decade or two unless someone build a working Gundam-like giant mechas) What will a newly built battleship looks like? will it be Zumwalt with wider hulls and four turrets and each has three main guns? Will it has a size of Iowa or Texas or somewhere as big as Pre Dreads but less labor intensive? (and will it houses UAV?)

And have you ever watched a movie named 'The Battleship' ? is this movie created by dreadnough freek saying that Modern Navy is heading wrong way by discarding dreadnoughs in favor of war boats that's slightly bigger than gunboats? (well every country wants a best warship that worths the price.) and saying that a Destroyer - Carrier combo isn't always work against certain emeny (Alien bots maybe?))

Also have you ever played Civilization 6? If so what do you think of warship rosters. did they emulate actual naval warfare into the game engine well? (There are 'dreadnough' battleship in the game and it can be upgraded to missile cruiser. both have ranged attack while Ironclads can be upgraded to destroyer and only do melee but can fight submarine well. )

I can tackle number 2.

During World War 1 and 2 the Swedish (and the other Nordin navies) navy had a number of "coastal defence battleships" ("pansarskepp", lit. "armour ship" in Swedish). These were relatively small ships (sub-8000 tonnes) with a shallow draught, heavy armour and low-end battleship guns (The Sverige-class having 11" guns). The idea was that anything short of an actual battleship would die a horrible death while an actual battleship would be ambushed in the Swedish archipelagos, torpedoed/bombed and sunk. Post-war it turns out that the German navy didn't think they could break the Swedish navy without using at least one of the Scharnhorsts, which they couldn't afford since they needed them against Britain.

Scharnhorst and Gneisenau arguably also qualify. 11" guns on WW2 battleships were really small, but Germany couldn't make larger guns when the ships were built. They were instead built to be able to upgrade to the Bismarck's 15" guns later, when those were available, but they never got the chance.

German battlecruisers during WW1 also dropped main gun calibre for more armour while keeping their speed up, but they were never called battleships.

I'd recommend Drachinifel's YouTube channel if you're interested in warship history (mainly dreadnought-era stuff), he knows far more than I do about such things and deserves every view he can get for his excellent historical content.

Scharnhorst and Gneisenau arguably also qualify. 11" guns on WW2 battleships were really small, but Germany couldn't make larger guns when the ships were built. They were instead built to be able to upgrade to the Bismarck's 15" guns later, when those were available, but they never got the chance.

weren't they pocket battleships?


Google fuued it:
Basically it's called a Panzerschiff and somewhere inbetween a Heavy Cruiser and Batlecruiser it seems.

No, those were the Deutschland-class, including the infamous Admiral Graf Spee. Those were light cruisers except they had the same 11" guns as the Scharnhorsts. Eggshells armed with sledgehammer, essentially.

And "pocket battleship" was just a way for the Royal Navy to drum up more support IMO; the only three battleships in existence in WW2 that could conceivably have lost a 1v1 against a Deutschland-class would've been the two German pre-dreadnoughts Schleisen and Schleswig-Holstein and the Japanese pre-dreadnought Mikasa, which was wholly encased in concrete as a museum ship by then.

Even one of the Japanese Kongōs, which started their lives as battlecruisers and were later upgraded to (light) battleships, would demolish a Deutschland without breaking a sweat.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
No, those were the Deutschland-class, including the infamous Admiral Graf Spee. Those were light cruisers except they had the same 11" guns as the Scharnhorsts. Eggshells armed with sledgehammer, essentially.

Tbf most heavy cruisers fit that descriptions, altough the sledghammer part hits home better.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
No, those were the Deutschland-class, including the infamous Admiral Graf Spee. Those were light cruisers except they had the same 11" guns as the Scharnhorsts. Eggshells armed with sledgehammer, essentially.

And "pocket battleship" was just a way for the Royal Navy to drum up more support IMO; the only three battleships in existence in WW2 that could conceivably have lost a 1v1 against a Deutschland-class would've been the two German pre-dreadnoughts Schleisen and Schleswig-Holstein and the Japanese pre-dreadnought Mikasa, which was wholly encased in concrete as a museum ship by then.

Even one of the Japanese Kongōs, which started their lives as battlecruisers and were later upgraded to (light) battleships, would demolish a Deutschland without breaking a sweat.

Did Jap. Kongous considered 'standard' battleship since IJN is quite a big fan of Battleships (and even converted some Pre-dread to semi-dread mid-build and this created an interim class).

And so when did bulbous bow has been introduced. and the first ship that came with it.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
No, those were the Deutschland-class, including the infamous Admiral Graf Spee. Those were light cruisers except they had the same 11" guns as the Scharnhorsts. Eggshells armed with sledgehammer, essentially.

Tbf most heavy cruisers fit that descriptions, altough the sledghammer part hits home better.

Most Heavy Cruisers had heavier armour than the Deutschland-class though. Even light cruisers like the Town-class (of which HMS Belfast is part) had heavier belt armour than the Deutschlands. The Germans really had to skimp on armour to keep the weight down enough that they could pretend to be below the 10'000 tonne limit imposed on them by Versailles.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
No, those were the Deutschland-class, including the infamous Admiral Graf Spee. Those were light cruisers except they had the same 11" guns as the Scharnhorsts. Eggshells armed with sledgehammer, essentially.

Tbf most heavy cruisers fit that descriptions, altough the sledghammer part hits home better.

Most Heavy Cruisers had heavier armour than the Deutschland-class though. Even light cruisers like the Town-class (of which HMS Belfast is part) had heavier belt armour than the Deutschlands. The Germans really had to skimp on armour to keep the weight down enough that they could pretend to be below the 10'000 tonne limit imposed on them by Versailles.

Aye on the Deutschalnd class for sure: Altough later on when they basically turned the Versaille treaty into maculatur i wouldn't be surprised if they allready cheated on them for Deutschland class.

They did, there's just a physical limit on how much you can cheat without other nations sitting up and taking notice. The Deutschlands were 4.5 thousand tonnes over the limit even WITH all the cut corners and innovative ideas (first ships to be entirely welded as opposed to riveted IIRC). Other nations can tell roughly how heavy a ship is based on its dimensions and how deep it sits in the water; you can only get away with so much before the Royal Navy goes full U WOT M8? on you, and Germany didn't want that.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
They did, there's just a physical limit on how much you can cheat without other nations sitting up and taking notice. The Deutschlands were 4.5 thousand tonnes over the limit even WITH all the cut corners and innovative ideas (first ships to be entirely welded as opposed to riveted IIRC). Other nations can tell roughly how heavy a ship is based on its dimensions and how deep it sits in the water; you can only get away with so much before the Royal Navy goes full U WOT M8? on you, and Germany didn't want that.

considering the political situation at the time, i really doubt they'd do anything beyond basically stating the obvious

Even fudged as the measurements were the French responded with the Dunkerque-class battleships/battlecruisers/battle...things. Fudging it more could well have seen Britain's planned Lion-class actually happening instead of the "Lion-light" George V-class that happened in real life. The long-needed refit for HMS Hood, including a strengthening of the deck armour against plunging fire, would also potentially have happened, not to mention the various refits for some of the R-class and Queen Elizabeth-class battleships or HMS Repulse that never happened because the Kriegsmarine wasn't enough of a perceived threat.

Of all the British things to prod, the Royal Navy was the least good idea.

The George V-class is arguably another battleship where they went with smaller guns (relatively, 14" guns are still massive) to keep armour, but that was because they were slightly too far in to the building process when the escalator clause for the London naval treaty kicked in to upgun to 15"; the American South Dakota-class was a few months behind and switched its planned quadruple 14" turrets for triple 16" turrets. In this case it wasn't that they couldn't make a ship with both guns and armour with the same speed though, but rather that they were limited by naval treaties.

The battleship (the last real ones) were the final evolution of the old way of fighting naval combat, i.e. pummeling each other with non-guided shells, and resisting those shells with armour.

That type of naval combat is more or less gone. The ship's size and weight was only required to bear the armour and handle/hold the guns (and survive their recoil when firing). This size/weight/mass obviously produce immense cost, and required loads of manpower (both negative traits).

Modern fighting ships are more concerned with defeating long-range threats with missiles. Any guns mounted are more for defense against small littoral craft, and anti-piracy missions, etc. Armour is more or less about damage control vs. actual protection as almost no armoured warship currently can defeat the main types of missiles being used against it. It's about protecting and compartmentalizing additional damage (controlling fires on ship, maintaining redundant systems, etc.). Most modern surface vessels have a kind of all or nothing defense. If one or two major anti-ship missiles get through the defenses, the ship is in trouble.

Aircraft and long-range missiles, and maybe soon-to-be railguns are the main threat. How effective railguns can be remains to be seen. Is there room for a new type of battleship if we revert to non-guided railgun munitions as a viable ship-to-ship or ship-to-coast weapon? I suppose so. I don't know how big a railgun can get or needs to be (nor do I know anything about the size of generators/power supply required to feed a railgun arsenal). I know we're testing relatively small railguns. Is there science/purpose behind massive railguns for which we'd need a big ship again? Dunno, maybe someone can chime in.

Railguns are attractive because of the hypersonic nature of the round and the lack of needing to store immense amounts of powder charges/fuel for the round. If anyone who's been following railgun tech can chime in I'd be fascinated to know where we're at with them and what the future looks like.

I'd argue that torpedoes rather than missiles is what makes armour currently obsolete. You can't armour against underwater explosions that break your ship's keel.

Oh, and nukes, obviously.

Oh I'd agree, but the armour really only existed because of the threat of big ass cannon shells coming from the other direction. Torpedoes more or less trump everything. We have a number of defenses against them, like we do missiles...but at the end of the day it only takes one or two to sink something.

IIRC the US navy tested anti-ship missiles against the equivalent of the Iowa-class' main belt back in the 80s and just had them bounce off. The problem is that you'd have to cover the deck as well as the belt, you still die to torpedoes, and you can't armour against nukes.

Another issue is that you just cannot project power from a BB the same way you can from a carrier. You're extremely range-limited unless you're using missiles and a DDG does that at a fraction of the cost. A smaller railgun-armed ship armoured more like a monitor could work as a shore bombardment support ship, but I don't see BBs returning as surface combatants even with anti-missile countermeasures unless torpedoes can be neutered.

There's an argument to be made that BBs could work in an environment where satellites are knocked out right as the war starts, but even then nukes remain a thing.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
IIRC the US navy tested anti-ship missiles against the equivalent of the Iowa-class' main belt back in the 80s and just had them bounce off.

True, but one should bear in mind American anti-ship missiles at the time topped out at the Harpoon, with a roughly 500 lb. warhead. The Soviets at the time were throwing around big antiship missiles with warheads four to five times that size... and doctrine was to launch over 100 of them at a time against a major fleet element.

In the end, there's just no way to armor against that level of threat. It's FAR more important to be able to shoot them down instead. Thus, carrier-borne long range interceptors like the F-14/Phoenix weapon system, and long-range anti-air missiles like the Standard linked to the Aegis radar system.

The trick there being neither of which are cheap. There have been various proposals for arsenal ships carrying several hundred missiles of various types, but they all are eventually shot down by the same problem: The U.S. Navy, wealthy as it is, can't afford to fill one ship with hundreds of missiles on top of all the other ships and their magazines too... and in the end, ten smaller ships with 50 missiles each can do the same job, and cover ten separate locations too.

Oh its this thread again.

Well, my take is as follows.


As counter-measures against missiles and aircraft continue to advance these weapon systems will become largely obsolete. Ground based or even orbital lasers will render cruise missiles, ICBMs, and any aircraft larger than very small drones worthless militarily as such lasers will eventually become very cheap to operate and they will be highly effective. SAMs and anti-ICBM missiles are rather iffy on weather they can hit a target. Its enough to be a possibility, but its at best a coin toss and that is enough to still allow aircraft and ICBMs to be a threat. Lasers won't have that problem. If the target is in LOS it is hit instantly, and missiles and modern aircraft do not take much to put out of commission. A slightly deformed area of plating can easily tear apart a missile or an F35.

Its not really a question of if this will happen, its just a question of when. And there will be a short period where the military that develops these lasers will have them and nobody else does, but eventually the technology will spread everywhere. Everybody would pay top dollar to have an extremely effective and cheap to run AA system that has unlimited ammo as long as it is powered.

This will result in a meta shift in warfare. Aircraft and missiles will be largely useless, and they're already way too expensive to be cost-effective. So we will go back to using lots of tanks and other heavily armored vehicles. And on the ocean, this means Battleships. Namely armed with railguns, and a crap ton of those AA lasers.

A battleship sized railgun will be very useful as force projection, and since they are projected to eventually have ranges roughly around 400 miles you'll be able to support ground troops even while you are a great distance away. All while moving constantly to avoid any potential enemy fire. Sure, its far less than a carrier can do. But 400 miles from any ocean is still a fairly significant chunk of the world. Certainly the entire Middle East and anywhere we'd be going in Asia is well within 400 miles of an accessible coast.

Combating opposing fleets, which may or may not be armed with railguns, will require you to get closer though as even with the velocity of a railgun you're still going to most likely miss any targets that are actively evading you. So naval engagements will be at relatively close ranges for the railguns, though definitely a bit longer than what happened in WW2.

These battleships and their accompanying ships will almost certainly be nuclear powered and armed with an array of railguns. Probably 3-4 main turrets along with a large number of smaller secondary railguns for shooting at smaller and closer targets(as well as for extra AA defense). They will be equipped with a large number of AA lasers to deal with missile and aircraft, as well as blinding attacks on any ships within direct line of sight. They'll also probably have a small launch facility for scout drones. These drones will be very small to avoid detection and be used primarily to scout for targets. Enemy ships will probably have the same and attempting to locate and shoot down the enemy spotting drones will be a major component of this new naval warfare.

Unlike the battleships of old, these new ships will be much more survivable because their ammunition will not be volatile. Railgun slugs will mostly be inert chunks of metal, no cordite for impacts to set alight. You might have some explosive shells, but they will be rarely used and only against specific targets. This means less effort can be made to protect the magazines and more focus can be put on simply having more armor and speed.

Its worth noting that with Battleships, they have almost never been disabled or sunk because a precision strike was able to deliberately target a weakspot. It was always sheer dumb luck that actually led to most battleship's being sunk, it was never that the enemy actually managed to pummel their way through their armor with sheer force. The Yamato sank because a lucky attack disabled her flood controls on one side, which caused her to eventually roll. Arizona had her magazine detonated by a lucky bomb, Hood and many british ships in the Battle of Jutland also suffered from "lucky shots". Bismarck had her rudder disabled by a lucky torpedo, and she only actually sank after multiple point blank torpedoes were used to put her out of her misery. Though at the same time the Bismarck's crew had also detonated scuttling charges in the engine room, so its debatable if she was sunk by enemy fire.

Unfortunately physics disagrees; the inverse square law makes it very difficult for long-range laser weapons to work.

After nearly 40-years development the best we’ve got are some prototype / low production systems that can take out missiles, because they’re fragile (and not designed to resist it). They can’t do enough concentrated energy input to damage an aircraft (unless you deliberately target the pilot, which is against the Geneva convention) and they certainly can’t do anything about an ICBM warhead in descent phase, as those things are designed to absorb the energy from atmospheric re-entry.

 Lone Cat wrote:
1. What are Battleships. Definitions that distincts ones from Ironclads, Cruisers, and Destroyers.
- Pre Dread
- Dreadnoughs onwards

'Ironclad' is a term which theoretically denotes any ship from HMS Warrior onwards coated in armour. Allthough some would argue it only applies to those ships entirely constructed out of metal (thus excluding the wooden battleships converted in the early 1860's to have iron armour), and the term largely went out of use with the introduction of the dreadnought in 1905. That's also when we see the term 'pre-dreadnought' creeping in to denote all ironclad battleships with turret arrangements (rather than broadsides) which were designed and produced pre-dreadnought. The Dreadnought itself is often considered the first modern battleship. It was faster and hit harder than any existing pre-dreadnought ship due to the installation of Parson turbines and large guns in a central configuration/layout.

2. If a warship has the same thick armor but doesn't have the same number of mainguns or armed with smaller mainguns (those of generic artillery pieces) and not specially designed ones (like the 50 inches thing Yamato has), can it be called 'Battleship'

Many battleships pre-dreadnought had smaller guns. It was always a question of thickness of armour to size of artillery piece. A ship can only carry so much weight after all, the battle between armour and artillery was a constant one for forty odd years. On top of that, before the torpedo boat destroyer made an appearance in the 1890's, larger warships had to carry large numbers of quick-firing small guns in addition to their main armament so to fend off potential torpedo attack. Multiple Nordenfeldt and Hotchkiss guns were a standard fixture and each of these would carry a fairly large slug so as to be able to blow holes in torpedo boats

 Jadenim wrote:
Unfortunately physics disagrees; the inverse square law makes it very difficult for long-range laser weapons to work.

After nearly 40-years development the best we’ve got are some prototype / low production systems that can take out missiles, because they’re fragile (and not designed to resist it). They can’t do enough concentrated energy input to damage an aircraft (unless you deliberately target the pilot, which is against the Geneva convention) and they certainly can’t do anything about an ICBM warhead in descent phase, as those things are designed to absorb the energy from atmospheric re-entry.

I've seen lasers take down UAS/drones. Not sure how they could do that but not a manned aircraft...

Probably a combination of several things;
1) Most UAVs are also a lot less robust than frontline combat aircraft as they’re not designed for high speed or high G.

2) Unless you’re talking about Predator type UAV, they’re going to be more vulnerable laser damage (a two inch hole in a 20-tonne fighter jet is a lot less of a problem than in a 200kg drone)

3) A key element for laser effectiveness/defence is manoeuvring; it takes time to build up the energy to do structural damage (a second or two), during which time you have to keep the laser trained on precisely the same spot. If you’ve got a drone flying a predictable path that’s a lot easier than a jinking manned aircraft.

4) (or 3a) It’s a lot easier to damage the sensors than the structure (or even just dazzle optical ones), which can destroy the craft by causing it to tumble. That’s actually a very real, effective option against manned aircraft, but illegal as I mentioned before.

A 2 inch hole in an F35 is going to be fatal. Especially at high speeds. The faster any aircraft flies the more vulnerable it is to minor structural damage being catastrophic. The same reason ICBMs are vulnerable. They fly so fast that any damage can result in the extra friction unbalancing their trajectory, and any wobble in the nose is going to tear the missile apart.

Yes, lasers right now are not powerful enough to deal with fighter and bomber aircraft. But as time goes on lasers are going to only get stronger. Inverse square law can be overcome with stronger lasers. It’s just a question of time.

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And that’s without getting into A-10 battle damage pictures, which are frankly ridiculous (and it’s a beautiful, ridiculous, aircraft)

Those aren’t F35s. We do not make planes that can take damage anymore. Modern fighters and bombers are paper.

It’s a good argument for keeping A10s around. They can take a beating. Other newer stuff simply can’t.

If the US can't armour against Russian anti-ship missiles I have a hard time seeing how there's going to be any armour against railguns. You'd not have battleships duking it out with railguns, you'd have cruisers, since there'd be no point in having a larger ship just to carry armour that didn't do anything anyway.

Plus, all of this doesn't take into account the fact that lasers won't do squat against torpedoes. Submarines are the kings of sinking other ships.

If the armor is as thick as it was historically on Battleships(or thicker) and heavily sloped it will have an effect, its easy to forget that most battleship armor was in excess of 12" thick, and often closer to 2 feet than not. I would expect these battleships to not have the flat decks that prior ships have had. Rather they would have domes of armor plating covering most of their exposed surfaces to give optimal angles for incoming fire to skip off. Yes, a railgun could still potentially damage this armor, but it wouldn't be like going through the soft skinned vessels we deploy today. It would be an attrition game. And because a nuclear powered railgun armed ship will need less space to store its ammunition and fuel it will have more tonnage that can be devoted to armor.

Regarding Torpedoes. Their effectiveness against ships as heavily armored as battleships is mixed. A single torpedo is NOT going to sink a battleship, or even cause massive damage, unless you get extremely lucky(ala Bismarck). The real threat of a submarine is its ability to attack you and then disappear. The danger of a single torpedo is fairly small. Dozens of torpedoes launched over a series of hit and run attacks is a danger, but that is why Battleships wouldn't operate alone. And this argument applies just as much to modern carriers, and submarines haven't made them obsolete and they are even more vulnerable to submarines because they're actually a ship that a single torpedo can and will sink trivially.

Fleets won't be just comprised of battleships. They'll be centered around them, but there will be a large quantity of destroyers, cruisers, and submarines to support them.

Besides sloped armor another thing I could imagine in response to the introduction of railguns would be to "go deep" and start constructing ships in a way that the majority of vital systems is below the water line. As far as I now, railguns shoot in a rather straight trajectory and should - at least in theory - have a hard time hitting objects that are only slightly above, or even below the surface. In contrast to conventional projectiles that arrived in a steeper trajectory.
So to try and illustrate my Point:

So the railgun projectile would be severely slowed down by the water it would have to pass through to hit the lower parts of the partially submerged ship resulting in less devastating blows or even misses. And if the most succeptible parts (engine, fuel, missile silos, generators for the railguns) are in those lower parts, hits of the above surface stuff would be less likely to result in destruction of the ship.

The result might even look alot like these old dudes:



But of course I'm neither a shipwright nor a navy officer, so take that as an uninformed idea based on a at best rough understanding of how railguns work.

Even Yamato only had a 16" belt. That's quite a bit off from 2' of armour. Are you going to armour the entire deck with equivalent armour too?

Submarines may well have made carriers obsolete already; there hasn't been a major naval clash between roughly peer opponents on the high seas since WW2. Carriers retain their usefulness against less-advanced opponents that can't meaningfully strike back.

There's no reason a neo-battleship would do any better against a modern torpedo. Both would have their keels snapped because gravity is gravity. You don't hit ships with modern torpedoes, the torpedo explodes beneath the ship and makes a gas bubble that causes the ship to snap under its own weight. If anything a heavily armoured ship would just exacerbate the problem. Further, looking into the future there's supercavitating torpedoes as well. Both Russia and Germany have them in service, and I'd be highly surprised if the US didn't too. How do you defend your ship from a 2-tonne object ramming you at 3-400 KPH under the waterline? Armour the entire ship? Good luck affording that.


The problem with ships like those old Ironclads is that their seakeeping is absolutely atrocious. They're at risk of simply flipping over in any kind of rough weather. IIRC even the Zumwalts have some sort of stability issue due to their hull shape.