re: Navy is scrapping the Railgun

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The main drawback is the large crew requirement of each battleship, close to 2000 sailors, as opposed to 276 for an Arleigh Burke destroyer.

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The main drawback of even a modern battleship is that anti-ship weapons are so lethal.

Battleships were great in their day because hitting another ship at long range with artillery was very hard and often involved just getting lucky. So it was a good idea to have lots of armor to protect vital systems against near misses.

With modern missiles you're going to hit your target with rounds every bit as lethal as a battleship round of old, and armor thick enough to protect against that is incredibly heavy and not worth it. They might have some usefulness in a shore bombardment situation in uncontested waters (which is mostly what they did in WW2) but they'd be sitting ducks against a serious blue water force. And that would be true even if the crew complement was zero.

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Future options include a magazine ship, or MGX, which is basically a modern gunship, armed with a number of 5" guns capable of firing the new shells.

Personally I would think the old battleships might be considered also, as they carry as many as 20 5" guns already, together with missile systems and other upgrades added in the 1980's. These could be brought out probably for the cost of a few new destroyers. The main drawback is the large crew requirement of each battleship, close to 2000 sailors, as opposed to 276 for an Arleigh Burke destroyer.

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I'm as big a fan of the Iowas as anyone, but what it would cost to reactivate them, then the requirements to crew them, then add an obsolete power plant...you could look at a smaller hull with a reduced crew requirement (which is where you make REAL savings over the life of the ship)