re: How do you protect Battleships in the modern era? Trump building 25

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You’ve been sunk about 10x before you got within 100 miles if you’re planning on engagement with guns.

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These battleships do not engage that way. They will be more like aircraft carriers in that they will be protected by a fleet that carries defensive weapons. They strike remotely like aircraft carriers.

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24 miles is right next to the target in 2026.

You’ve been sunk about 10x before you got within 100 miles if you’re planning on engagement with guns.

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Doubtful the battleships get anywhere close to a target until aerial superiority is won. And anyway, I doubt very seriously they will be much like the battleships of old. In his speech, Trump mentioned that they will be equipped with lasers, rail guns, and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

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These battleships do not engage that way. They will be more like aircraft carriers in that they will be protected by a fleet that carries defensive weapons. They strike remotely like aircraft carriers.

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That description just makes the problem clearer, not better.

If the ship “strikes remotely,” is protected by a fleet, and does not engage with guns, then it is not a battleship by any meaningful definition. That is either a missile arsenal ship, a large surface combatant, or functionally a carrier substitute. Calling it a battleship adds nothing except confusion.

We already build ships that do exactly what you’re describing. Destroyers and cruisers launch long-range missiles, operate inside a carrier strike group, and never plan to close to gun range. The Navy explicitly moved away from concentrating more firepower into larger single hulls because survivability comes from distribution, not size.

If you scale that concept up past existing destroyers and even past Zumwalt, you do not get a “modern battleship.” You get a massively expensive, high-signature missile platform that does nothing carriers, subs, and distributed surface combatants don’t already do better and with less risk.

So either it’s a literal battleship, which modern doctrine rejects, or it’s a remote-strike platform that already exists under different names and should not be described as a battleship at all. You can’t solve the problem by redefining the word while keeping the same objections in place.

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How do you protect Battleships in the modern era?

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AEGIS cruisers perhaps?

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AEGIS cruisers perhaps?

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Then exactly what problem is the giant ship solving that existing Aegis destroyers and cruisers don’t already solve?

If it needs Aegis escorts to survive, what capability does the large hull add beyond concentrating missiles in one place?

If the answer is “more firepower,” why is concentrating that firepower into a single hull better than distributing the same weapons across multiple ships that are harder to target and cheaper to lose?

If the escorts provide the sensors, missile defense, and protection, why not just build more of the escorts instead of a single higher-value target?

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I love how you people all think you know more than military leaders. And no, Trump is not making this decision in a vacuum.

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It doesn’t matter what is proposed. They will hate it because Trump.

There was a study done that concluded the 16” guns could shoot ammunition that would reach out to 100+ miles. The only reason they declined to chase that was the operational expense of those older battleships.

Another study looked at the armor they carry and rearm them, it would take a lot to sink them. Their “staying power” of taking hits is still impressive.

That said, drones are old news, technologies like Leonidas make them kind of pointless. The future is AI powered drones that don’t need gps guidance. They can operate in a gps jamming environment.

Even hypersonic missiles are sort of hard to claim as the end all be all. You can’t hit a moving target with them as the plasma generated from the heat of the speed they are traveling at interferes with “know” guidance technologies. So those Chinese and Russian hypersonics can’t hit a moving aircraft carrier, and AEGIS can absolutely hit them.

Hypersonics are great for standoff weapons against stationary targets.

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Right?

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Its going to need a casino and lots of neon.

Roger the shrubber . Government pays my bills.