Keep in mind that we once had many battleships in the fleet. They were rendered obsolete by the airplane. Battleships are very fat targets in this age. Bismarck and Musashi were eventually sunk by bombs. Then there was the near-successful attempt sinking USS Cole reflecting the potency of asymmetric warfare, and of course current drone technology which, if Ukrainian boat drones are able to sink large Russian missile cruisers, what more with a battleship about the size of an Iowa? He’s in it mainly for the belief he wants to show a bigger e-peen.
Its a bigger issue than just battleships versus carriers.
Its a doctrine issue. The US military industrial complex selected a US defense/ war strategy that would be most profitable for them as consultants. This has almost always meant that bigger, more complex, more high tech, is always better from the eyes of a consultant. Hence the Iowa. Hence the F-35. Hence the Virginia Class. US military doctrine hasn’t been selected for based on what a good doctrine would be. Its been selected for based on what would be profitable for consultants.
And both the war in Ukraine and October 7th just, blow that up. Hamas, literally, an almost comically underfunded barely-a-military in the grand scheme of global conflict got past one of the most heavily militarized borders on the planet in fucking hand made gliders. Like honestly, not NEARLY enough credit is given to what Hamas accomplished on that day. It should be studied, for generations, for millennia. What they did was horrible, but what the accomplished, it should change peoples minds about what is possible and the “value” of technology like the iron-dome. And then there is Ukraine. And the value of cheap, mass production shines, yet again.
I’m… not sure Oct 7 is a great example. They got past the border yes, but then they’ve lost continuously for the next two years. Cheap mass production worked once in an attack that was brutally effective… and then it’s done nothing. It’s a great example of how effective “exploiting overconfidence” is as a tactic, but the gazan war pretty conclusively shows the benefits of holding technological superiority.
(wait, no, hang on: the virgina class is a great submarine, what’s the issue there?)
It’s about high technology versus low. The Virginia class, the F35, Iron Dome, these are some of the most complex pieces of military technology in existence. They cost more than a medium national military spending to build one of them. They depend on incredible expertise and support systems to stay functional. The supply chain is maybe one of the most complex in the world.
They are the result of a military doctrine whose ass was shown on Oct 7, and which continues to be shown in Ukraine. October 7th is an important example because of just the extreme disparity between the two forces in the technology, materials, and funding available to both nations. Ukraine is important because it shows us what a sustained example looks like. Mass production, loser cost, more available, consumer grade: these are antithetical to US military doctrine.
It’s not that a five billion dollar submarine isn’t a useful fighting tool, it’s that if a five hundred dollar drone can keep it in port… what really is its value?
The US military doctrine has been basically “highest if the high technology only”. And I’m arguing that it’s ass is showing.
I’m really confused by a bunch of what you’re saying here:
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Oct 7 happened because iron dome had a huge hole in it’s coverage: namely, it was never designed to protect against extremely short range, low speed gliders. Iron dome is incredibly effective at what it was designed to do, protect against low-tech rockets and artillery (as seen during the 2025 israel-iran war). Hamas identified and masterfully exploited that, but it’s not exactly a failed technology because it was circumvented once with an unanticipated strategy, and has since continued to be proven extremely effective at the thing it was designed to do.
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How is Ukraine showcasing a failure in doctrine for the west? I’m just confused, given the amount of western equipment and aid flowing into Ukraine and their spectacularly effective resistance to what-was-once-thought-to-be the 2nd most powerful military in the world, you’d think the conclusion would be that the soviet derived strategies of the russian army (cheap + simple = good) would be the ones being most clearly highlighted as outdated.
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Why is complexity inherently bad? You’re asserting that’s the case, but you’re not really making an argument as to why that’s the case. Yes, the supply chain is complex, but the supply chain for the F35 isn’t more complex than for things like the F-16E, one of the most effective fighter aircraft of the modern era, it’s just less broadly established (well it was, as F35s have been delivered to NATO countries that supply chain is now extremely robust).
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A $500 drone is not keeping a submarine in port. I don’t even know what you’re trying to say here with that one. What could a $500 drone even do to threaten a submarine, besides report it’s position to an artillery battery (and if that happened, why wouldn’t the submarine just… not stay in port?).
And as a concluding point: You know that drone warfare in Ukraine consists of significantly more than just $500 FPV drones (which rely on foreign supply chains), right? They’re incredibly effective for their role, but Ukraine uses much more highly sophisticated drones all over the battlefield. Presenting the drone development work they’ve done as being centered around “cheap mass produced drones” belies a serious lack of understanding as to the most basic mechanics of the Ukrainian war.
Its great to come back to these threads months later after getting brigaded and watch peoples entire-ass just flapping in the breeze of history…
1: You didn’t get “brigaded”, three people disagreed with your interpretation. Your other comment is sitting at +31, -4. My absolute goodness, how will you ever manage such an intense public backlash.
2: Everything I said has been shown to still be correct, much as it was correct at the time.
3: Why are you dredging this back up?edit:
OH NO I’M BEING BRIGADED AUGH HELP AAAAAH SOMEONE ANYONE SAAAAVE MEEEEE
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Battleships were rendered obsolete by the airplane but also by radar and radio.
Even in their heyday, battleships never went out alone. They were always protected by smaller ships like destroyers. A WWII battleship cost about $100m to build (about $2b in today’s money). A destroyer was only about $6m. Destroyers evolved from something called a “Torpedo Boat Destroyer”, which was a ship built specifically to kill torpedo boats. Torpedo boats were small boats that either launched torpedoes, or in the earliest days carried torpedoes affixed to the bow which they’d use to ram high-value enemy ships. In the “rock, paper, scissors” world of naval combat, a really cheap torpedo boat could take out a really expensive battleship, but the torpedo boat was countered by a (torpedo boat) destroyer.
Battleships come from a time when the only way to spot an enemy fleet was to see them visually across the water. It used to be that an entire battlegroup could “hide” by just chasing off or killing whatever had spotted them and then changing course. The ocean was a big place, and spotting something visually was really tough. Add night, clouds and weather and sometimes ships could be only a few km away and never spot each-other. By the middle of WWII radar and radio improvements had changed that (the radar for spotting, and the radio for relaying the information on what you found).
Radar makes spotting any ship nearby easy, even at night or in bad weather. Put that radar into a plane and now a tiny plane can spot and track a huge fleet, so it can no longer disappear. With the ease of communication with radio, that means that if the enemy fleet is too powerful, your fleet can stay in port or otherwise avoid it. If you have submarines (the modern version of the torpedo boat) you can try to set up an ambush.
So, even if airplanes didn’t exist, battleships would probably still be obsolete just because of radar and radio. And, up next, carriers will become because of drones and missiles.
I think carriers are to useful as bases on the water. I mean in some ways submarines could be seen as already eclipsing them combat wise.
