On Balance, the battleship should be reinstated as the flagship of navies and fleets.

As noted by pro in the comments round one is not for acceptance only, so I will therefore be expected to state my case in round one. As pro has not yet been given the oportunity to present any arguments for me to grind into the dirt, I will simply start with a short history lesson leading into a general outline of why top military experts throughout literally the entire planet have decided that modern technology has required the abandonment of the now outdated "bigger is better" design doctrines. The modern battleship concept as defined by pro in round one was most predominant during the first and second world wars. During this time the most defining feature of Battleship armament was their huge artillery guns, whose shells were typically over a foot wide. Battleships made up for their slow speed and inability to dodge such devastating attacks with thick armor which covered most of the ship in early designs before the all-or-nothing armor scheme was developed. However, even in the glory days of the battleship there were major problems. These problems exploited the battleships reliance on armor alone for survivability and took the form of unguided torpedoes and mines. Armor schemes were limited not only by cost, but also by the fact that too much armor on the bottom of a ship has a vast negative effect on displacement and drag of said ship. Because of this, the underside of a ship tended to be one of the most vulnerable spots of a ship (besides perhaps the top deck, depending on the design.) Obviously having such a vulnerability is not too much of a problem against enemy artillery fire, but against enemy weapon systems specifically designed to target this weakness a slow moving battleship was completely defenseless. A huge, multi-hundred-million dollar ship with hundreds of lives being crippled by a single well-aimed torpedo shot from an enemy submarine or plane was a huge risk navies of the time had to take just by bringing a battleship to battle. Despite all this, Battleships did have their uses at the time. Due to that eras reliance on artillery for ship-to-ship warfare, bigger ship meant bigger guns. Bigger guns meant more firepower. Bigger ship also meant more armor, something that is a reliable defense against artillery if you have enough of it. So, at the expense of speed and maneuverability, as well as vulnerability to certain threats, the battleship did have some advantages during the height of the age of naval artillery. Now enter the age of the guided missile. So, the main reasons to want a bigger ship are more firepower and more armor (or more energy production, but I'm sure my opponent will bring that up in a future round.) Missles don't require huge ships to be brought to battle the way old artillery guns required larger ships for larger shells, and so in a battlefield dominated by missiles bigger is not necessarily better when it comes to offense. As for defense against missles, armor is far and away NOT the best choice when compared to electronic countermeasures and anti-missile guns which are easily mounted on smaller ships, therefore meaning that in a battlefield dominated by missiles bigger isn't necessarily better for defense either. Well that about does it for now. Allow me to sum up point by point: - Using artillery as a main weapon system, bigger ships mean bigger firepower. - Using artillery as a main weapon system, bigger ships mean better defense. - We don't use artillery anymore, we use missiles. Bigger isn't better for firepower or defense when it comes to missiles. - No matter what technology is popular at the time, bigger is more expensive. - On top of all this, bigger ships are still more vulnerable to threats such as planes and submarines, both of which are still in use today. In the next round I will address whatever arguments my opponent brings up. If I have time to do so after dealing with whatever my opponent brings up I will go into detail about naval fire support of shore operations and how that topic affects the current debate. (I didnt want to bring that up yet as with the burden of proof and my points made here, my opponent has enough to deal with for now. No need to overwhelm anyone just yet.) Before turning the debate over to round 2 I would like to thank my opponent for coming up with a debate topic that is actually unique and interesting. It is not often that I see both of these things in one title.