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

Well this will be my last round so I suppose I better make it good. Before I start though, I would just like to point out that Russia reinstating the Kirov is irrelavant to this debate either way, since this debate is about whether doing something like that is wise in the first place. The fact that Russia is doing it doesn't necissarily make it a good idea. Anyway, back to the actual debate: The first thing catching my eye is pros continued insistance that a modern battleship would be signifigantly cheaper than a modern aircraft carrier, and his continued insistance that the fact that a certain battleship built over 70 years ago costs a bit less than a modern nuclear powered aircraft carrier proves his point. Yet he goes on after that to say that his vision of these new modern battleships would include advanced technologies never before heard of at the time that WW2 was occuring, such as: - Cruise missiles - Surface to air missles - Magnetic anomaly detectors - Anti-submarine torpedoes - Electronic warfare suites - Anti-missile countermeasures - Modern damage control systems - Modern communications systems - Modern power generation systems - Modern engines - Just about all the other naval breakthroughs in the last 70 years that are taken for granted, but don't just appear out of nowhere without being paid for. Pros claim that huge warships weighing tens of thousands of tons are relatively cheap compared to other warships simply because you label it as a battleship is a fantasy. It is an illusion. It is wishful thinking which has its origins in the fact that the last ships to carry said label existed nearly three quarters of a century ago, when such expensive technologies did not exist. A modern destroyer is not expensive because it is a destroyer, a modern destroyer is expensive because it has these modern technologies I have mentioned. A modern aircraft carrier is not expensive because it is an aircraft carrier, a modern aircraft carrier is expensive because it has these modern technologies I have mentioned. Lastly, a WW2 battleship is not relatively cheap compared to modern warships because it is a battleship, a WW2 battleship is relatively cheap compared to modern warships because it lacks these technologies. I touched on this previously with my comment near the beginning of round two in which I pointed out that pro was comparing the cost of 70 year old gun-toting ships to the cost of a modern nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Pro never addressed this fact. Indeed, pro never addressed just why he says a huge warship would be relatively cheaper than another huge warship simply because one of these warships is labeled by its creators as a 'battleship' and the other huge warship is labeled by its creators as a 'cruiser' other than his falacious comparisons with battleships of old. Instead pro tries to convince you the voter that I conceded battleships are cheaper than aircraft carriers. No, I conceded that battleships built three quarters of a century ago are cheaper than modern nuclear powered ships. This is not the same, and I hope you can now see clearly why it is not. Now, I thought I had a decent point about radar and missiles, let's see how pro responded to it. Mm. Hmmm. Here we are... Ah, yes. Yes I see. It seems pro conceded the main points of that section, but did take me up on my challenge to identify a radar system that coud both be preactically used on a large ship and at the same time be impractical for a small ship. Let's google this Duga he speaks of. ... Ummm ... No, no. Gonna cut my response to this one short. That monster isn't going to fit on a ship, I don't care how large the ship is. Nope, not touching this one. Nothing more needs to be said. Google the damn thing and decide for yourself if that looks like a practical piece of naval technology, voters. What's next... battleship would beat a frigate 1v1? Yeah, probably. So would a carrier. GG no re. Next up we have another repeated claim that it's cheaper... Already addressed that falacy. Offhand remark about armor? Yeah, if armor doesn't keep you alibe then it functions as nothing but a liability, as I detailed in depth in round one. There's a reason that modern carriers can vastly outpace other modern warships despite being so much larger. It's because their vastly more powerful engines are not held back by armor configurations that do nothing in the modern age to help the survivability of your ship. Okay now we're back to the good stuff. Check out this quote of my opponent: "Con neglects the FA-18's firing range [over 3000km 'there and back'] as opposed to flying range. I strongly doubt fighter planes can shoot missiles with 400 kilometers." Which I assume is meant as a response to my argument about carrier launched fighter planes giving fleets an increased standoff distance from saturation attack threats. But this misses the point entirely. My argument was that an airplane would, as I said, give an increased standoff from the airplanes constituting said threat simply by virtue of the fact that it could fly nearly four times the distance of a long range SAM, engage the enemy at that distance from the fleet, and have enoigh fuel to return. Even if the air to air missles had a range of 100 meters (its a bit more than that) then my point would still stand because the standoff distance from the fleet where the engagement takes place would still be nearly four times the range of the longest range SAM. The fact is that a modern battleship would bring nothing new to the fleet, simply being a larger version of missile-based warships already in service such as missile destroyers. Carriers, however, have the ability to bring in the new factor of air support and vastly increases standoff distance against ait threats, along with the ability to strike the enemy at those ranges as well. I'm also glad my opponent references the importance of air strips in his last sentence too, carriers basically being floating airstrips that can go wherever you need them.