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

A Thing of the Past Pro starts round two by pointing to my statement about the world abandoning the battleship and bringing up the Iowa and Kirov ships as examples of this being untrue. The Iowa class has not seen ship to ship combat since WW2 and were decommissioned for the last time in 1992 about 25 years ago after being put out of and back into service several times. The Kirov article he links is a similar case, except that Russia has recently decided to start a program to un-abandon the Kirov, just as many advocate the U.S. un-abandoning the Iowa. This doesn't change the fact that both were abandoned though. Money Pro cites the Iowa class battleship as having cost about 100mil USD. However, pro neglects to mention that this figure is not adjusted for inflation. These battleships were first commissioned in 1943, and according to the calculator.net inflation calculator one 1943 dollar equals about 14.5 2016 dollars. This means that according to pros figure of 100mil the Iowa would have cost nearly 1.5 billion in today's terms, and that is just for construction. Crew size was anywhere from 1800 to 2700 (pros source 7) which is only slightly less than an aircraft carriers crew. This is especially important in light of the fact that today's military spends about 1.5 times more on personnel than on equipment procurement.(2) To top it all off, that was with technology now over 70 years old that the cost got to that point. Pro later proposes a number of modern refits that could make the Iowa potentially competitive on the modern battlefield, all of which will increase this cost dramatically. So yes, a WW2 battleship built over 70 years ago with 1940s technology is indeed cheaper than the brand new high tech nuclear powered carrier pro uses as a comparison, but not quite as cheaper as pro would have you the voter believe. Missiles, Artillery, and Radar Okay, bear with me a bit on this one. This section will be a combination of a rebuttal to some of what pro has said and a positive case for con. First, I concede that battleships in the age of guided missiles would have more missiles per ship, but this is not as great an advantage as it may seem as it also means putting more eggs in each basket, so to speak. The real advantage would be if larger ships indeed had longer ranged weaponry than smaller ships. This is certainly the case for the age of artillery as bigger ship = bigger guns = longer range. But is it the case for the age of guided missiles? Well, let's see. In order to engage a target at any range with any weapon system you must first know where the target is. In world war two even the longest range artillery still shot within visual range so this was not a problem. In the modern day this is not the case. Guided missile and sensor equipment far exceed visual range, with the max range of most cruise missiles far exceeding the most powerful ship-mounted radar systems ability to detect and track targets. This is why when it comes to moving targets radar and sensors are more important to determining the actual range of any guided missile system than how far the missile can actually travel. (With stationary targets whose position is known, this is not necessarily the case, but I would like to address ship to ship and surface to air missiles first) The question then becomes, would a new class of battleship necessarily have greater capability to track targets at longer ranges than its smaller counterparts? I don't think so. It seems that there are a lot of cases of the same radar systems being used on two ships of vastly different sizes, such as the UK's Daring class destroyer at 500 feet in length and 8000 ton displacement and the UK's Queen Elizabeth carrier at nearly twice the length and nearly 10 times the displacement both using the S1850M long range radar. (3 and 4) I fully admit to not being a subject matter expert on naval technology, but this seems to indicate to me that the size of a ship doesn't greatly affect its ability to mount different sensor/radar equipment. If pro can find a clear case of a certain radar system requiring a large enough ship to be put to use then I will reconsider this point in my next round. Anyway, the conclusion for part three is that the effective engagement range of a naval vessel in the modern age is primarily limited by the range of its radar, which is in turn not primarily limited by the size of the ship. Ergo, The effective engagement range is no longer greatly affected by the size of a ship as was once the case during the golden age of naval artillery, but rather is most strongly dependant on the technology level of the ships radar systems. That is my response to my opponents points up to the beginning of their 'counterattack' section. After that point my opponent strongly steps up his comparison of battleships to carriers, so for my next sections I will do so as well. Massed Missile Saturation Attacks and SAMs So-called missile saturation attacks are correctly identified by pro as a very important topic in modern naval military doctrine. For those unfamiliar with the concept, the idea is that such a large number of missiles are fired on a target simultaneously, or as close to simultaneously as possible, that the targets anti-missile capabilities are unable to deal with the threat simply due to the sheer number of incoming missiles. In a conventional war between two high tech navys of any highly industrialized nations in the present day, the outcome would likely rely heavily on strategic and well-timed use of massed missile saturation attacks by both sides. Now that the intro to the concept is complete, we look at pros claims. Namely, that such an attack would, if properly executed, be capable of quickly disabling any aircraft carrier unlucky enough to be targeted. Well, after an intro like that I suppose you are expecting me to tell you exactly why modern nuclear carriers and their escorts easily have enough anti-missile capability to defend against such an attack and that it is not as devastating as pro claims. Ehhhhh... hmmm... weeeelllll... kiiiinda? Hm. Let me explain. We do have a pretty good idea of what would happen if this scenario ever did take place. Basically if a suficiently advanced enemy is able to sucessfully pull off such a move in the form of a suprise attack on your fleet then really, it doesn't matter if your flagship is a carrier, a battleship, or a beluga whale. The end result is the same: RIP fleet. Game over. You have a few thousand death notifications to write and sign so you better get to it. My opponent seems to imply that a fleet lead by a hypothetical modern battleship would not be as susceptable to such an attack because the ship itself would have greater anti-missile capabilities than a carrier. While this may or may not be true, the fact is that the anti-missile capabilities of a single ship isn't going to make much of a difference against such an attack against a fleet. Pro is free to argue otherwise in his next round, of course. Really the best way to prevent a massed missile saturation attack from erasing thousands of lives in the space of minutes is just that: to prevent it. Identify what the enemy is doing while they are still positioning their assets to do so, then neutralize enough of those assets before the attack is ever launched that such an attack becomes impossible. Now as to which ship would be better at this strategy between a battleship and carrier, I think the answer is obvious. An F/A-18 has an operational range of over 3300 km (5) Cut this in half for the post-attack return flight, round down a bit to be on the safe side, and we get a carrier attack group able to strike a target while the carrier maintains a standoff range of 1500 km plus the range of the planes missiles (which can vary depending on loadout) compare this to my oponents SAM of choice, the S-400 missile system (I am using this rather than some anti-ship missile due to the fact that missile saturation attacks are far and away more likely to come from an enemy air attack group rather than an expensive enemy fleet) which has varying ranges depending on the type of missile being used, the longest ranged being about 400 km (6) This means that, assumimg the enemy is detected preparing a massed missile saturation attack, a carrier fighter wing has more standoff distance and therefore more time to intercept and neutralize the threat than a battleship. As I said before, if you are unable to intercept the enemy before their saturation attack is launched then you are pretty much done anyway. Also like I said pro is free to try and argue that point in the next round if they wish to do so. Furthermore, I would like to point out that my Commander in Chief is a llama. Well there you have it. I have less than 900 characters left now. Not much I can do with that as far as making a new section so I guess I will leave it at that for my part of round two. Sources: 1. http://www.calculator.net...? 2. http://www.businessinsider.com... 3. https://en.m.wikipedia.org... 4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org... 5. https://www.google.ro... range 6. https://en.m.wikipedia.org...(missile)