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MASSIVE US NAVY Drydock Capacity Failures

Hawkeye10 said:
https://breakingdefense.com/2017/10/15-subs-kept-out-of-service-177-months-of-drydock-backups/

More of the same but getting worse, and it will get worse still, because we suck now at even the basics of running a country.

Our navy is too small, too reliant on carriers, too short good officers, and too often not available to sail.

Lord help us the next time we need them.

SAD
Click to expand...

Gee, guess who will want more money from the working and underclasses. Again. And again. And again. Military contracts = welfare.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Carriers are large slow moving targets as a result of today's missile technology of China and Russia, but will make fine artificial reefs for the fishies.....

Fighting smaller less developed countries with forces like the Taliban or ISIS is what they are better suited for.
Click to expand...

Anti-ship missiles have existed since the 60s. Are you telling me that Carriers have been obsolete for 60 years?
 
RetiredUSN said:
I already posted what role carriers are good for.
Click to expand...

Carriers are good for force projection and their ability to deploy aircraft, which makes them a serious problem for any foe. Supersonic anti-ship missiles don't invalidate that.
 
Jredbaron96 said:
Carriers are good for force projection and their ability to deploy aircraft, which makes them a serious problem for any foe. Supersonic anti-ship missiles don't invalidate that.
Click to expand...

Carriers will be gone the way of the Dodo bird against enemies with a advanced military.

You can't stop the advancement of technology, and today's missiles are getting more complex, faster, and have much longer range.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
https://breakingdefense.com/2017/10/15-subs-kept-out-of-service-177-months-of-drydock-backups/

More of the same but getting worse, and it will get worse still, because we suck now at even the basics of running a country.

Our navy is too small, too reliant on carriers, too short good officers, and too often not available to sail.

Lord help us the next time we need them.

SAD
Click to expand...

1 - The article's right in that we HATE private shipyards - and for good reason, since they cut corners when it comes to safety and their workers will steal us blind if we're not careful. That's why we hated going to Todd Shipyard in Seattle instead of having our maintenance done in the Navy shipyard in Naval Base Kitsap. And seeing how the shipyard cut corners to save costs on safety, we couldn't help but wonder where they were cutting costs in the work they were performing on our ship. Yes, we watched them like hawks, but we couldn't see and check everything. That, and they're dirty...and to a career sailor, a dirty and unkempt workspace is a sign that the workers don't give a damn...and that it will reflect in the work that they do.

2 - What the article doesn't show is that when the Navy's first laying the keel of a ship or submarine, the maintenance program for that vessel is already planned for most (if not all) of the service life of that vessel. That tells me that the screw-up began two or even three decades ago when they likely made assumptions about when and where our vessels could undergo major planned maintenance, and what kind of funding would be available. Unfortunately for them and for us, those assumptions likely didn't take into account the rising costs of nuclear power maintenance and radioactive material disposal, not to mention the closure of certain Navy bases. Another major factor would be the significantly-less funding available, since we've been spending hundreds of billions on war and operations in Afghanistan for fourteen years, not to mention the hundreds of billions we spent in the Iraq war.

3 - Just yesterday, yet ANOTHER collision between a Navy tin can and a ship in Asia was reported. During my career, such collisions were very scarce, but it looks like we've had at least five this year alone! I could be wrong, but I suspect there's probably a big problem with morale fleet-wide - and not the type that's cured by "the beatings will continue till morale improves". I suspect that this is related to the increase in discipline problems in the Army over the past fifteen years in that the operations tempo was greatly increased...but for two increasingly-unpopular wars. It's very difficult to measure the morale of a unit - morale is, after all, a rather nebulous concept - but when the rank-and-file of the unit give less of a damn than they should, the results will evince themselves in unexpected (and sometimes tragic) ways. I say this because of how low the morale was when I first joined back in 1981 - most of the senior sailors were still in the post-Vietnam funk, and their attitude was reflected among the junior sailors.

But I don't think that last is a significant factor in what the article was pointing out - it was just me venting. That's MY Navy out there, and the khakis (especially the officers) need to get up off their asses and hold themselves and the crews to a higher standard!
 
I'm not sure how far along their R&D is, but China is developing what they call a "swarm attack" to use against aircraft carriers. Hundreds of explosive drones attack simultaneously and act as miniature kamikaze's.

The US (DARPA) is also developing miniature drones that work in swarms except these are imbued with an element of AI and work/think together to achieve an objective.

The US/China are developing hypersonic cruise missiles that travel at Mach 5, are maneuverable, and are virtually impossible to intercept.

Russia already has the hypersonic Kh-90 (Koala) and is testing the hypersonic/maneuverable Zircon (3M22 Tsirkon) cruise missile.

Aircraft carriers are invariably becoming a large floating liability.
 
RetiredUSN said:
You can't stop the advancement of technology, and today's missiles are getting more complex, faster, and have much longer range.
Click to expand...

And so do countermeasures as well.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
https://breakingdefense.com/2017/10/15-subs-kept-out-of-service-177-months-of-drydock-backups/

More of the same but getting worse, and it will get worse still, because we suck now at even the basics of running a country.

Our navy is too small, too reliant on carriers, too short good officers, and too often not available to sail.

Lord help us the next time we need them.

SAD
Click to expand...

What are you talking about? A few things...

1) More of the same equals a trend. It's not enough to acknowledge a trend. They have to acknowledge that this as a symptom of something else that needs correction. And it will remain a trend until they correct the actual problem. They claim that the deploy rate has hurt the ability to properly train. I don't understand this or why the Naval fleet has such a high deploy rate in the first place. The "show of force" shtick is an old and pointless routine that has grown to mere habit and appears to be more about wanting to be involved during a time when the Army and Marine Corps have been at a sprint since 9/11.

2) Our Navy is not too small. We command the seas and have commanded the seas for a very long time. There is nobody that can challenge the U.S. Navy in any ocean anytime soon. As far as the Pacific, China is not and will not be a threat. Their "fleet" is a joke. Besides, our economies are tied too closely together and it has even turned its back on North Korea. And considering how good we have gotten at bumper boats this year, we are our own threat to readiness. Using these issues to argue that the Navy needs to get bigger is disingenuous and only serves to relieve pressure where it belongs. The Air Force pulled this crap over the embarrassing display at Cope India in 2004 when our pilots proved inadequate against foreign pilots. Instead of addressing the fact that our pilots needed to get back to the basics and become proficient again, Air Force officials argued that this was exactly why they needed the bloated F-22 program and its wonderful cockpit toys that take the skill out of our pilots. In the meantime, the Army and Marine Corps would have appreciated the Air Force spending some of that money on more air-to-ground assets when they began experiencing waiting lines as CAS missions were being stacked.

3) Aircraft carriers are mobile air bases. It's not just that the Navy is "reliant" on them. They are highly necessary and highly useful to the ground military. Of course, then there are the smaller LHD carriers that hub the MEUs. The reason the Marine Corps is able to be a quick reaction and response force all over the world is because of the Navy's ability to maintain mobile air bases that can deliver Marines wherever a crisis arises. They are not like battleships, where technology eventually presented us with rocket systems that proved better for naval gunfire support. Replacing the carrier means that technology would have to present us with aircraft that could fly across oceans at the speed of light, deliver a payload, and return back across the ocean. Oh, and helicopters that could do the same with personnel.

4) "SAD?" Did you just translate a typical Trump Tweet to a post?
 
This has been a problem since the 1990's. At that point they closed 2 of the 3 West Coast shipyards (Mare Island and Long Beach), leaving only Puget Sound as the only Shipyard for the Pacific.

And at the same time, the shipyards in Charleston and Philadelphia were also closed, leaving only Norfolk and Portsmouth on the East Coast as active Naval Shipyards.

20 years ago we went from 7 active shipyards, to only 3 today. And then people wonder why we have a problem keeping up with the work that needs to be done?

This is why I hope to never again in my lifetime hear the words BRAC. Even then I opposed closing most of those bases, thinking instead they should have been mothballed and re-purposed for other military needs. Of course, most of the closures in the 1990's BRAC were political in nature, as most of the bases closed were in California. I know it was strange hearing my own Senators saying how bases should be closed in their home states, most fight to keep jobs in their communities.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
1 - The article's right in that we HATE private shipyards - and for good reason, since they cut corners when it comes to safety and their workers will steal us blind if we're not careful. That's why we hated going to Todd Shipyard in Seattle instead of having our maintenance done in the Navy shipyard in Naval Base Kitsap. And seeing how the shipyard cut corners to save costs on safety, we couldn't help but wonder where they were cutting costs in the work they were performing on our ship. Yes, we watched them like hawks, but we couldn't see and check everything. That, and they're dirty...and to a career sailor, a dirty and unkempt workspace is a sign that the workers don't give a damn...and that it will reflect in the work that they do.

2 - What the article doesn't show is that when the Navy's first laying the keel of a ship or submarine, the maintenance program for that vessel is already planned for most (if not all) of the service life of that vessel. That tells me that the screw-up began two or even three decades ago when they likely made assumptions about when and where our vessels could undergo major planned maintenance, and what kind of funding would be available. Unfortunately for them and for us, those assumptions likely didn't take into account the rising costs of nuclear power maintenance and radioactive material disposal, not to mention the closure of certain Navy bases. Another major factor would be the significantly-less funding available, since we've been spending hundreds of billions on war and operations in Afghanistan for fourteen years, not to mention the hundreds of billions we spent in the Iraq war.

3 - Just yesterday, yet ANOTHER collision between a Navy tin can and a ship in Asia was reported. During my career, such collisions were very scarce, but it looks like we've had at least five this year alone! I could be wrong, but I suspect there's probably a big problem with morale fleet-wide - and not the type that's cured by "the beatings will continue till morale improves". I suspect that this is related to the increase in discipline problems in the Army over the past fifteen years in that the operations tempo was greatly increased...but for two increasingly-unpopular wars. It's very difficult to measure the morale of a unit - morale is, after all, a rather nebulous concept - but when the rank-and-file of the unit give less of a damn than they should, the results will evince themselves in unexpected (and sometimes tragic) ways. I say this because of how low the morale was when I first joined back in 1981 - most of the senior sailors were still in the post-Vietnam funk, and their attitude was reflected among the junior sailors.

But I don't think that last is a significant factor in what the article was pointing out - it was just me venting. That's MY Navy out there, and the khakis (especially the officers) need to get up off their asses and hold themselves and the crews to a higher standard!
Click to expand...

Damn good response to this thread.
 
MSgt said:
What are you talking about? A few things...

1) More of the same equals a trend. It's not enough to acknowledge a trend. They have to acknowledge that this as a symptom of something else that needs correction. And it will remain a trend until they correct the actual problem. They claim that the deploy rate has hurt the ability to properly train. I don't understand this or why the Naval fleet has such a high deploy rate in the first place. The "show of force" shtick is an old and pointless routine that has grown to mere habit and appears to be more about wanting to be involved during a time when the Army and Marine Corps have been at a sprint since 9/11.

2) Our Navy is not too small. We command the seas and have commanded the seas for a very long time. There is nobody that can challenge the U.S. Navy in any ocean anytime soon. As far as the Pacific, China is not and will not be a threat. Their "fleet" is a joke. Besides, our economies are tied too closely together and it has even turned its back on North Korea. And considering how good we have gotten at bumper boats this year, we are our own threat to readiness. Using these issues to argue that the Navy needs to get bigger is disingenuous and only serves to relieve pressure where it belongs. The Air Force pulled this crap over the embarrassing display at Cope India in 2004 when our pilots proved inadequate against foreign pilots. Instead of addressing the fact that our pilots needed to get back to the basics and become proficient again, Air Force officials argued that this was exactly why they needed the bloated F-22 program and its wonderful cockpit toys that take the skill out of our pilots. In the meantime, the Army and Marine Corps would have appreciated the Air Force spending some of that money on more air-to-ground assets when they began experiencing waiting lines as CAS missions were being stacked.

3) Aircraft carriers are mobile air bases. It's not just that the Navy is "reliant" on them. They are highly necessary and highly useful to the ground military. Of course, then there are the smaller LHD carriers that hub the MEUs. The reason the Marine Corps is able to be a quick reaction and response force all over the world is because of the Navy's ability to maintain mobile air bases that can deliver Marines wherever a crisis arises. They are not like battleships, where technology eventually presented us with rocket systems that proved better for naval gunfire support. Replacing the carrier means that technology would have to present us with aircraft that could fly across oceans at the speed of light, deliver a payload, and return back across the ocean. Oh, and helicopters that could do the same with personnel.

4) "SAD?" Did you just translate a typical Trump Tweet to a post?
Click to expand...

This post delivers, 10/10. Well said.
 
Glen Contrarian said:
1 - The article's right in that we HATE private shipyards - and for good reason, since they cut corners when it comes to safety and their workers will steal us blind if we're not careful. That's why we hated going to Todd Shipyard in Seattle instead of having our maintenance done in the Navy shipyard in Naval Base Kitsap. And seeing how the shipyard cut corners to save costs on safety, we couldn't help but wonder where they were cutting costs in the work they were performing on our ship. Yes, we watched them like hawks, but we couldn't see and check everything. That, and they're dirty...and to a career sailor, a dirty and unkempt workspace is a sign that the workers don't give a damn...and that it will reflect in the work that they do.

2 - What the article doesn't show is that when the Navy's first laying the keel of a ship or submarine, the maintenance program for that vessel is already planned for most (if not all) of the service life of that vessel. That tells me that the screw-up began two or even three decades ago when they likely made assumptions about when and where our vessels could undergo major planned maintenance, and what kind of funding would be available. Unfortunately for them and for us, those assumptions likely didn't take into account the rising costs of nuclear power maintenance and radioactive material disposal, not to mention the closure of certain Navy bases. Another major factor would be the significantly-less funding available, since we've been spending hundreds of billions on war and operations in Afghanistan for fourteen years, not to mention the hundreds of billions we spent in the Iraq war.

3 - Just yesterday, yet ANOTHER collision between a Navy tin can and a ship in Asia was reported. During my career, such collisions were very scarce, but it looks like we've had at least five this year alone! I could be wrong, but I suspect there's probably a big problem with morale fleet-wide - and not the type that's cured by "the beatings will continue till morale improves". I suspect that this is related to the increase in discipline problems in the Army over the past fifteen years in that the operations tempo was greatly increased...but for two increasingly-unpopular wars. It's very difficult to measure the morale of a unit - morale is, after all, a rather nebulous concept - but when the rank-and-file of the unit give less of a damn than they should, the results will evince themselves in unexpected (and sometimes tragic) ways. I say this because of how low the morale was when I first joined back in 1981 - most of the senior sailors were still in the post-Vietnam funk, and their attitude was reflected among the junior sailors.

But I don't think that last is a significant factor in what the article was pointing out - it was just me venting. That's MY Navy out there, and the khakis (especially the officers) need to get up off their asses and hold themselves and the crews to a higher standard!
Click to expand...

Nice post...

Re Morale:

One sailor commented that "it's only a matter of time before something horrible happens" while another said that "I just pray that we never have to shoot down a missile from North Korea because our ineffectiveness will really show". Perhaps most disturbingly, one shipmate described the Shiloh as "a floating prison". Despite the poor results of the survey, Aycock retained command of the ship until August of this year. The Shiloh also made headlines during the summer when one of its crew members went missing, presumed overboard. After a massive search by the U.S. Navy, Japanese military and coastguard, he was found seven days later hiding in the ship's engineering spaces.
Click to expand...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallm...phic-morale-problem-infographic/#2f5d5d0a281a

I know it is just one ship but I dont care, this is like cockroaches, you find one then you know that you have many.

I have not abandoned this thread, just been otherwise occupied, the gross negligence of the Argentinian leadership (ARA San Juan) has me fuming.

Ya, I am reading that this backlog is in part due to two decades of leadership increasingly not caring to either do their jobs or tell the truth re capacity.....some would pipe up "Folks, this is not going to work", then nothing happened, to include enough conversation.....exactly like the Forest Services WildFire eating up the budget problem.

Then a whole mass of Washington idiots sit back trying to figure out why so many of the people no longer trust their government.
 
Last edited:
US Navy Farci Island Report incident Jan 12 2016
Not only was the crew not prepared or trained adequately to perform their mission on Jan. 12 but the investigation also found a “can do/will do” leadership environment in the parent unit, “frequently compromised appropriate risk management and procedural compliance
Click to expand...
https://news.usni.org/2016/06/30/seizure-u-s-sailors-blames-chain-failures

Nobody should have been surprised to find in 2017 the Navy would lose even the ability to not be bashing into things on the seas.

Bad Leadership was a known.
 
RetiredUSN said:
Carriers are large slow moving targets as a result of today's missile technology of China and Russia, but will make fine artificial reefs for the fishies.....

Fighting smaller less developed countries with forces like the Taliban or ISIS is what they are better suited for.
Click to expand...

A conventional war with nuclear powers like Russia and China is just about unthinkable and would certainly result in a nuclear conflagration. Why do you think it is even a possibility to prepare for?
 
Hawkeye10 said:
US Navy Farci Island Report incident Jan 12 2016
Not only was the crew not prepared or trained adequately to perform their mission on Jan. 12 but the investigation also found a “can do/will do” leadership environment in the parent unit, “frequently compromised appropriate risk management and procedural compliance
Click to expand...
https://news.usni.org/2016/06/30/seizure-u-s-sailors-blames-chain-failures

Nobody should have been surprised to find in 2017 the Navy would lose even the ability to not be bashing into things on the seas.

Bad Leadership was a known.
Click to expand...

Compare the above quote to the report out a few weeks back about bungling in the 7th Fleet:
"The risks that were taken in the Western Pacific accumulated over time, and did so insidiously," the report said. "The dynamic environment normalized to the point where individuals and groups of individuals could no longer recognize that the processes in place to identify and assess readiness were no longer working at the ship and headquarters level."
Click to expand...
Crippled US destroyer damaged by transport ship - CNNPolitics

Sounds like they are talking about the same thing dont it.....
 
Last edited:
Battleships were kings of the sea, until naval aircraft exposed their weakness.

It stands to reason that missile technology will do the same with other big naval platforms.

It's not a bad thing. Technological advancements have always changed the way wars are fought.

I think that carriers are still very relevant when it comes to projecting power towards anywhere but China and possibly Russia, for all the reasons stated above. There is something awesome about the amount of destruction a couple of squadrons of strike aircraft can deliver. But I think for some, the thought of seeing carriers go the way of the Mighty Mo is upsetting from a nostalgic point of view. I mean what symbolizes U.S. military dominance more than a big nuclear powered aircraft carrier sporting a few dozen sleek attack planes?

Carrier strike groups are incredibly expensive to maintain and operate. In the end, the U.S. will find another way to project military power around the globe, and I would agree with the poster above that unmanned aircraft and surface ships will likely play a major role in that endeavor. I doubt we are going to see aircraft carriers done away with in our lifetimes, but eventually they will go away - at least within the way we conceive them today.
 
American said:
Thanks, Obama
Click to expand...

I remember that time that Obama gave the Talibans all those torpedos and they attacked those ships what were American, SAD! Thanks Obama!
 
iguanaman said:
A conventional war with nuclear powers like Russia and China is just about unthinkable and would certainly result in a nuclear conflagration. Why do you think it is even a possibility to prepare for?
Click to expand...

It's about keeping them in their domain, not fighting on their turf. Maintaining the status quo.
 
MSgt said:
What are you talking about? A few things...

1) More of the same equals a trend. It's not enough to acknowledge a trend. They have to acknowledge that this as a symptom of something else that needs correction. And it will remain a trend until they correct the actual problem. They claim that the deploy rate has hurt the ability to properly train. I don't understand this or why the Naval fleet has such a high deploy rate in the first place. The "show of force" shtick is an old and pointless routine that has grown to mere habit and appears to be more about wanting to be involved during a time when the Army and Marine Corps have been at a sprint since 9/11.

2) Our Navy is not too small. We command the seas and have commanded the seas for a very long time. There is nobody that can challenge the U.S. Navy in any ocean anytime soon. As far as the Pacific, China is not and will not be a threat. Their "fleet" is a joke. Besides, our economies are tied too closely together and it has even turned its back on North Korea. And considering how good we have gotten at bumper boats this year, we are our own threat to readiness. Using these issues to argue that the Navy needs to get bigger is disingenuous and only serves to relieve pressure where it belongs. The Air Force pulled this crap over the embarrassing display at Cope India in 2004 when our pilots proved inadequate against foreign pilots. Instead of addressing the fact that our pilots needed to get back to the basics and become proficient again, Air Force officials argued that this was exactly why they needed the bloated F-22 program and its wonderful cockpit toys that take the skill out of our pilots. In the meantime, the Army and Marine Corps would have appreciated the Air Force spending some of that money on more air-to-ground assets when they began experiencing waiting lines as CAS missions were being stacked.

3) Aircraft carriers are mobile air bases. It's not just that the Navy is "reliant" on them. They are highly necessary and highly useful to the ground military. Of course, then there are the smaller LHD carriers that hub the MEUs. The reason the Marine Corps is able to be a quick reaction and response force all over the world is because of the Navy's ability to maintain mobile air bases that can deliver Marines wherever a crisis arises. They are not like battleships, where technology eventually presented us with rocket systems that proved better for naval gunfire support. Replacing the carrier means that technology would have to present us with aircraft that could fly across oceans at the speed of light, deliver a payload, and return back across the ocean. Oh, and helicopters that could do the same with personnel.

4) "SAD?" Did you just translate a typical Trump Tweet to a post?
Click to expand...

While I agree that China is not at all eager to go to war with us because of how tightly our economies are bound, there is precedent - barely two months before the beginning of WWI, almost all economists were absolutely positive that war was impossible between Germany and France and England, for it would kill the goose that was laying the golden eggs. I still don't think China would do so...but history shows us that it is foolish to assume that it won't happen. One of the most important tenets of warfare is to not to base one's plans on what you think the enemy will do, but on what the enemy can do.

And when it comes to China's navy - theirs is built on a different paradigm than ours. Ours is built for blue-water supremacy and power projection, while theirs is built for regional sea denial. It would be the height of foolish hubris to assume that we could somehow wipe the seas clear of Chinese vessels, especially since when it comes to technical and scientific advances, they're quickly overtaking (and in some areas have already overtaken) America. The very worst - and most common - mistake that any great nation makes is to underestimate the enemy. As a MSgt, you should know this better than I do. Do I think their navy would defeat ours? Not for a moment. But I do believe that they would inflict significantly more damage on our navy than most of us assume...especially since I think our carriers are too vulnerable...and too valuable to our wartime strategy. What we need to be doing is to concentrating on how to win without the carriers...for then the use of the carriers would turn a tactical victory into an overall strategic victory.
 
Lerxst said:
Battleships were kings of the sea, until naval aircraft exposed their weakness.

It stands to reason that missile technology will do the same with other big naval platforms.
Click to expand...

And they still are.

What people all to often fail to realize is that military equipment and power is a Chinese Checkers game. You make an advancement, then somebody does another advancement which renders your's obsolete. Then you make another advancement which makes that obsolete, etc. And it is not unusual to find that it eventually goes full circle.

Modern Naval warfare was largely static until the age of steam. Then you had ships that were not dependent upon the wind to bring your guns to bear. This remained the same even when the first ironclads started to rule the waves. But all that ended with the USS Monitor. It was not the steam or iron that made the difference, it was the rotating turret. Now it no longer matters where you are in relation to the enemy ship, you can turn the gun to hit it.

And the cannon remained the standard for another 80 years. To offset this, ships got larger with more armor. Much of the naval arms race from WWI until WWII was in who could make the largest ships with the biggest guns.

Now much was made of the "death of Battleships" since December 1941. But what all of those individuals forget is that the ships sunk then were not at sea, but tied up in harbor where any ship is incredibly vulnerable. And during WWII, there were 28 "Battleships" sunk in combat. 14 of those were sunk in the harbor. So what is the most important lesson? Do not let your ships get attacked in the harbor.

And the vast majority of the 28 ships were also Pre-World War ships. In other words, they were built prior to 1914. There was absolutely no provision in their construction at all for air defenses, they were relatively slow beasts, designed as massive mobile gun platforms.

Many claim that WWII proved the dominance of aircraft. However, the decades after that became the era of missiles. Now aircraft do not even have to come within range of the guns to fire on a ship, they light off their missiles and go back home without even seeing the ship. And they do that because of the advantage in defense of missiles on the ships as well.

Well and good, but in the race to make ships lighter they have forgotten the purpose of having armor in the first place. And that is to allow the ship to absorb the damage from being struck and continue doing their mission. We all know what happened to the British fleet against Argentina, and the result of an Iraqi missile on the USS Stark. The armor on those ships was so thin that even a single missile often crippled them.

And interestingly enough, there has really only been one "modern warship" built with the WWII era concept that has been sunk in combat since then. That was the ARA General Belgrano, a Pre-War Brooklyn class light cruiser. But it was not sunk by missiles, but 2 heavy torpedoes.

If anything, the growing dependence on missiles shows you have to go one of two ways.

First, you go tiny. Make the ship so small and stealthy that it is hard to detect and lock onto with missiles. The problem with that is what we are seeing with the newest generation of destroyers however. They are to small to have any real use in an engagement. Little more than expensive Coast Guard cutters.

Or secondly, you return to the old way of thinking. You build your ships bigger with more armor, to give them the ability to shrug off such blows. Even the largest non-nuclear anti-ship missiles were no threat to an Iowa class Battleship. In fact, even the smaller and lighter Alaska class cruisers were largely impervious to even modern missiles.

Not really unlike the modern return to wearing armor on the battlefield. Thought obsolete for hundreds of years because of guns, suddenly it came surging back in the last 40 years because of the advance of new materials. We have knights, well we has bowmen. Well we has better armor and our own bowman, well we has guns. Well we better stop wearing armor then. It is a cycle that never really ends, you just have to aadapt to these changes, and understand what they really mean.
 
Oozlefinch said:
And they still are.

What people all to often fail to realize is that military equipment and power is a Chinese Checkers game. You make an advancement, then somebody does another advancement which renders your's obsolete. Then you make another advancement which makes that obsolete, etc. And it is not unusual to find that it eventually goes full circle.

Modern Naval warfare was largely static until the age of steam. Then you had ships that were not dependent upon the wind to bring your guns to bear. This remained the same even when the first ironclads started to rule the waves. But all that ended with the USS Monitor. It was not the steam or iron that made the difference, it was the rotating turret. Now it no longer matters where you are in relation to the enemy ship, you can turn the gun to hit it.

And the cannon remained the standard for another 80 years. To offset this, ships got larger with more armor. Much of the naval arms race from WWI until WWII was in who could make the largest ships with the biggest guns.

Now much was made of the "death of Battleships" since December 1941. But what all of those individuals forget is that the ships sunk then were not at sea, but tied up in harbor where any ship is incredibly vulnerable. And during WWII, there were 28 "Battleships" sunk in combat. 14 of those were sunk in the harbor. So what is the most important lesson? Do not let your ships get attacked in the harbor.

And the vast majority of the 28 ships were also Pre-World War ships. In other words, they were built prior to 1914. There was absolutely no provision in their construction at all for air defenses, they were relatively slow beasts, designed as massive mobile gun platforms.

Many claim that WWII proved the dominance of aircraft. However, the decades after that became the era of missiles. Now aircraft do not even have to come within range of the guns to fire on a ship, they light off their missiles and go back home without even seeing the ship. And they do that because of the advantage in defense of missiles on the ships as well.

Well and good, but in the race to make ships lighter they have forgotten the purpose of having armor in the first place. And that is to allow the ship to absorb the damage from being struck and continue doing their mission. We all know what happened to the British fleet against Argentina, and the result of an Iraqi missile on the USS Stark. The armor on those ships was so thin that even a single missile often crippled them.

And interestingly enough, there has really only been one "modern warship" built with the WWII era concept that has been sunk in combat since then. That was the ARA General Belgrano, a Pre-War Brooklyn class light cruiser. But it was not sunk by missiles, but 2 heavy torpedoes.

If anything, the growing dependence on missiles shows you have to go one of two ways.

First, you go tiny. Make the ship so small and stealthy that it is hard to detect and lock onto with missiles. The problem with that is what we are seeing with the newest generation of destroyers however. They are to small to have any real use in an engagement. Little more than expensive Coast Guard cutters.

Or secondly, you return to the old way of thinking. You build your ships bigger with more armor, to give them the ability to shrug off such blows. Even the largest non-nuclear anti-ship missiles were no threat to an Iowa class Battleship. In fact, even the smaller and lighter Alaska class cruisers were largely impervious to even modern missiles.

Not really unlike the modern return to wearing armor on the battlefield. Thought obsolete for hundreds of years because of guns, suddenly it came surging back in the last 40 years because of the advance of new materials. We have knights, well we has bowmen. Well we has better armor and our own bowman, well we has guns. Well we better stop wearing armor then. It is a cycle that never really ends, you just have to aadapt to these changes, and understand what they really mean.
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Thanks for such a detailed response, makes sense to me. I'm enjoying reading everyone's take on this. Lot of different opinions on this.
 
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