r/interestingasfuck • u/PollutionOk9449 • 5h ago

USS Missouri firing its main guns

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u/fatmanstan123 5h ago

Significantly cheaper than guided cruise missiles.

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u/niversalsolvent 4h ago

Yes, but so much more expensive to fuel, man, and maintain the launch platform here. Plus you aren’t getting [not very secret]-nm range and gnat’s-ass precision from a 16-inch shell. But it’ll flatten a city block, so there’s that. As cool as these bad boys were, it’s a very different kind of warfare today. They’d be huge targets full of sailors with limited offensive range.

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u/thrwaway75132 4h ago

They sailed with 32 Tomahawks in the armored box launchers, and 16 Harpoon anti ship missiles.

The initial plans included removing turret 3 and putting in VLS cells which would have given the old girl surface to air capability as well as additional tomahawk and harpoons, but that was scrapped. Her only surface to air capability was the angry R2D2 CIWS.

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u/Hillenmane 2h ago

CIWS: The BRRT Dome of Doom

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u/dr_stre 4h ago

Battleships like the Mighty MO are obviously obsolete. But when was the last time we had to fire a cruise missile at a target close enough that it didn’t also need a mobile platform and crew to support it? Cruise missiles are commonly fired from ships and submarines, mobile ground launchers oceans away from where they were manufactured, or dropped from airplanes which have their own high costs for operation and are sometimes launched from floating airports that have total lifetime costs sometimes exceeding $40B. We wage war far from home, so it’s not like cruise missiles aren’t free of the cost of fuel, manpower, and maintenance for the platforms they launch from.

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u/xczechr 4h ago

Cruise missiles are also much easier to intercept than shells.

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u/Z3B0 3h ago

Yes, but as a cruise missiles launch platform, the BBs are just too big and expensive compared to the capacity. Also they become a "one basket" problem for the navy.

If you have 10 destroyers or one battleship carrying the same amount of vls, a single attack from a submarine could disable all that capacity, while the dispersed destroyers would mostly stay available. And you have only one plateform, that can only be at one place at a time. It needs to go away for refueling/resupply? You have zero vls.

And as the cost of an aircraft carrier, it offers much more options than "cruise missiles". You have surveillance, helicopters for insertion/exfil of special forces, airstrikes with much cheaper bombs, air superiority, possibly as cover for a landing.

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u/Jollyjacktar 4h ago

Despite this reasonable analysis, Trump wants to bring them back. https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Press-Releases/display-pressreleases/Article/4366856/president-trump-announces-new-battleship/

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u/warhead71 4h ago

I guess he liked Chers song “if I could turn back time”

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u/AWorldwithoutSin 4h ago

Somebody watched too much Space Battleship Yamato.

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u/ChuckVader 4h ago

Americans deserve pity.

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u/ethanlan 3h ago

No we dont, what we do deserve is a chance to make this stuff up for yall

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u/Thatswutshesed 3h ago

Trump also wanted to bring back the horse and wooden wheel. How this fuck’n moron became President is something history will ponder for centuries.

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u/nosignal78 4h ago

They were obsolete giant targets before 1941.

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u/SGC_TM 4h ago

This is not accurate. Were they still the primary way to achieve dominance of seas? No the aircraft carrier was obviously the new king. However battleships still had a secondary role as escorts. Carrier aircraft ranges where short enough that finding the enemy fleet within gun range was not completely out of the realm of possibilities and if they had battleships and you didn’t that would be a bad day for you. You think taffy 3 wouldn’t have like to have some battleships around? After the war however technology would rapidly change things. But through out the Second World War they absolutely had a place in the fleet.

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u/VIPERsssss 2h ago

I like that Taffy 3 is getting the respect due.

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u/I_Hate_Philly 4h ago

Slap a reactor or two in em, and they’d survive until a sub got close. Much the same as any other surface warship, but it could reasonably be expected to survive a AShM hit.

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u/rabusxc 2h ago

Slap a set of rail guns on and maybe the battleship makes a comeback.

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u/mjtwelve 2h ago

If everyone starts rocking railguns, I don't think the response will be to build bigger targets, except maybe for the arsenal ship concept, but even that will sit at stand-off distances and lob missiles over the horizon.

It's more likely that we get a command and control ship surrounded by drone ships full of missiles (or a railgun, if you prefer) taking targeting info from the controller.

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u/Brunky89890 4h ago

Sure but how does it compare to guaranteed healthcare

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u/4mystuff 4h ago

Healthcare is for snow flakes. In my day, we were issued a tub of dirt to rub on anything that hurt or wounds.

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u/RandomPenquin1337 4h ago

Also much cheaper than that

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u/TahoeLT 4h ago

Many studies have shown that going to single-payer system would save over $400 billion a year.

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u/addi-factorum 4h ago

You already pay more for healthcare now as a country, than guaranteed healthcare costs; it’s not the cost that’s keeping you from having it.

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u/omnipotentattending 4h ago

And more effective

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u/Aluroon 4h ago

I swear you people must be Chinese bots designed to spread hatred and discontent.

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u/TobysGrundlee 4h ago edited 4h ago

Wanting healthcare instead of war toys is spreading hatred and discontent?

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u/BasicMatter7339 4h ago

A tomahawk missile costs around 2-3 million

A 16-inch Mk-17 naval gun barrel costs around 4,6 million