Battleships were intended to engage in gun duels with other battleships. That drove both gun development, and the armor. That specific function was made obsolete by the aircraft carrier way back in WWII, and the situation has not changed. Carriers massively out-range gun armed vessels, and the exposed sensors they would need to function effectively in the modern world can not be armored, and would be as fragile as the exposed sensors are on any modern warship, where destroying them often ends up as a mission-kill without even needing to sink the vessel. A large, gun armed, armored vessel with modern sensors would be rendered blind and useless with a good air strike. So, you would not be building one for any major surface engagements.
They make for an extremely poor choice as an escort vessel, themselves needing screening from submarines even during WWII, and costing far more than a Burke would, which is our current general purpose escort design. So, you would not build them for this.
This seems to leave fire support against shore targets for amphibious operations, or just power projection ashore. That then requires getting within gun range of the target. Approaching a well defended coast is dangerous. Armoring your gun platform against hits would be justifiable, but you still end up with the exposed sensors being put out by what hits you do absorb. To be effective in engagement, you need to be networked to receive targeting data. If your network is blinded, even if you receive the data, you likely won't be able to effectively target anything.
The second approach is the one used by the Zumwalts. Lots of stealth, making you a difficult target to acquire, and hopefully allowing you to "hit them before they hit you." Large guns require a large hull. Hiding a large hull is not conducive to lowering the costs of stealth. Those two goals work in opposition to each other. Reducing gun size then requires what was intended for Zumwalt...increasing range, and number of rounds per minute, to dump many smaller rounds very precisely on a target, to both destroy it with the smaller rounds and reduce collateral damage.
The third approach is to stand as far away from the hostile coast as possible, preferably completely out of range of their own systems. No gun which is affordable will accomplish this, but aircraft and missiles have the potential. But then you don't want to build any sort of gun ship.
Before you build any system, you must know its purpose. "It would be so cool to have one" is not a wise use of funds. I doubt it would be any cheaper than our largest amphibs, and can find no use for it in any case. Our largest amphibs do all the things Jim Slade mentions below...maintenance, fuel and medical support, and operate RPVs. They can also launch strike aircraft for close air support, which is pretty much the modern day equivalent of gunfire support. And I do agree gunfire support "in the abstract" is very much cheaper than air support. Shoot a shell or go to the complexity to drop a bomb or fire a missile? The problem becomes effectively deploying the cheaper weapon. The complexities of effectively fielding a gun end up costing more, for less diverse mission abilities, than fielding aircraft.
Which is why the Navy is not discussing either activating the Iowas, nor building any sort of newer version. Unless/until some one of these conditions changes, they never will.
Recently read that adminstratedly the Iowa and Wisconsin have had their status changed
from museum ships to decommissioned warships.
They havent been moved from where are on display.
Aren't they too old to be reused?
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