About an hour ago someone posted a thread about why we don't have Battleships anymore. By the time I finished typing my comment he had deleted the thread. I WILL BE DAMNED IF THIS GOES TO WASTE. So for the enjoyment of that gentleman who deleted his post I give you my comment.....

I am gonna hit you with a little bit of a longer response because...well I fucking love history and battleships are part of history and this gives me an excuse to brush up on my history of naval tactics and armaments a bit. Ok so number one (and the short version) is that battleships are basically moderately-heavily armed floating gun platforms. Modern battleships are descendants of the old "ships of the line" from the age of sail which existed up until the creation of the HMS Dreadnought. (though to get technical only ships from like 1880 or so up through the Dreadnought are technically pre-dreadnought with older battleships being either iron-clads or closer to true ships of the line (modern circa 18th century).

The thing all these classes of ship have in common is that they are primarily utilized for ship to ship combat. When engaging in naval combat, for the majority of human history, and more specifically since the invention of the cannon, the idea was to siddle on up to the enemy and blast the holy fuck out of them while they did the same to you. First one to sink looses. (before that, in "ancient history" they just rammed each other till one sank, for more on this google "trireme" as a start) The battleship that you are thinking of (post-dreadnought) utilized the latest technology to increase the range and accuracy of it's weapons systems in the hope that we could better blow the shit out of ships that got a little smarmy with us.

From now on I want all of us to be picturing the USS Missouri. The Missouri is an Iowa class battleship, upon the deck of which we accepted the Japanese surrender in the pacific; she had a crew size of 2,700 enlisted men and officers, was in service non continuously until 1992 AND, if it was a woman, I would make sweet tender love to it every night.

Now, one of the major weapons systems on a BB class ship (the designation for battleships in WW2) was the 16" gun. The most modernized version of which had an effective range of about 20 miles. Most versions probably closer to 12 or 15. Other guns included the 14" guns and on down. Now, hopefully you've by this point googled some pictures of the beautiful Missouri and in conjunction with my amateurish attempt to convey the awesome power and majesty of this vessel, realized it is a awesomely effective weapon of destruction....That being said I could sink it with 12 kids straight out of boot camp and about 1.5 million dollars of modern navy weaponry or less.

The reason for that was apparent even during the time of it's commissioning in 1944. While it's a near unparalleled navy gunfighter, we don't have sea based gunfights anymore. I am going to digress a little bit for context again, so buckle the fuck up kiddos.

Arguably the most desirable position to be in during surface naval combat is using a technique called "crossing the T" Easy to explain in photos but not in words but here we go. Essentially a line of ships sailing together come horizontally in front of enemy ships stacked more or less vertically if your are picturing this from a top down perspective in a 2 dimensional space. Now, using your positioning in a broadside set up you can fully utilize your local armament while denying said same capability of your enemy. You then proceed to laugh heartily at them while you watch the flaming wreck of their fleet sink to Davy Jones locker. The last time this was EVER DONE IN COMBAT was the battle of Leyte Gulf at the end of WW2, a single naval battle that was a series of smaller but still HUGE AS FUCK engagements with the Japanese navy that cut off several key supply lines while decimating their remaining fleets. Victory came at a huge cost to both sides, but needless to say we won because fuck yeah.

So we have just covered in the most egregious brevity the last great ship to ship combat this world has ever seen, and potentially the last of that kind of engagement. All of this for the same reasons the BB class ship is no longer used.....missiles and torpedoes. As discussed the 16" gun has a range of 20 miles. Missiles and torpedoes put that to fucking SHAME while also possessing a far greater destructive payload. (the tomahawk missile introduced int eh 1970's has a range somewhere around 1000 nautical miles). Both of these weapons systems were new in WW2, the V2 rocket was a breakthrough,torpedoes as we conceive of them were introduced around 1900 (before then torpedo was used to mean naval mine "damn the torpedoes") but were nothing compared to what we have today. Now pay close attention this is important....THEY STILL RAVAGED THE FLEET. Submarine warfare in both the pacific and Atlantic theater won the war just as much as anything else.

Even during ww2 we had begun heavy utilization of aircraft carriers. Now our entire naval force is based around the idea of the Carrier strike group and CVN's as well as SSBN's used for deterrence and defense. Range and payload delivery on both of these platforms is essentially worldwide. A single CVN carriers a air component that can fly really far away, and then rain hell on things that are STILL REALLY FAR AWAY FROM THEM. I am getting tired of typing so I am gonna wrap it up. Batttleships are amazing, you can still tour some classic battleships including the Wisconsin and the Texas, and should you ever get the chance I recommend you do so with all due haste. The reason we use no longer implement this platform is the same reason we no longer utilize the M1 Garand. It's simply outclassed by modern technology.....not because it isn't 1000% cooler than anything we have today.

Second wind...ok, second point worth talking about for context. One of the area's of warfare the Us Navy Categorizes is called "Strike warfare" we also have "Surface" "Anti-submarine" "Air" "Naval Special Warfare" and "Information Dominance". Strike Warfare specifically is focused on the idea of "I can touch you but you can't touch me" Much like drone warfare provides ISR and Hellfire missiles from god with no risk to an actual human, that's what strike warfare sort of wants. The US Military has (rightfully or wrongly is for another debate) become really skittish about spending lives. If you can destroy your enemy without putting a living person in danger then Uncle Sam is pretty interested to hear what you have to say. The battleship was about in your face engagements. We don't like those anymore....I guess that's your REAL short answer.

Edit: formatting

Edit 2: I am leaving my last paragraph up there. But it has little to do with my overall thesis with this whole thing (which, remember, was originally a comment). If you are expecting my last paragraph to be the tl;dr of the whole thing it's defiantly not. If you want the tl;dr read the paragraph that starts with "so we have covered". Or, as someone said in the comments "missiles"