I don't understand. Aren't modern military ships armoured anymore?
But it's important to note that before the Iowas were given their final retirements into museum ships the Navy made sure to basically document everything they could about firing large caliber guns. Because when they initially pulled them out of mothballs in the 1980s they were woefully inaccurate, but by the time they were decommissioned for the final time they could hit a proverbial fly on a flag pole (allegedly).
The other part of it was that the Soviet Union didn't really have a surface fleet to really speak of. They invested heavily in submarines, so consequently the US Navy focused heavily on ASW. So... nobody really knows how 16" of modern armor would fair against modern weapons, it's literally never been tried. Whereas you can find pictures from way back when they were testing guns, of how various shells fared against various thicknesses and types of armor.
Long story short: We've forgotten most of what we knew about surface warfare, and we're starting to forget what we knew about shipbuilding and design. The US has outsourced all it's naval architecture and shipbuilding so long that the necessary skills are either all retired or lost.
It was Mitsubishi Ki0167[2], according to Ryan Szimanski the curator of the Battleship New Jersey, in this video[1].
This marked the effective end of the concept of armor thick enough that it couldn't be breached, and the Battleship.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KlFxbF8hrs
[2] https://www.daveswarbirds.com/Nippon/aircraft/Ki-167.htm
No, no amount of armoring is useful against modern weaponry, but it does increase the "m", thus lowering the "a" you get from your engine's "F".
Wire up a cheap boat with explosives and it can sink an expensive naval vessel. The Ukrainians are using this to massively great effect right now against the Russians.
What if instead of building one new aircraft carrier, you build an autonomous submersible capable of launching drones with variable payloads?
Or instead of a destroyer, build a drone ship that can launch missiles?
Or an entirely new class of ship that simply swarms enemy defenses and is laden with explosives? Mass-produced autonomous jet skis with explosive payloads. But faster.
This has been pretty obvious since the Millennium Challenge 21 years ago, when they just called them suicide attacks. Nobody seems to have cared then and not much has changed.
I think the issue is pretty tightly limited to boats/sea drones, though. If you're even a few feet under the surface then sonar can see you. If you're a few feet above the surface then radar gets you. Both options die a mile away.
I also think Russia is probably not very representative of the overall threat, too. I don't think their navy is running particularly better than their army. I don't know that other navies can do much besides trying to spot ships and blow them up with guns (do top-attack missiles work?) but whether or not they're good at it they'll definitely be much better than Russia. Until there's some sign that countries are actually investing in sea drones I don't think anything will be done, and I wouldn't be surprised if some kind of small top-attack rocket makes it a non-issue.
> autonomous submersible
autonomous and submersible don't go very well together. Radio contact underwater is terrible. It's not like drones fly themselves; we haven't figure out the whole autonomous thing.
> capable of launching drones with variable payloads?
Landing a plane on a ship is actually really hard and requires constant maintenance, even for VTOL. Even for helicopters. Smaller the ship, harder it is to land.
> build a drone ship that can launch missiles?
But like, why? Why not have people on it? Ships are not big because of the people on it. People can treat casualties, repel boarding, land on the ground etc. Ships are also constantly being maintained and repaired. Waves and salt are a real bitch.
If you make a ship without people it'll cost almost the same, be almost the same size, be very hard to repair and be much less capable.
Simply looking at costs and complexity "on paper" from an engineering / accounting perspective doesn't really capture all the differences between humans and machines, especially considering civilian morale.
The US military lost <2.5k in Afghanistan over two decades, and that generated enough war weariness for us to quit.
The current American public and political system simply isn't willing to tolerate large numbers of casualties. So it makes a whole lot of sense to take people out of the equation.
Obviously not combat vehicles but it’s not hard to imagine such a thing being reframed in a similar way.