USN Super Carriers are the most protected Military Asset in the world today bar none. So, that arguement hardly holds water…….

Still, US super carriers were never used against a strong military power. They were used against week countries as Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Yugoslavia etc., but never against someone, who was really testing their abilities – and the abilities of their escorts.

Therefore this discussion is very theoretical.

Today the escorts of the carriers have themselves a massive strike capacity: the Ticonderoga class can load up to 128 Tomahawks, the Arleigh Burke class up to 96, the Los Angeles class up to 37 Tomhawks etc. For sure, they will have usually not only have Tomahawks in their launchers. But keep in mind: Tomahawks are already something like a disposable UAV… It is possible that in future more sophisticated UAVs can be launched from destroyers/cruisers.

Compared to a carrier the escorts alone probably would be cheaper and have a strike capacity, which is not that different from the carrier itself. They cannot achieve air superiority that easily (have only SAM for that), but this capacity of carriers were not that often used in the last decades (e.g. no real Air Force in Afghanistan).

?? For sure? I have thought that e.g. her sister ship Hessen was also already part of a US carrier strike group…

Personally I prefer the RN convention, Frigates for GP and ASW (Usually sitting in the 4-7kt range), Destroyers for AAW (Sitting slightly higher at 6-9kt). For Cruisers i’d say that all round vessels above 10kt works well, maybe adding in some extra use/specialism such as the gun support of a DDG1000 (so tempting to call that a modern battleship), or the massive missile and ASAT capabilities of a Tico.

There are all round vessels with 6000 t around, therefore I do not see the sense to classify using the displacement.

I would not call any of these ships battleships. Battleships were built to fight as units of many of them against other battleships. This will probably never happen again, because aircraft carriers and land-based aircraft made such kind of battles very unlikely.

The term “destroyer” is derived from “torpedo boat destroyer”, i.e. defending the battleships against enemy torpedo boats – a task not existing anymore. It probably would make sense to get rid of this classification/term.

“Frigate” is historically a cruiser – until the RN introduced “frigate” as term for slow anti-submarine hunting ships during the Second World War. But many other navies (e.g. the USN calling the big destroyer leaders “frigates”) used the term to describe a all round ship capable of independent operations (i.e. a cruiser).

Actually most modern frigates have the size of light cruisers of the first half of the 20th century and many of them have general purpose/all round capabilities. They can be used for independent operations. Their capabilities and displacement completely overlap with ships classified as destroyers, whereas no navy built any new ship classified as cruiser in the last decades except the small number of Russian Slava and Kirov class ships. Remember that the Ticonderoga class started as DLG… I would call all the modern frigates/destroyers/cruisers either frigates or cruisers. Historically these two words have anyway the same meaning.

In the RN the distinction has for half a century primarily been decided by role rather than size alone, Cruisers were large command vessels capably of deploying anywhere in the world without escorts (big enough and tough enough to look after themselves). Apart from the three Tigers, the eight County class were effectively light cruisers, but were lumbered with the Destroyer designation to get them past the Treasury. The Type 42 destroyers were on a par with most contemporary Frigates when built, but in the RN a Destroyer is and Anti Air Warfare vessel (ie has an Area Defence missile system) whilst a Frigate is a general purpose escort with an Anti Submarine Warfare bias and point defence AAW capability only. Simply put, fit an area defence SAM system on a frigate and it becomes a destroyer.:rolleyes::eek::D

The RN classification is logical – except of the cruiser category. Bristol probably would have been also a cruiser according to this definition, but was classified as destroyer.

But the RN system is not used anywhere else.

The statement that the French design does not work in the cold is only a complain that the order went to France – not to a Russian yard.

and Varyag is a Casino in Macau. What’s your point? :diablo:

Minsk IS a tourist attraction, whereas Varyag was NEVER a casino 😉

Perhaps he referred to the Indonesian KRI Klewang?!? But also there apparently nobody was killed.