Anon

Well you won't be seeing any 8" gun cruisers coming back either, and let's face it...they're far less protected, slower, have shorter range, have a much lower ammunition capacity, and don't have a secondary battery of 20 5"/38 Guns like an Iowa does(let alone 9 16" rifles).

In my discussions at military.com and warships1 i have certainly discussed the Iowas at length with people who've served on them, and have had conversations with Dick Landgraff, who is probably the foremost BB expert in the world today, as well as reading most of the articles and technical documents he's released over the last several years wrt the Iowas. I also have had extensive conversations with Ted Yablonski, who is heavily involved in the USNSFA "BBBG" proposal. My discussions with the above named individuals(particularly the latter) have run into the most minute of detail on all sorts of subjects wrt the Iowas, their hull state, crew size, their potential scalability, their boilers, and their weapons systems.

As far as the numbers of tricks the Iowa pony can do, if you want to argue that the Iowas fit of 16 Harpoons or it's battery of 16" guns are not capable of ASUW or Strike, well, then i see no point in arguing with you anyway, because that's just not true.

What the Iowas do lack is any semblance of AAW or ASW capability, but they can certainly kill anything on the surface in a 23nm radius with their guns....regardless of the presence of the Harpoon system that was installed in the 80s. I have no reason, nor has anyone demonstrated any factual reason whatsoever, to believe that the Iowa's existing fit of 16 Harpoon missiles would not still be effective in the ASUW role either for that matter.

As far as 'sinking one to see what happens', there is absolutely ZERO useful reason to do so because no navy in the world has any ship that is even remotely close to as well protected, nor does any nation have any plans to build any such ship.