Originally posted by Dreadnought
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Now then, different tools for different jobs is meaningless. The question is which would win in a one-on-one fight, an Iowa class battleship or a Russian Kirov class cruiser? Different roles has nothing to do with anything. This is a hypothetical question that cares not what those roles are.
Back in 1991 the USS Missouri was steaming through a narrow cleared lane in a Iraqi-laid minefield. The Iraqi's were covering that minefield with a hidden Silkworm battery. HMS Gloucester's first warning of the attack was apparently an ESM warning probably triggered by the sweep of a target indication radar at the Silkworm battery. The Iraqi's presumably fired their missiles down the bearing of the largest blip they got on that sweep (hence passing just astern of Missouri) but either in haste or due to inadequate range data the missile seekers did not switch on when they should have (note what I said earlier about the importance of good target data when firing anti-ship missiles). In other words, a nice setup by the Iraqi's but poorly executed. The missiles passed their probable intended target - the USS Missouri, a nearby frigate USS Jarrett bravely shot up a chaff cloud with Phalanx, some of those rounds hitting the Missouri, then HMS Gloucester took out one missile while the other apparently crashed into the sea, either through mechanical failure or deception by chaff. USS Missouri apparently only sighted the enemy missiles visually and did little, if anything in the way of countering the attack.
So the question is, if an Iowa class battleship doesn't even realize she is under attack by something as crude as Silkworm, how in the heck is an Iowa going to know if it is under attack by Granit? Remember, we are talking about a mano-a-mano duel to the death between 2 ships - the British are not around to save the battleship in our hypothetical scenario. And if the battleship can't detect inbound Silkworms how is she supposed to find, track and shoot at something like Kirov without being seen and attacked in kind?
As for what would happen to an Iowa class battleship if hit by Silkworm, that is outside the scope of our hypothetical duel but I am a bit less casual about the possible results than you. Silkworm, though far from ultra-modern is still a far more lethal projectile than say, FX-1400 yet we all know what that could do to a modern battleship.
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