Not a reply to the previous ccouple of posters, but those who seem to feel larger ships are "not practical":
Maybe a little bit of educating for those members of the hive that dont have a nuanced understanding of weapons effects:
here:
The ship that was discussed prior to my post was a Iowa class Battleship.
most drones are tiny and have a tiny payload and would stuggle to even scratch the paint on any WW1 or 2 large surface combatant.
Battleships often took dozens of hits by torpedos and large bombs to sink.
And "single mines" have also never taken out a "battleship" ever
So in case the enlarged modern ship that was discussed a warship is constructed in acompartmentalized manner and a large and expensive war ship has a signifcant defensive suite , damage control and compartimentalization.
Sometimes laymen study war based on headlines and those often make a un-nuanced impression.
-The Britannic despite being large was taken out by a single mine, true, but it was not a compartmentalized warship. (and to make matters worse the portholes had beeen left open for ventilation in the warm summer in the Med, allowing dramatically increased flooding ads the bow went down)
AND it had a bunch of nurses and doctors but no damage control parties on board, like a proper warship would.
- The USS Stark was hit by two exocet missles not one , (the poster in question stated just one would be enough) and most importantly it was the smallest US ship a FFG7 class frigate, desigend as a surface combatant and not a "battleship", or battle cruiser or missle cruiser.
- The Moskva an admittedly much larger and somewhat modern missle cruiser was hit also by two anti sea missles which were among the largest of their type.
And it very nearly made it back to shore. And the Black Sea is a very constrained battlespace, perhaps not ideal for a powerful ship such as the Moskva that was designed for sea superiority in the open ocean.
So this missle threat does not make large ships impractical.
But what makes such large weapons platforms eminently "practical", is the height thiese platform can accomodate a sensors suite and they in turn being able to send and target missle themselves for large distances.
Also unlike a small ship, they can serve as flagships and extert command and control with room for the large staffs a fleet flagship needs and also handle large volumes of radio traffic both from their equipment and larger manning, than a small warship like a FFG could ever hope to.
Missle technology is nothing new and missles have been a threat since the end of WW2 when the Germans (of course) pioneered this technology, via the Fritz-X guided missle . .
And there there is also the engineering thing, we call "minimum gauge".
This means in laymen's terms that some things need a minimum of size to function at all and can not be infinitly miniatuarized.
So smaller ships will have their minimum radio suite, the minimum engines, the minimum bilge pumps, and the minimal manning always take up a larger proportion of the ships tonnage and complement than with a larger unit.
This also means that these larger weapons platforms become more efficient and out of proportion capable compared to many smaller platforms.
And if you are a Navy and have the choice between 10 large ships or 40 small ones of equal tonnage you will exert more seas superiority combat power with those 10 indiviudally larger vessels.
So if you are not just out to show the flag, for which many small vessels are fine, but are concerned about Sea superiority a smaller number of larger ships will always dominate the equal tonnage (and expense) spread out over many smaller ships.
This makes them eminently "practical".
