OTOH, the Silent Service can, without notice or warning, put one down your stovepipe from long range, without anyone's being particularly aware that Sneaky Pete was in the area. Great way to deal with terrorist camps and people like Osama and Abu Ayman.
We need more submarines, but speaking of expense, I think we need to break out some older blueprints and revert to less expensive, more basic nukey-boat designs (638's and 688's) and Fleet reserve callups (yes, I know about the radiation buildup problem) to put generic submarines into service, even diesel boats of the newer designs like the Japanese ones or the Kockums-designed Australian Collinses. Sometimes you don't need a Seawolf on station, sometimes you just need a submarine. We're in danger of becoming a five-submarine Navy if what I suspect are "peace-dividend" motivated build-down trends are allowed to continue. Your comment about quantity having a quality all its own has relevance here.
Samuel B. Roberts, a Perry class frigate, struck an old style contact mine and lived. She's still serving today.
The original Samuel B. Roberts was a DE, one of the "Small Boys" that took their heroic death-ride at Samar. Great little ship, great name. I expect there'll be a Samuel B. Roberts in the United States Navy for the next 200 years.
I do agree that there are things that 16" shells do better than anything else, but I believe that 24 Burkes with an 8" gun and no change to current manning levels beats the 2 Iowas and their associated cost in $$$ and manpower.
I thought that 8" lightweight gun had flunked its operational testing. Like the Army's DIVAD SP AA gun, it was an idea that didn't work.
So you want 24 Burkes? Yeah, well, 120 would be even better, wouldn't they? Point is, you'd have to build them -- the Iowas, four of them, are already there. What else do you want -- vertical-launch Standard? Plenty of room on a BB's weather decks. More SSM launchers? Plenty of room for them, too. Sea Wolf or navalized Patriot SAM systems, or maybe heavier-caliber Dardo AA gun systems to complement Phalanx CIWS? Can do. SURTASS? Nye problema -- 'course, you'll need an ASW asset with an ASCAC and some VDS/Sonobuoy-equipped LAMPS to go shoo away the submarine; presumably, you'll have one along inside your screen somewhere.
Whatever you can hang on a 7,000-ton hull, you can certainly hang more of on a 45,000-ton one.
A little backwards but, 24 Burkes already exist. My suggestion is to replace the 5" Pop gun and the forward 32 round VLS with an 8" MCLWG ~100 Long Range Guided Munition rounds, and about 3-400 rds conventional 8" ammo. These ships are the Flight I/II non aviation ships. They would retain the 64 round aft VLS.
The 8" program was suspended in the seventies as too costly since we had 3 Newport News CAs and 4 Iowa BBs in category B reserve. They were designed to replace the forward gun on Spruance class destroyers. The tests conducted used only conventional rounds and were very sucessful. The 11 calibre round (this is a 7 foot long missile) never was developed as too expensive with the tech of the day. We could without much problem move our ERGM/AGS 5/6" programs into an 8" shell with no significant extra cost. There are also substantial numbers of rounds available since the Army's 8" Rocket assisted Copperhead rounds can be fired from this gun. (By the way, the original 75 round version of this system that tested on the USS Hull is still down at Dahlgren and might be able to be refurbished for a quick startup to testing.)
The problem with the everything to everyone super BBs is that 4 of these (more likely 1-2) are difficult to maintain, expensive to convert and hard to man even after substantial efforts at manning reduction. These are capitol ships and require escorts that are not in our current force structure (2-4 additional Burkes each). They are not able to replace a CVN BG. The chance that 1 of these will be where you need it, when you need it is pretty low. 24 8" Burkes mean that there are 2 with each Expeditionary Strike Group with 4-6 deployed at all times. The BBs admittedly can protect their crews better than the Princeton/ Cole/ Roberts/ Stark did, however once damaged we probably would have extreme dificulty repairing these ships armour schemes.
Subs. Agreed, the "bolt out of the blue" scenario is extremely useful and you won't find any argument here, the case I cited was not a surprise shot since there were plenty of other ships tossing tomahawks at that time.
We agree that "sometimes you don't need a Seawolf" I would go with a number of modern Skipjacks (small, fast, handy). Diesel boats are probably too limited in capabilities. We can train against 'friendly' nation's diesels when we need to, so that argument that I've heard, doesn't stick.