If you thought that the golden age of naval combat came to an end 200 years ago, then clearly somebody forgot to tell the national navies of today, as scores of state-of-the-art, armed-to-the-teeth battleships are currently emerging from shipbuilding yards with a singular aim in mind: total domination of the world’s seas.
From the formidable Type 45 destroyers being pushed out of British dockyards, through to the almost sci-fi Zumwalt-class battleships emerging in the US, and on to the cruising carrier vessels sitting like small islands in the world’s oceans, battleships are being produced en masse and to a more advanced spec than ever before.
Far from the basic heavyweights of bygone centuries, required simply to go toe-to-toe with each other in a deadly game of broadsides, today’s warships need to
