Are naval guns still useful?

[vash]

Back in the old days, all naval battles were fought with big guns. In the modern age, all battles are taking place beyond visual range... more likely from hundreds miles away. Most of the anti-ship missiles have a maximal range of hundreds miles. It is far beyond what the naval guns can hit.

While there is no question that a warship of this day still should have a naval gun just in case (run out of missiles, or deal with enemies in close distance, much like how modern jets still have guns on them), but in actual naval combat between ships to ships, I very much doubt the gun will have a chance to be used against the enemy ships at all.

What do you guys think?

 

[Susimi]

Naval combat has evolved in such a way that the naval gun is pretty much obsolete at this point in time and other than surface bombardment and for use when all other systems fail, I cannot see any other use for them any more which is sort of a shame.

If I recall, one of the last US battleships was active during the Gulf War where it used it's naval guns for bombardments.

 

[vash]

Yeah, the way I see it, the only uses for a warship's gun right now are
1. shore bombardment
2. use in emergency against incoming aircraft or ships in close range

Both situations are rare, and the chance of having a ship coming next to you during a naval battle is next to zero. You'd either sink the enemy or be sunk before you ever see each other. While I guess you can run out of missiles, but in my opinion the warships would just turn around and run like when jets run out of missiles. Going forward for close engagement with a gun is just suicide.

 

[explorerx7]

I don't know why these guns should be termed as obsolete. I think it should be considered as support just as in the past. There will still be near shore defences where these guns can still be effective in destroying.

 

[vash]

I don't know why these guns should be termed as obsolete. I think it should be considered as support just as in the past. There will still be near shore defences where these guns can still be effective in destroying.

We are talking about naval warfare. So it is basically ship to ship, or maybe throw in some aircraft, but what you use is a warship. How can a gun on a warship be effective against enemy warships and aircraft these days? Aside in emergency (and lucky) situations, it probably will never be fired outside military drills or test firing.

 

[Scorpion]

Its useful against maritime violation weapons and drug smuggling.

 

[vash]

Its useful against maritime violation weapons and drug smuggling.

Maritime violations do not require any live ammunition firing. Unless you want to start an international incident or even a war.
In the case of weapon and drug smuggling, if it is truly some individuals' doing, it is still overreact to shoot them with a naval gun. They should be arrested, not to be fired upon like some kind of target practice unless they opened fire first. Then again, a lot of so called "weapon smuggling" are really done by some countries. If one powerful country does not like the fact another country is selling weapons to a third party, then it would call it "smuggling". That's the way I see in today's world affair.


By the way,
I should have made the thread title more clearly. It is about naval warfare since it is what the subforum is all about.