I must upvote Italian Regia Marina battleships unconditionally

Yeah, the drones are basically maneuvering sea mines now. And many of long term loitering. Going to be weird.

On the horizon? How the hell is my twelve-pounder going to reach there? We need to get yardarm-to-yardarm with the dogs! Then we can deploy our real smashers, the 18 pounder carronades

Highschool fleet be like

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_naval_battles

Most recent three entries as an example:

• August 21, 2024: 21 August - In Red Sea, the Greek flagged tanker Sounion was attacked and exchanged gunfire with two Houthi manned fast attack craft. The Sounion was then hit by three projectiles and set afire before being abandoned by its crew.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_the_Sounion

Two Houthi fast attack craft engaged in a firefight with the Sounion armed guards before three projectiles struck the tanker.

Sounds like that may have been small arms, if armed guards were involved. There was a subsequent boarding action.

• 15 July, 2024 - In the Red Sea, the Panamaninan flagged tanker Bentley-I is unsuccessfully attacked by a Houthi sea drone before engaging in a gun battle with two Houthi manned fast attack craft, which are driven off.[29]

I assume that the sea drone attempted to ram. The attack craft were using guns.

• 5 March, 2024 – Sinking of the Sergey Kotov – Russian Bykov-class patrol ship, RFS Sergey Kotov is attacked and sunk by Ukrainian sea drones in the Kerch Strait.[28]

Probably ramming.

We may, surprisingly-enough, be at more of a knife-fight range than we have for a long time in naval combat, though I suppose one could argue that maybe USVs should be thought of as more like long-range torpedoes or something than watercraft.

I wish people had a perverse love of main battleships like they do the other ancient shit technology like the A10.

Keep on spending huge amounts of cash because big guns cool!

What’s sugma