Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[Bofferbrauer2]

Dulfite said:

How is a cruiser class ship the flagship of the Black Sea Russian fleet. Do they not have aircraft carriers or battleships in that fleet?

I'm having my original noob question up even though I found the answer before posting, due to having learned something. Apparently nobody uses battleships anymore. And I guess the black sea fleet wouldn't need aircraft carriers since the sea is located very near Russian land.

Me being right - 0
Me having learned something - 1

The main reason is because both rockets (on cruisers and destroyers) and airplanes (on carriers) outrange cannons and are more precise with modern guidance systems.

Still, the US kept their WW2 Iowa-class Battleships around, and the USSR was scared shitless of them. They were armored so much that most anti-ship rockets of the time could only ding them unless it was a very lucky hit, while being hit by one of their shells would have been catastrophic for any other warship of the cold war.

One other reason is that ships are much bigger in general these days. A modern destroyer is larger than a WW2 cruiser despite being a class below. Hence why cruisers became the flagships: due to the square cubed law, making ships even bigger started to become impractically large and heavy, and the shipyards would be too small for that.