India sold Brahmos Anti-Ship Missiles to Vietnam. Do we need to build a REAL battlefleet?

via LiveFist

Amidst a tense military stand-off with Chinese troops at the Dolam tri-junction in Bhutan, India has quietly made history on a crucial new front against China: a deal has finally reportedly been struck to give Vietnam, one of Beijing’s arch-adversaries in the region, the Indo-Russian BrahMos supersonic anti-ship and land-attack cruise missile. Vietnamese reports today confirmed the purchase. At the time this report was filed though, word was awaited from the Indian Ministry of Defence, which administers one half of the India-Russia BrahMos Corp. joint venture headquarters in New Delhi. Sources said the deal had reached ‘finality’, but provided no further specifics.

Story here. 

You ever get the feeling that we're living in the modern equivalent of the 1930's leading up to WW2?  Not in terms of economic or social conditions (although some could probably make that argument), but more in terms of rapidly advancing military tech that will see current ideas and predictions of the future swept away.

Tech that is so powerful that current fleets of aircraft, armored vehicle and ships are rendered obsolete?

I'm beginning to get a whiff of that when it comes to our naval forces.

Brahmos is a beast and Russia/India have developed a world beater.  The question is simple.  Do we need to build a battlefleet?

Iowa Class.

Fact.  This tech will spread and even if it isn't copied it will be sold.  We can expect Iran to push hard to buy these missiles which would give them the potential to close the Persian Gulf to our warships ....any relatively small body of water can be turned in an Anti-Access/Aerial Denial locale with just a small battery of these types of missiles.

Do we need to take a page from the past and revive the Battleship or heavily armored versions of current ships?  The Iwo Jima Class was built to shrug off the 18 in guns of the Yamato Battleships of the IJN.

Yamato Battle Ship.

This could turn things entirely on its head for the US and Allied Navies. 9K destroyers will be a thing of the past.  As weird as it might sound we would be heading toward "Cruisers" the size of the San Antonio LPD, with a larger crew than the bean counters will be comfortable with, loaded to the gills with anti-missile missiles, CIWS, cannons that can range 100 miles (to effectively engage those shore fired anti-ship batteries), build a "modern spotter aircraft" (that tilt rotor UAV might be essential for a different mission than envisioned) and the type of armor we haven't seen since 1945.

Oh and that's just so we can get close enough to chase terrorists.  If its an advanced foe then we will have to cancel the idea of independent ship operations entirely...if these type missile proliferate and we keep the same kind of ships we still might!

I've talked about the necessity of armor on land, but unless lasers get working with a quickness then we might see battlewagons or their modern equivalent make a comeback.