![\"Iowa\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/07\/iowa.jpg?w=620\")
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It\u2019s 1988. World War Three has begun, with the armies of the Soviet Union and the rest of the Warsaw Pact pouring over the Inter-German Border. Their destination: the Rhine River and beyond, dealing NATO a knockout blow that will end the war.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile at sea, an equally titanic battle is about to take place. A Soviet Kirov-class battlecruiser, attempting to intercept a U.S. Navy carrier battle group, is intercepted by the battleship USS Iowa<\/em>. The biggest ship-against-ship battle since the World War Two is about to begin. Who wins?<\/p>\n Built in the late 1980s, the Kirov-class battlecruisers were designed\u2014like much of the Soviet navy at the time\u2014to neutralize American carrier battle groups during warfare. American aircraft carriers were a threat to not only the Soviet mainland but also Moscow\u2019s nuclear missile submarines, and were to be taken out as quickly as possible. A secondary mission of the Kirov class was as commerce raider, designed to cut the flow of American and Canadian ground reinforcements to the battleground in Europe.<\/p>\n The Kirov class were the largest surface warships built since the end of World War II. Each displaced twenty-four thousand tons and measured 826 feet long\u2014nearly as long as an aircraft carrier. Nuclear powered, they could cruise indefinitely at speeds of up to thirty-two knots.<\/p>\n The purpose of the battlecruisers was to attack, and they were well suited for the task. Each carried twenty enormous P-700 Granit<\/a> antiship missiles. Each, a Granit<\/em> missile weighed more than fifteen thousand pounds. This was enough to include 1,653-pound high explosive warhead, enough fuel to give it a range of three hundred miles at Mach 2.5, and a both inertial and active radar guidance. Initial targeting data would be provided by the space-based Legenda satellite targeting system<\/a>, shore-based aircraft, shipboard helicopters or the battlecruiser itself.<\/p>\n Granit<\/em> was unique among Cold War\u2013era antiship missiles in having an early networking capability. One missile per salvo rises higher than the rest, providing radar targeting information to the rest of the missiles though a network. If that missile was shot down, another would rise to take its place.<\/p>\n The Kirov cruisers were also designed to be self sufficient in anti-air weapons, the overall armament forming a layered defense system. Each carried 96 S-300F long-range surface to air missiles, a naval adaptation of the land-based S-300 system<\/a>. The ships also carried 192 3K95<\/a> short-range surface-to-air missiles based on the Tor<\/em>, and forty 4K33<\/a> missiles based on the Osa<\/em>. As a last resort, the ships had six AK-630<\/a> close-in weapon systems equipped with thirty-millimeter gatling guns.<\/p>\n