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If you're asking seriously, it's because, while their shells were comparatively cheap, battleships were really expensive, big targets. There's some argument just how far USA procurement has gone to the expensive, precise, and hard-to-produce end of the scale. It should tell us something that most countries that can value technology and precision highly when procuring to fight peers or near peers. Ideally precision ends engagements faster, with more certainty, and are less costly. Which make wars against near peers faster, more sure, and less costly.
During GWOT the US did do some economic "value" option procurement.
Rail guns were supposed to be the more economical gun replacement, but Navy seems to have petered out on pursuing that technology? Someone can correct me. I just looked and the the newer 'small' 5 in. guns on US destroyers can 'officially' reach out to 37km with certain ammunitions. Which was the effective range of the USS Iowa's guns anyway.
I suspect the reason we haven't seen more action against the Houthis is not for a want of options. It's mostly a political, executive decision. This administration has zero desire for any sort of action that may end with escalation in an election year. Maybe they are planning to deal with it in 2025 after a win, or maybe they think the Red Sea isn't that important to US efforts and stability. Stuff like intercepting arms shipments to the Houthis is a simple, defensible action USA and allied ships could take.
That decision makers think the risk of doing so is unacceptable might tell us they really believe Iran is inkling for a major war, it might tell us they are risk averse to the extreme, that the Commander-in-Chief won't accept conflict for domestic reasons, or perhaps they just aren't that interested in the ME anymore. Could be they're right, and it's a no win situation to escalate against the Houthis. Although, it's a bit strange to send ships to patrol a place with missiles flying around, and not take sufficient efforts to deter missile shooters. I think there is a real cost imposed on risk aversion (Ukraine 2014 leading to Ukraine 2022 for recent example) but I don't think the behavior is too out of the norm for a D Whitehouse with a weak, aging leader worried about re-election.
What argument? US military procurement is full of corruption and various other concerns that have long since taken priority over actual combat effectiveness and efficiency. China has 232 times the shipbuilding capacity of the US and the US military supply chain is full of Chinese products - if there's an actual conflict between the USA and the Global South, the US would lose the ability to repair or even maintain their current fleet of ships, let alone manufacture new ones. In the USA-vs-Russia proxy war that's happening right now the west is being dramatically outcompeted in terms of ammunition supply/manufacturing, and on top of that there's a technological gap between the US and Russia - the US still hasn't bridged the hypersonic weapons gap.
The West isn't falling completely behind there: the Army opened a new artillery shell plant in May, and within the last month the US announced operational deployment of long-range air-launched SM-6 missiles and Lockheed announced a hypersonic missile (I haven't seen any claims of deployments, though).
Yeah, Western munition production capacity is going to rise at least 4-500% over 2019 levels in the next 5 years. Whether that’s enough remains to be seen.
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I was thinking of certain missile stocks. My understanding makes me suspect something close to a "232 times" number would be net raw tonnage of all things built to float. And that would be accounted for in shipyards (most of them) building civilian cargo ships. Big cargo shipyards are important. A shipyard pumping out cargo ships is closer to being retrofitted to produce new frigates than a non-existent shipyard, but maybe not that close. US shipbuilding capacity is anemic regardless, and it could not rebuild a fleet in any reasonable amount of time. China is building many ships and will build many more! But I'm not sure any nation, even China, will be able to replace a fleet in an amount of time that a conflict may requires. You never know, though. Hopefully by the time a nation needs to rebuild a fleet of a conflict would be resolved so the world can get better. I do not look forward to such a world.
If you mean Russia pumps out more artillery shells than the EU and the US, that is true. It will still be true even when both entities reach new production quotas. But, I'm not super interested in a dick measuring contest. Regardless of how capable or wunderwaffe-y hypersonic missiles may be, or how much stronker Russia artillery production is, neither appear to be capable of stopping more droves of poor slavs from dying in the foreseeable future. And that's sad, but also indicative that all weapons carry limitations, and much of what they can do relies on many other things going right in the right places.
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Is it that strange? They can claim they're taking bold action, without running the risks of actually taking bold action.
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