Keep in mind that we once had many battleships in the fleet. They were rendered obsolete by the airplane.
Battleships are very fat targets in this age.
Bismarck and Musashi were eventually sunk by bombs. Then there was the near-successful attempt sinking USS Cole reflecting the potency of asymmetric warfare, and of course current drone technology which, if Ukrainian boat drones are able to sink large Russian missile cruisers, what more with a battleship about the size of an Iowa?
He’s in it mainly for the belief he wants to show a bigger e-peen.
The only way it makes sense otherwise is if they did a 9/11 intel situation where some parts of the apparatus knew but nobody who could use that information got it in time. In 2023. On one of the most aggressively monitored land borders on the planet.
The conspiracy theory is that they didn’t know.