When is a warship a cruiser?

uk 75

uk 75

ACCESS: Above Top Secret
Senior Member
Joined
27 September 2006
Messages
5,744
Reaction score
5,619
When I was a little boy the Royal Navy at the beginning of the sixties the Royal Navy still had cruisers. They all had 6 inch guns so obviously were not destroyers which only had 4.5" guns. Fast forward to the late sixties and the RN decides to design a new "Command Cruiser" with a flat deck to carry Seaking helos. By the 1980s the RN had no more cruisers. The Command Cruisers had entered service as anti-submarine aircraft carriers (CVS).
Today we have destroyers which carry area anti-aircraft systems and general purpose frigates which do not. T45 and T23s. All nice and simple.
 
uk 75 said:
When I was a little boy the Royal Navy at the beginning of the sixties the Royal Navy still had cruisers. They all had 6 inch guns so obviously were not destroyers which only had 4.5" guns. Fast forward to the late sixties and the RN decides to design a new "Command Cruiser" with a flat deck to carry Seaking helos. By the 1980s the RN had no more cruisers. The Command Cruisers had entered service as anti-submarine aircraft carriers (CVS).
Click to expand...
Well, let's face it; from its very appearance in mid-XIX century, "cruiser" was a very broad term. Initially based on supposed function - raider/counter-raider - "cruiser" quickly became "everything that is not other class". XX century somewhat straightened situation (initially by chance, then by artificial classification of Washington and London treaties), but post-WW2, the definition of "cruiser" became broad again. Especially in USSR, where admirals just loved the term "cruiser")
 
Cruiser was a ship category existing, aproximately from the second half of XIX century and first half of XX century. Main tasks: maritime commerce protection and negation. Also fleet scouts and escorts. Capable of secondary combat actions.

So old Frigates and corvettes, the long range oceanic sailing ships got renamed into the steam/petrol era.

After WWII, only cruisers were big enough to receive the earliest missile weapon systems allowed them to survive after WWII as large escort ships.

Now in the XXI century, miniaturization allows to pack offensive weapons into any size hull this transforming escorts into surface combatants. This is the term to me.

Cruiser, frigate and corvette can be refered as surface combatants. They are multi mission capable ships.

Cruiser designation could be applied to the largest surface combatants but which is the displacement when a destroyer deserves to be considered as a cruiser?

Zumwalt and Type 055 are still considered destroyes at about 10.000 tond
 
Additionaly, some of the classic cruiser tasks are performed by SSN so, in some sense, modern cruisers operate beneath the waves.
 
A ship is a cruiser when your primary adversary has a bunch of cruisers and you don't. (Hence the USN's great redesignation in 1975)

For the USN, the only real distinction is whether you have command facilities for the air warfare commander (AW) role. And DDG(X) might even do away with that. We may well have seen the end of the line for USN cruisers in our lifetime.
 
Last edited:
Nowadays ? A cruiser is a +10 000 tons ship - up to 20 000 tons.
Above that, it's a battlecruiser, like the Kirovs.
Below 10 000 tons it is a destroyer or frigate.

Last +10 000 tons French ships
-not an amphib
-not a carrier
-not an helicopter carrier
Was the Colbert cruiser (retired 1992)
- and before it, the De Grasse (started before WWII, finished afterwards, ended as a nuclear command post in French Polynesia in 1970).

Pretty fun to think that
- 1910 armoured cruisers
- 1910 pre-Dreadnoughts
- 1910 HMS Dreadnought
- 1945 Worcester CL
- 1945 Des Moines CA
- 2020 Type 55 or Zumwalt

All of have comparable tonnage, in the 15 000 tons ballpark (+ / - 3000 tons)

Only 30 years ago, with the notable exception of the Kirovs everything "not an amphib, not an helicopter carrier and not a carrier" (should I say, ESCORTS ?) was stuck below 10 000 tons.

No idea why all of sudden the Chinese and USN have busted that limit, roughly 15 years ago ?
 
Last edited:
Speaking of cruisers and destroyers, currently only 13 navies in the world own warships called "destroyers". Among these countries are Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Italy, the United Kingdom, France, Argentina, India and Australia. Only Turkey currently wants to equip itself with a destroyer in the future.
 
The only time, the term "cruiser" actually had a written down definition, may have been, when the Washington/London
treaties were in effect. Before that time, the only definition was via the tasks, a ship had to fulfill, I think. Quite a lot
of former "battleships" were modified/re-classified to "cruisers", when their best time was up (e.g. German
armoured frigates König Wilhelm, Kaiser, but HMS Warrior, too), old cruisers sometimes were relegated as "gunboats".
Up to the mentioned treaties, neither size, nor armament was a criterion, not only the WWII German destroyers of the Z23 onwards, but probably even the "Große Torpedoboote" (=destroyer), S 113 up to B 124 built during the end of
WWI would have to be counted as "cruisers" then, especially, as several sources mention, that they were designed, to
to fulfill cruiser tasks for the fleet, too, as there were too few "real" cruisers.
After WWII, cruisers generally were either left-overs from the war, or at least still based on wartime designs, or,
the newer ones, they were cruisers, when the country owning them, thought it to be useful to desginate them as
cruisers. In the case of the USN Leahy the term "cruiser" obviously wasn't wanted for quite a while, as those ships
were called "Large Frigates", whereas the Soviet Kynda class "cruisers", weren't that much bigger, than the Krupny
class destroyers. I may be wrong, but selling a "frigate" ( known as a relatively small ship) a to a congress man, may
be easier, than a "cruiser" ? And a class of ships, that is the spearhead of a fleet, has at least to be cruisers ?
The USN Ticonderogas were based on the Spruances, here at best the importance of those ships could have justified
the new classification... The Kirov, a type, that with regards to it's arsenal and its task, could have been called a "battleship", but as the the terms "battleship" and "battlecruiser" were mixed up in the media long before anyway,
it was called "battlecruiser" in the west, while for Russia, it's just a "big CGN", AFAIK. But maybe "battlecruiser"
seemed to open a better way for re-commisioning the USN New Jersey battleship (real battleships ...) ?
A similar kind of politics maybe the reason for the classification of the the Zumwalts, and maybe the Type 55, too.
Actually the same seems to be the mishmash of "frigates" and "destroyers". The first designation reminds everybody
to those brave ships and their men, who defended the free world against the Nazi U-Boats, whereas even the name of
the other class probably has bad connotations in nearly every parliament ...
So, principally the kind of armament, protection and the task of the ship, could or maybe still can define a "cruiser"
quite well, but what it is actually called is just a question of political thinking today.
 
The US Navy in the early 60s had a slew of wartime cruisers converted to be missile ships plus the new built Long Beach.
As pointed out above the US adds its new build missile ships previously known as destroyer leaders or frigates in the 70s.
The Ticonderogas were originally just another destroyer with Aegis till the Virginia and Long Beach AEGIS ships were binned.
With this form expect a new cruiser to be a redesignated Burke or Zumwalt?
 
At one time cruisers were surface combatants that had a level of armour/ protection more than the lightest splinter protection but less than battleship-level thick main belts and deck armour.
Hence cruisers varied greatly in size and role over time.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Broadly speaking, postwar cruisers that were not some sort of gun cruiser or converted gun cruiser could be divided into three categories:

1. Helicopter cruisers
Examples: IT Andrea Doria, Vittorio Veneto; USSR Moskva

Capital vessels intended as the centerpiece of ASW formations providing helicopter coverage and area air defense with long-range SAMs. Died out because they couldn't carry enough helicopters for continuous coverage and that small V/STOL carriers did the job with modest extra cost.

2. The cruise missile slingers
Examples: USSR Kynda, Kirov, Slava

Capital vessels intended as the centerpiece of surface action groups, carrying heavy antiship cruise missiles, area air defense SAMs, and extensive point defenses. Not used outside the USSR because all attempts cost almost as much as carriers for far less utility.

3. The destroyers with pretensions
Examples: All US missile cruisers not Long Beach

The high end of American missile escorts, intended solely as carrier escorts. Distinguished by destroyers mainly by endurance. Cruiser designation entirely political. Swallowed up by increasing growth in size and capability of destroyers.

Probably the best working definition for the missile age is any non-carrier surface combatant large enough, powerful enough, and expensive enough that you treat it as a capital vessel to be escorted. Which, granted, identifies the Zumwalts as cruisers, but what can you do. Ship types are damn muddy these days.
 
CV12Hornet said:
Broadly speaking, postwar cruisers that were not some sort of gun cruiser or converted gun cruiser could be divided into three categories:

1. Helicopter cruisers
Examples: IT Andrea Doria, Vittorio Veneto; USSR Moskva

Capital vessels intended as the centerpiece of ASW formations providing helicopter coverage and area air defense with long-range SAMs. Died out because they couldn't carry enough helicopters for continuous coverage and that small V/STOL carriers did the job with modest extra cost.

2. The cruise missile slingers
Examples: USSR Kynda, Kirov, Slava

Capital vessels intended as the centerpiece of surface action groups, carrying heavy antiship cruise missiles, area air defense SAMs, and extensive point defenses. Not used outside the USSR because all attempts cost almost as much as carriers for far less utility.

3. The destroyers with pretensions
Examples: All US missile cruisers not Long Beach
Click to expand...
The Albany's packed 104 Talos SAMs (some of them nuclear) and 80 Tartar SAMs. Nothing to sneeze at.

123789526_10158735503442173_508923331192566691_n.jpg
 
In the days of sail cruisers were ships that undertook independent operations and included Frigates, Sloops, and Corvettes. For most of the 20th century in the RN at least they were still ships capable of independent operations, but with superior command and control facilities, capable of a degree of self maintenance and did not require the support of a tender.
 
CV12Hornet said:
1. Helicopter cruisers
Examples: IT Andrea Doria, Vittorio Veneto; USSR Moskva

Capital vessels intended as the centerpiece of ASW formations providing helicopter coverage and area air defense with long-range SAMs. Died out because they couldn't carry enough helicopters for continuous coverage and that small V/STOL carriers did the job with modest extra cost.

2. The cruise missile slingers
Examples: USSR Kynda, Kirov, Slava

Capital vessels intended as the centerpiece of surface action groups, carrying heavy antiship cruise missiles, area air defense SAMs, and extensive point defenses. Not used outside the USSR because all attempts cost almost as much as carriers for far less utility.

3. The destroyers with pretensions
Examples: All US missile cruisers not Long Beach

The high end of American missile escorts, intended solely as carrier escorts. Distinguished by destroyers mainly by endurance. Cruiser designation entirely political. Swallowed up by increasing growth in size and capability of destroyers.
Click to expand...
I like it!
 
My thinking is pretty much along the lines of Muttly and CV12. In any case, trying to make sense of how the US Navy classifies ships after WWII is a fool's errand.

Personally, I buy into a destroyer vs. cruiser distinction that I think fits with CV12's post about cruiser types:
  • A cruiser is designed to be capable of independent action (e.g., commerce raider, fleet scout) and has the ability to lead smaller groups of ships / tasks forces when no capital ships are available. Note that "fleet scout" implies the ability to defeat an enemy destroyer screen or, in fleet operations, protect your own destroyer screen against enemy cruisers
    • A Battlecruiser is just a bigger cruiser, designed to defeat "regular" cruisers but serving the same roles
  • A destroyer is a fast, maneuverable long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller powerful short-range attackers.
    • Where it gets muddy is that the role of destroyers and the role of the old torpedo boats (the thing that destroyers were built to destroy) were conflated into the destroyer role, so they are built for escort duties but also had torpedo tubes (or now SSM) with an offensive role

The best description of the sub-destroyer sizes ships was one I stole from a commenter on Tank-Net (unfortunately, didn't note their name). I believe it's based off of WWII era Royal Navy thinking but I love it's simplicity and clarity:
  • Sloops were essentially slow destroyers without torpedoes.
  • Frigates were sloops built to mercantile standards with fewer guns.
  • Corvettes, the predecessor to frigates, were small, even slower frigates not originally intended as ocean escorts.
  • Escort destroyers (i.e. the Hunt class) were slightly faster sloops with torpedoes.
  • Destroyer Escorts were US sloops with torpedoes optimized as ASW escorts.
 
Last edited:
I once read on Quora the answers to a question about the difference between destroyers and cruisers. One user wrote that according to him the USS Zumwalt was neither a destroyer nor a cruiser (some users thought it was more of a cruiser), but a modern version of the monitor (not to be confused
with computer screen)
en.m.wikipedia.org

Monitor (warship) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
The only difference is that at least one monitor had cannons to shoot with.
 
Lc89 said:
I once read on Quora the answers to a question about the difference between destroyers and cruisers. One user wrote that according to him the USS Zumwalt was neither a destroyer nor a cruiser (some users thought it was more of a cruiser), but a modern version of the monitor (not to be confused
with computer screen),
en.m.wikipedia.org

Monitor (warship) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
Click to expand...

That answer suggests the Quora writer doesn't understand how the Zumwalt is designed and equipped.

Sure, there was a lot of talk around how the DD-21 was a "Land-Attack Destroyer" built around those guns for shore bombardment. And if that was all the ship could do, "monitor" might have been a fair term. But that was not an accurate description of DD-21's capabilities (even before the LRLAP/AGS fiasco that means it can't really do shore bombardment at all). The Zumwalt was absolutely designed and equipped as a general-purpose destroyer with excellent ASW capability, good AAW capacity, and significant strike warfare potential (with Tomahawk). The big limitation is in their lack of antisurface warfare capability, thanks to the absence of antiship missiles.
 
When I was a boy Destroyers were anti air defence and Frigates were anti submarine oriented while both had some general purpose qualities. This explained why size did not matter.

Essentially Cruisers were anything else mostly on the heavier side while not really as good as the other two types.

Does it really matter what we call them when job description is more relevant?
 
Another Quora user thought of the Zumwalt as a battleship, because of its odd shape, because it would have cannons to fire at enemy positions like real battleships in Normandy and the Pacific front did, and that its dimensions that made the ship larger (in length, not weight) than an old battleship like the USS Nevada, (They bore the example of modern European frigates, which are larger than many WWII destroyers). Obviously they were wrong, because the real heir to the battleship should have been the arsenal ship, but it was never built.
 
Last edited:
Lc89 said:
Another Quora user thought of the Zumwalt as a battleship, because of its odd shape, because it would have cannons to fire at enemy positions like real battleships in Normandy and the Pacific front did, and that its dimensions that made the ship larger (in length, not weight) than an old battleship like the USS Nevada. Obviously they were wrong, because the real heir to the battleship should have been the arsenal ship, but it was never built.
Click to expand...

Honestly, Arsenal Ship was much more of an heir to the monitor title than the battleship. ArShip was never conceived a as a platform to do battle with other warships. That was the defining characteristic of battleships, the ability to exchange gunfire with other similar large armored warships. That they spent so much of their time bombarding shore targets just showed how obsolete their main design features had become by ~1945.

But I liked Norman Polmar's conceptualization even better -- ArShip was an ammunition ship (AE) that didn't require UNREP to deliver its cargo.
 
Lc89 said:
Another Quora user thought of the Zumwalt as a battleship, because of its odd shape, because it would have cannons to fire at enemy positions like real battleships in Normandy and the Pacific front did, and that its dimensions that made the ship larger (in length, not weight) than an old battleship like the USS Nevada. Obviously they were wrong, because the real heir to the battleship should have been the arsenal ship, but it was never built.
Click to expand...
An arsenal ship would have less fighting ability than even a Zumwalt. Battleships were much more than floating magazines, which is what the arsenal ship concept was.
 
TomS said:
Lc89 said:
Another Quora user thought of the Zumwalt as a battleship, because of its odd shape, because it would have cannons to fire at enemy positions like real battleships in Normandy and the Pacific front did, and that its dimensions that made the ship larger (in length, not weight) than an old battleship like the USS Nevada. Obviously they were wrong, because the real heir to the battleship should have been the arsenal ship, but it was never built.
Click to expand...

Honestly, Arsenal Ship was much more of an heir to the monitor title than the battleship. ArShip was never conceived a as a platform to do battle with other warships. That was the defining characteristic of battleships, the ability to exchange gunfire with other similar large armored warships. That they spent so much of their time bombarding shore targets just showed how obsolete their main design features had become by ~1945.

But I liked Norman Polmar's conceptualization even better -- ArShip was an ammunition ship (AE) that didn't require UNREP to deliver its cargo.
Click to expand...
The US Navy even wanted to classify the ArShip with the number 72 in homage to the old battleships (Number 71 was to belong to the never built USS Louisiana - BB 71 - of the Montana class.).
 
If we are talking Zumwalt, I think she is a battleship. Let's face it; in her modern incarnation, she is pretty much centered on A - self-defense and B - delivering long-range weapon strikes. She is not exactly very good as escort (problem with area air defense), but she could protect HERSELF excellently, due to the combination of low RCS, multi-channel targeting radar, and durability-increasing technologies (like side-mounted VLS cells). So... essentially she is the ship, designed to survive heavy enemy attacks and strike with long range onboard weapon. I.e. - battleship!
 
Last edited:
Dilandu said:
If we are talking Zumwalt, I think she is a battleship. Let's face it; in her modern incarnation, she is pretty much centered on A - self-defense and B - delivering long-range weapon strikes. She is not exactly very good as escort (problem with area air defense), but she could protect HERSELF excellently, due to the combination of low RCS, multi-channel targeting radar, and durability-increasing technologies (like side-mounted VLS cells). So... essentially she is the ship, designed to survive heavy enemy attacks and strike with long range onboard weapon. I.e. - battleship!
Click to expand...

Except she was never designed to actually fight against other enemy ships (other than submarines). So, battleship is a weird category to force her into.

Zumwalt is at least as capable as an escort as the Spruances were, in their day -- substantially better, really, since Zumwalt is capable of local area defense with SM-2 MR and is supposed to get SM-6, while the Spruances were only capable of self-defense. When DD-21 was being designed, aside from the increased emphasis on NSFS, the requirements were almost all "like a Spruance, but better."

Ultimately, as I've said many times, this idea of trying to shoehorn new ships into old labels is really a fool's errand. Roles change, and we need to think about changing classifications to go with them. The Soviet BPK/BRK (large ASW ships, large missile ship) labels were very much on the right track here. And the USN almost had this as well. For a while, DEs were officially "Ocean Escorts" rather than "Destroyer Escorts." And the DDs/DLGs were collectively "Battle Force Escorts." Honestly, calling a DLG a "Battle Force AAW Escort" would probably have been a more accurate description than calling it a Destroyer Leader, Frigate, or Cruiser.
 
Last edited:
Dilandu said:
If we are talking Zumwalt, I think she is a battleship. Let's face it; in her modern incarnation, she is pretty much centered on A - self-defense and B - delivering long-range weapon strikes. She is not exactly very good as escort (problem with area air defense), but she could protect HERSELF excellently, due to the combination of low RCS, multi-channel targeting radar, and durability-increasing technologies (like side-mounted VLS cells). So... essentially she is the ship, designed to survive heavy enemy attacks and strike with long range onboard weapon. I.e. - battleship!
Click to expand...
I think you're making some good points here, but that there is also a counter argument: the raison detre of the battleship was having the most powerful surface to surface armament possible and being able to withstand (at least partially) the enemy's most powerful surface to surface strike.

As you point out, the Zumwalts have some of the latter, but their surface to surface strike (as built) is the same as any ship with a Mk41 VLS; it has no surface to surface capability that isn't available to almost every other combat ship in the navy (especially since the NSM will fit on an LCS).

If the guns are replaced with something more like a Brahmos missile installation, then it would meet your battleship criteria much better.

As built, I'm not sure they correspond neatly to any previous ship, being almost a destroyer and a monitor mashed together into one ship, a self-escorting monitor.
 
TomS said:
Except she was never designed to actually fight against other enemy ships (other than submarines). So, battleship is a weird category to force her into.
Click to expand...
Well, a battleship is supposed to apply long-range weaponry both against enemy ships and coast targets. Many battleships in their career never ever engaged enemy units - only coastal targets. So... Zumwalts could fight against enemy warships, if loaded for that. And could do it highly efficiently.
 
Dilandu said:
TomS said:
Except she was never designed to actually fight against other enemy ships (other than submarines). So, battleship is a weird category to force her into.
Click to expand...
Well, a battleship is supposed to apply long-range weaponry both against enemy ships and coast targets. Many battleships in their career never ever engaged enemy units - only coastal targets. So... Zumwalts could fight against enemy warships, if loaded for that. And could do it highly efficiently.
Click to expand...

Shore targets were never a significant part of the design calculation for battleships. That was just something they did because enemy battleships were not around, or were too powerful for old battleships to deal with (or both). B

As for fighting enemy ships, the Zumwalts actually had very little antiship capability at all, just the residual use of SM-2 in direct line-of-sight engagements. No Harpoon, no NSM, and no LRASM (which is only air launched at this time). And no reported plans to fit any of them. It was only in 2019 that the Navy started planning to add SM-6 and Maritime Strike Tomahawk. If the Zs do eventually get hypersonic strike missiles, the issue will be even more confused, because those will be operational level weapons, sliding the class into a historically unique role.

PS: It seems to me that you're making a much stronger case to consider the Kirov/Orlan class as battlecruisers (or battleships), a position you rejected earlier in the thread. Clearly designed primarily to fight enemy surface warships with heavy long-range antiship armament, strong self-defense capability, and even the potential for independent operations. They're a much better (but still imperfect) match to the battleship/battlecruiser label than the Zumwalts.
 
Isn't it to do with the number of swimming pools, the size of the ballroom and the number of Michelin stars the restaurant holds? ;)

In all seriousness, I always thought it was related to the presence of onboard engineering workshops that enabled them to do their own maintenance when deployed.
 
It seems to me that it is possible to determine the classification if we consider not a separate type of ship, but the entire fleet at once.
The battleship after the Second World War was built only by the USSR, so we do not consider it.
A cruiser is the largest universal ship that a country can build.
The brig is the smallest of the ships, a ship of the coastal zone with a displacement of about 1000 tons.
The other types are located between
 
Cruiser, 18000 tonn
48 cruise missiles + 144 anti-aircraft missiles = 192

Destroyer / Clipper, 9000 tons
24 cruise missiles + 72 anti-aircraft missiles = 96

Frigate, 4500 tons
12 cruise missiles + 36 anti-aircraft missiles = 48

Corvette, 2250 tons
8 cruise missiles + 16 anti-aircraft missiles = 24

Brig,1000 tons
4 anti-ship missiles + 16 self-defense missiles
 
johnpjones1775 said:
When the navy that owns it designates it as such.
Click to expand...
This is really the key one. No ship classifications have been handed down on stone tablets from above.

FWIW, the classification I prefer is:
  • Cruiser - full-spectrum surface warship capable of air, surface, subsurface and strike warfare, with task force command capability
  • Destroyer - full-spectrum surface warship capable of air, surface, subsurface and strike warfare
  • Frigate - specialised surface warship capable of fleet speed and self-sustainment
  • Corvette - specialised surface warship capable of fleet speed but not self-sustaining
  • Sloop or aviso - generally capable only of self protection, self-sustaining but not capable of fleet speed
  • Patrol ship - can point something that goes 'bang' and radio for help
As far as I can tell, this system is unique to me.
 

Similar threads

Back
Top Bottom