Cruiser

A cruiser is a warship of significant, but not the greatest, power. The term goes back into the age of sail, although the usage differed from even the 20th century. Beyond that basic statement, the characteristics and roles of cruisers have varied greatly since the beginning of the 20th century, when the term was applied with some degree of formalism.

The word "cruiser" was first used in English in 1651. Cognates in Dutch, Portuguese, and French meant "crossing", as in crossing back and forth across the entrance to a harbor to enforce a blockade, or crossing an ocean.

One of today's challenges is that the definitions of three warship types — cruiser, destroyer, and frigate — have had changing and overlapping definitions, and even overlapping realization. The "frigate" of the age of sail had a role comparable to many modern cruiser roles, but a modern frigate is an escort vessel lighter than a destroyer or cruiser. Literally the same hull is used for the Ticonderoga-class cruisers, the retired land attack and antisubmarine-optimized Spruance-class destroyers, and for the multirole but extremely strong antiair Burke-class destroyers.

The U.S. and Russia are the only navies with ships designated as cruisers, and only the U.S. has actively discussed building new cruisers.

Classic Roles

Classic roles included:

• Foreign station ships, independently deployed, looked out for national interests around the world. In addition to an extensive gun armament, the station ship had self-repair capability, long range, and "first-responder-to-disorder" equipment such as small arms for the crew and an extensive boat outfit. The disorder could be a revolutionary situation or a natural disaster.
• Sea denial ships, using their pre-deployed location, attacked other nations' trade routes. Counter-raider merchant ship escorts would, in turn, try to stop enemy sea denial ships.
• Scout vessels, fast enough to run from what they could not fight, and heavily armed enough to defeat what they can catch.

Cruiser is certainly an older term than destroyer. As destroyers emerged, as well as light cruisers, one of the classic distinctions was that a cruiser had some armor but a destroyer had none.

Evolved roles

Reconnaissance

Scouting is a traditional role. In WWII, the UK used cruisers, with radar and greater speed than battleships, to shadow capital ships and coordinate strikes. The Soviet Union assigned some of its cruisers, in the fifties and sixties, a similar role against U.S. carrier battle groups.

The scouting function is reflected in the U.S. ship type code, CV, for aircraft carriers. Some of the early aircraft carriers had 8 inch/203mm guns for self-protection against other ships, that being considered a caliber fit for a heavy cruiser. As it became obvious that carriers would always be escorted, the heavier guns were removed from carriers with them, to make more space for aviation functions. Most subsequent carriers, through WWII, did have 5" dual-purpose guns; the latest carriers have, at most, autocannon for defense against speedboats or perhaps final point defense against air threats.

New Japanese "destroyer" designs will carry more than the usual two helicopters of a cruiser. Italian Andrea Doria class cruisers carried 6 helicopters. Discussions of ship designs underway also considering carrying a mixture of helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles, the latter in both unarmed ISR and armed combat configurations.

Sea denial role

The idea of an independent balanced ship, or at least a small formation, has gone in and out of style. For blue water operations, however, air and space sensors are far more capable than anything on a surface ship.

Threats, of course, have changed. There are few scenarios where there would be blue-water commerce raiding, but there very definitely are littoral threats from pirates and terrorists. These threats, however, come from nothing larger than a fast attack boat.

Anti-air warfare

In WWII, the CLAA type, a light cruiser with an exceptionally large number of 5" guns, met with only limited success. Had radar control been more advanced, they might have had a chance. The most significant advantage of this design was that it was larger and had better sea-keeping characteristics than a destroyer, so it could escort carriers under any weather conditions.

A high-end modern destroyer could be as strong an anti-surface threat as a WWII heavy cruiser, and immensely more in anti-air warfare. For a time, however, a distinction was that cruisers had area air defense capability, while destroyers had local capability, more than self-defense but only extending to ships in close company.

Modern cruisers are the key escorts and escort command vessels in CVBGs. The group anti-air warfare officer is usually on a cruiser, which has both AEGIS battle management that a carrier does not, and more space for task group command functions than a destroyer.

It seems a given that new-generation U.S. cruisers will have a significant theater ballistic missile defense role. Nevertheless, any AEGIS ship potentially can use the SM-3 ABM; the Japanese Kongo-class destroyers are adding TBMD capability. Kongos are modified copies of Burke-class destroyers, not cruisers. A

Command ship

• Group
• NCA

Land attack

Gunfire support was long a role of cruisers, where many believe their 8" and 6" guns were superior to the larger guns of battleships. The cruiser guns were faster-firing, as or more accurate, and their smaller shell size allowed them to fire in closer proximity to friendly forces.

With the advent of the Vertical Launch System on U.S. Ticonderoga class (i.e., CG 52 and higher), the ships gained a significant, if expensive, land attack capability using the BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile.

Ballistic missile defense

• TBMD
• SM-3

Experimental variants

Perhaps the most common experiment of the past was a gunship-aircraft/floatplane carrier, a concept that has revived significantly with helicopters.

Sailing cruisers

The Royal Navy categorized sailing ships (i.e., three-masted_ from the most powerful 1st rate to the light 6th rates; smaller fighting vessels, such as sloops and brigs, were not "rated". Parliamentary documents of 1694 show that 5th and 6th rates were detached to "cruise" to protect friendly shipping, and to find hostile vessels. Ships of these rates had long endurance and high speed. They held to the general principle that they could run from any vessel heavily armed enough to defeat them, but were armed well enough to pursue and neutralize pirate and other commerce raiders. Their captains had sufficient rank to be trusted on independent operations.

While they could not survive in line of battle, they had important roles in fleet operations, as couriers, rescue vessels, scouts, and, after the Battle of the Saintes (1782), were often used as command ships that would not be tied to the line or a tempting target.

First World War

Scouting remained a role, independently, in small cruiser units, and for a fleet. Cruisers did not take on a significant antisubmarine role, even though one of the first actions in the war involved three British cruisers being sunk by a German submarine.

In the balance among speed, armament, and armor, cruisers favored speed above all. Cruiser armor did not meet one of the contemporary definitions of a battleship: armor proof against shells the same size as its main battery. There were continuing discussions during WWI about "battlecruisers" and about "large cruisers" afterwards; it did become clear that using battlecruisers as part of a battle line, in the presence of battleships, was extremely unwise. A battlecruiser might find a battleship, but never fight one.

Cruisers under interwar treaties

The London Treaty of 1930 is one point of reference, as it defined a heavy cruiser, also known as an armored cruiser (CA) or first class cruiser, as having a 6.1/155mm to 8/203mm inch main battery. They are generally a post-First World War design. A few examples of "first class protected cruisers" or "semi-armored cruiser" existed; they had the armament of heavy cruisers but lighter armor.

Designs for, and operations in, WWII

Actions

• Graf Spee?
• Guadalcanal

Post-WWII gun cruisers

• Shore gunfire in Korea, Vietnam
• Sverdlovsks

Experimental designs

• Long Beach
• Kara

Major missile combatants

• Ticonderoga
• California and sisters?
• Kirovs
• Slavas