It seems you have a lot of knowledge of Naval ships and I was wondering if you could explain the practical difference between a Guided Missile Destroyer like the Arleigh-Burke class vs a Guided Missile Cruiser like the Ticonderoga class?
The difference was almost entirely the size. The US used to have very few cruisers during the 70ies, but the Soviet Union had a lot of ships that were much smaller than US cruisers, yet designated as cruisers. So the US simply redesignated all large destroyers (i.e. the entire Ticonderoga class) as cruisers, arguing that the larger size enabled them to e taskforce flagships. But the difference in size between the Ticonderogas and the first Burke's (build 15 years after the Ticos IIRC) was only roughly 1000 tons and by now the 3rd generation of Burkes is as large as the Ticos were.
