Austria-Hungary might invent the fast battleship

Austria-Hungary possessed firms such as Skoda that could compete with the great British armaments combines and had already considered guns larger than those fitted to the Tegetthoff class. In this scenario, combining that industrial base with a demand for greater speed might accidentally produce the first fast battleship. Such an Austro-Hungarian advance would add another qualitative benchmark that Germany had to answer while also trying to maintain fleet numbers. France could rejoin the technical competition after recovering from the Jeune École period. Smaller buyers such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Greece, and the Ottoman Empire would acquire improved ships from the leading builders, spreading the higher standard without driving the underlying technology themselves.