The Washington settlement capped cruiser displacement at 10,000 tons and guns at eight inches, but it set no total number. Britain could therefore have sustained six County-class heavy cruisers per year until the London Naval Treaty, potentially reaching forty-eight new ships plus the Hawkins class. A parallel light-cruiser program would make the counterfactual even larger. Government funding and shipyard capacity, rather than treaty law, would set the practical limits. The calculation separates formal arms-control rules from the budgets that determine whether a navy can exploit them.
Notable Point · 27:05-27:58
Why the treaty could permit forty-eight County-class cruisers
Washington capped cruiser size and gun caliber but not cruiser numbers, leaving British output constrained more by funding and industry than by the treaty itself.