Kirov's roughly 28,000-ton full-load displacement dwarfed Long Beach and the smaller US nuclear cruisers. One cruiser label therefore covered ships of sharply different scale and origin. Such labels still carried political power in Congress because the Cold War was also an ideological contest fought through visible measures of strength. Fleet counts make more sense when each counted ship is considered in relation to what it was designed to do.
Notable Point · 29:27-31:32
Kirov exposed the politics behind cruiser comparisons
Comparing the 28,000-ton Kirov with much smaller US cruisers shows why nominal ship counts could distort Cold War force debates.