Large cruisers as a layer below carrier deployment

How would a full class of 45,000-ton Zumwalt-style cruisers perform?

They would serve as powerful conflict-management ships between destroyer and carrier deployments, reducing pressure on both.

The proposed cruiser class would have few demanding combat tests in the post-Cold War period described. Its main role would be conflict management below the level of a carrier deployment. A force with only individual destroyers, groups of destroyers, and carriers has relatively few ways to scale a response. Constellation-class frigates would add one level, and very large cruisers could add another. That wider choice could relieve the deployment pressure on both destroyers and carriers.