From an enlarged Long Beach to a strike-cruiser class

Using the lines of a Lexington-class battlecruiser instead of a light-cruiser hull would have produced a much larger Long Beach. A class of three or four ships on the existing design would already have offered more value than a unique one-off. The historical follow-on plan was more ambitious: convert Long Beach into an Aegis prototype and then build eight to twelve nuclear strike cruisers. In that fleet structure, the Ticonderogas would have served as destroyers alongside purpose-built cruisers.