A naval treaty that limits numbers without stopping construction

Could naval treaties cap fleet numbers while allowing a permanent qualitative construction race?

Yes; rolling national build quotas could restrain quantity while preserving yards and pushing continuous competition in battleship and carrier quality.

A treaty could permit regular capital-ship construction while restricting how many ships each country built and how long it retained them. The suggested quota allows Britain and the United States five ships each in every five-year period, Japan three, and France and Italy five each over ten years. A service life of about twenty years would connect replacement construction to a limit on fleet size. Britain and the United States would probably order ships mostly in pairs, adjusting the timing to fit their quotas. Continuous construction would encourage competition to produce the best 16-inch-gun capital ship. Countries that interrupted development, particularly Russia during and after its civil war, could fall far enough behind to struggle when they tried to compete again. Carrier construction could also develop differently under this continuing competition.