Why major ship classifications usually change after war

Should navies rename and reclassify ship types as they did in the nineteenth century?

A wholesale change is considered unlikely without another war to force a reassessment of ship categories.

A comprehensive overhaul of ship classifications is judged unlikely in peacetime. Another war is expected to force the reassessment of what navies call their ships. In this view, the time elapsed since World War II is insufficient by itself to produce a change comparable to nineteenth-century reclassification.