NATO discovers an 80,000-ton Soviet missile ship

What if NATO discovered an 80,000-ton Soviet nuclear surface combatant entering service in 1980?

NATO would rapidly expand carrier forces and anti-ship capability while reconsidering its own large surface combatants.

The premise is an 80,000-ton nuclear surface combatant appearing alongside Kirov in 1980 without advance warning to NATO. Scaling up Kirov produces a speculative load of more than six hundred missiles, including about a hundred P-700 Granit anti-ship missiles and several hundred surface-to-air missiles. Its likely propulsion is discussed as a larger combined nuclear and oil-fired steam installation, with a speed around 32 knots. The American responses proposed include converting a Nimitz hull or accelerating carrier construction, alongside another Iowa refit. One suggested force calculation reaches twenty-four Nimitz-class carriers by assigning two carriers to each of twelve task groups across the Atlantic and Pacific. Britain is imagined concentrating more resources on North Atlantic naval forces. The cancelled American nuclear strike-cruiser concept could also return, possibly as a much larger ship than its earlier design. The weapon loads and fleet totals are extrapolations within the hypothetical, rather than established designs.