Why a navy could not simply skip the ironclad era

Could a navy avoid building ironclads and wait for steel warships?

Only if it found another way to create the industrial infrastructure and skills that ironclad construction normally supplied.

A planner who correctly predicts the steel warship cannot safely wait for it to arrive. Ironclad construction drives investment in heavy metalworking, yards, machinery, and skilled labour. Without that intermediate demand, the navy reaches the steel age without the capacity to build the ships it has anticipated. Any attempt to skip the ironclad phase must therefore reproduce its industrial learning and infrastructure through some other programme.