A comment presents Sverdlov as one part of a combined surface, air, and submarine threat. Large strike aircraft occupied carrier hangar space, while an air threat also required fighters, limiting the room available for anti-submarine aircraft. Surface cruisers could threaten isolated anti-submarine escorts and encourage ships to gather in mutually supporting groups, reducing the ocean area they covered. These competing demands complicate an opponent's preparations. Late-war German submarines provide the comparison: increasingly capable boats remained one principal maritime threat around which Allied ships, convoy organization, and sensors could concentrate. Combining threats forced more competing demands on those same resources. The advantage mattered especially in a conventional war lasting long enough for attacks on shipping to accumulate.
Notable Point · 1:04:32-1:09:37
How Sverdlovs complicated NATO's anti-submarine effort
Surface cruisers could force NATO to divide carrier capacity and concentrate escorts, making its anti-submarine effort harder to sustain across a wide area.