How more US cruisers might have changed later treaty bargaining

Under a counterfactual Washington treaty with London-style aggregate cruiser limits, retaining Lexington's eight-inch turrets would be more defensible because every separate cruiser would consume scarce total allowance. Under the actual Washington rules, the United States could instead build additional heavy cruisers for Pacific requirements. A larger US cruiser program might push later negotiations toward roughly 240,000 tons each for heavy and light cruisers, yielding twenty-four 10,000-ton heavy cruisers and forty 6,000-ton light cruisers. Such a ceiling would bring the Royal Navy close to its roughly seventy-cruiser requirement, especially if overage C- and D-class ships could be retained. Procurement before a conference can alter the bargaining baseline of the next treaty.