Cruiser standards are more than armour

Calling a warship a cruiser does not require the heavy armour often associated with interwar treaty cruisers. Some historical heavy cruisers carried less than 900 tons of armour, and some carried less than 600 tons. The more useful distinctions here are hull size and scale, internal subdivision, and redundancy in vital systems. A cruiser also needs systems arranged for independent deployment. Those requirements account for much of the extra displacement even when armour is modest. By this definition, USS Long Beach was the last US Navy ship built to cruiser standards. The Virginia class and later Ticonderogas were closer to destroyer or destroyer-leader standards, with the Ticonderoga design based on a modified Spruance hull.