Shipbucket

So I was wondering why the US navy never built any sister ships to the long beach class? Was it because the radar was kind of awkward in practice? Or what? Would love to know.

From my basic understanding the Long Beach was more of a proof of concept ship, showing how a nuclear cruiser may work

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the uss long beach was as rodondo said a proof of concept her super structure was designed around the huge flat panel array radar system the radar that eventualy led to SPY 1 although this older system combined two radars was very advanced for its time, probably to advanced as it pushed the vacuum tube and cathode tube technology to its limits and its reliability and high maintenance meant only two ships Long Beach and Enterprise were ever fitted, power consumption was also its Achilles heal not till the advent of Aegis did the phased array come into age.......
Also of note she was also the last US ship built on a conventional cruiser hull, the subsiquent Virginia and Ticondaroga classes built on upscaled frigate or destroyer hulls. she was also the first US ship to be built with a primary missile armament if not at the request of president Kenedy woud have not had the 2 5.25 in guns as instead this space amid ships was intended for Polaris missiles, but the plan was later dropped.

Cost.

A lot of new surface ship and missile conversion programs died to bring the Polaris Subs into service. Note that even the original number was supposed to be "45 for Freedom", not the 41 that were built.

Edit: Just to put this into perspective, the US at the time was spending close to 10% of the GDP on defense, and we still couldn't afford everything the Navy was asking for.

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The Soviets were using 30% on its military. That was still nowhere as much money as the US budget.

In the late 1950s the US represented nearly a quarter of the worlds economic product, or about four times that of the Soviets.

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