Nuclear Cruiser

The nuclear-powered cruiser was the logical conclusion of Cold War naval thinking: a heavy surface combatant that needed no refueling for the entire operational life of its reactor — potentially decades — and could sustain full speed across any ocean indefinitely. The USS Long Beach, commissioned in 1961, was the first nuclear surface warship; the Soviet Kirov-class battle cruisers of the 1980s displaced twenty-four thousand tons and carried over five hundred missiles and rockets for anti-ship, anti-submarine, and land-attack missions. A nuclear cruiser's strike range was limited only by missile reach and sensor horizon, not by fuel. Its reactor gave it silent high-speed endurance that no conventional ship could match on a sustained basis. In the game the atomic cruiser combines virtually unlimited range with powerful missile armament that engages surface, submarine, and coastal targets alike, the supreme naval unit of the Atomic Age, but enormously expensive and vulnerable to saturation missile strikes.