[BwanaNdege]

“dreadnought battleships and battle cruisers, ships over the twice the size of most modern surface combatants”

I don’t think so.

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Class and type: Indefatigable-class battlecruiser
Displacement:

18,500 long tons (18,800 t)
22,130 long tons (22,485 t) at deep load

Length: 590 ft (179.8 m)
Beam: 80 ft (24.4 m)
Draught: 29 ft 9 in (9.07 m) (deep load)

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Class and type: Arleigh Burke-class destroyer
Displacement:

Light: approx. 6,800 long tons (6,900 t)
Full: approx. 8,900 long tons (9,000 t)

Length: 505 ft (154 m)
Beam: 66 ft (20 m)
Draft: 31 ft (9.4 m)

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Type: San Antonio-class Amphibious transport dock
Displacement: 25,300 t (full)
Length: 684 ft (208 m)
Beam: 105 ft (32 m)
Draft: 23 ft (7.0 m), full load

[PAR35]

First, by no stretch of the imagination could a San Antonio LPD be called a surface combatant. It’s got a 30 mm (1.2 inch) main gun and some air defense missiles.

And second, as your numbers show, an Arleigh Burke destroyer (which probably ought to be classed as a light cruiser) has less than half the displacement of a dreadnaught - mainly due to lack of armor and heavy guns.

[Seruzawa]

The battle ship is almost 3x the displacement of the destroyer.

[Rockingham]

In fairness to the author, by "surface combatant," he means gunships, which in modern navies are characteristically destroyers or frigates. This implicit gunship criteria thus excludes today's aircraft carriers and amphibious transport and assault ships .

The impressively large size of the ships at Jutland can be further illustrated by limiting the comparison to cruisers. The modern US Navy's Ticonderoga class cruisers are less than ten thousand ton displacement and carry guided missiles as their main armament, with but a single vestigial five inch gun of limited combat value.

In contrast, the British armored cruisers at Jutland were substantially larger and carried guns of over nine inches. The battlecruisers were larger yet, with Britain's HMS Lion, for example, rated at over 30,000 ton displacement when loaded and carrying eight thirteen and a half inch guns as its main battery.

In sum, the warships at Jutland were impressively large when compared to modern naval gunships.

[Vermont Lt]

I know little about dreadnaughts but is the replacement difference what they would refer to? Clearly they are not carriers, but they were heavy.