Flight III Arleigh Burke destroyer (DDG)
Length 509.5 ft, Beam,66 ft, displacement 9700 tons
Virginia class cruiser (CGN)
Length 585ft, Beam 63ft, displacement 9472 tons
Virginia class submarine (SSN)
Length 377 ft, beam 34ft, displacement 7800 tons
1) And the Burkes are destroyers??? LOL!
2) The Virginia class CGN were built in the 1980s.
3) I get that there are a whole lot of design differences between the two surface ship classes, but they’re of comparable size. A nuclear powered 10,000ish ton surface warship is possible. Whether it’s desirable is a separate question.
4) Virginia class subs were much smaller than Virginia class cruisers.
The problem is that with the Burkes, we’ve continued to cram more and more and more stuff into their hulls. While there has obviously been size creep in classes (the Zumwalts are physically longer, wider and taller than some battleships that fought in WW2), that still doesn’t mean that there’s room to stick a reactor and power generation system into an existing destroyer class.
I don’t disagree that you can make a 10,000 ton nuclear surface combatant. I am just saying that it would have to either be a completely new design or a massive redesign of the Burke - the latter of which would be rather pointless as the Burke design is getting very long in the tooth and is absolutely inferior to newer designs like the British Type 45s (post engine/cooling fixes).