Why not, that’s what it is isn’t it? Besides, it’s a more allround unit than the ASW oriented Spruance and the AAW oriented Ticonderoga (which is called a CG anyway). THe assignment didn’t state that only the lated models of ships could be included. Kidd is a KA destroyer in my book.

Yes, but the Kidd class is today quite old.

I haven’t. I have taken the classification given by the parent navy at face value

OK. Today’s classifications are really problematic. Not only the obviously ridicules ones as the Japanese DDH of the Hyuga class, but most CG, DD, DDG, FF, FFG classifications.

I am thinking about how future generations will classify the warships of the last decades. They will have to invent something more useful than “corvette”, “frigate”, “destroyer” and “cruiser”.

In the 1940s there were only some cases, where the classification in destroyer and cruiser were difficult, e.g. the Dutch Tromp class, the French Le Fantasque class, the Italian Capitano Romani class – but today?!

In my opinion the development of the cruising ship came into a blind alley with the big cruisers of the 1940s. They new cruising ships were developed from the smaller and cheaper destroyers – but where classified as cruisers, destroyers or frigates. The lower end of today’s cruising ships are frigates with similar tasks as the gunboats of the 19th century, e.g. the the French Floréal class. The biggest examples are the ships of the Atago and KDX III class – again slightly smaller than the biggest ships some decades before (e.g. the Slava class).

Two additional developments also contributes to the development of today’s crusing ships and somehow fused into the same development:
a) the slow escort vessels designed to protect convoys and hunt submarines (these ships were called frigates, corvettes, sloops and DE in World War 2)
b) somehow also the FAC, which grew to a size to be useful for blue water operations and fused to the lower end of today’s cruising ships.