Strongest ranged naval unit, available in the Information era.

The term “cruiser” was first used in the mid-17th Century AD to refer to a warship that could operate independently of a fleet – fast enough to run away from anything with bigger guns and big enough to blast apart anything with smaller ones. During the next couple centuries these were often commerce raiders, and occasionally used in fleet actions to screen the main body. So they didn’t figure prominently in naval affairs … until the advent of long-range missiles. While a number of navies invested in the design and construction of missile cruisers during the Cold War (even the mighty Peruvian navy had one), only the Americans and Soviets have kept theirs afloat. The first of the U.S. Navy’s Ticonderoga-class cruisers was launched in 1981, arguably the most powerful vessels still in service, armed with 122 launch tubes with a staggering variety of surface-to-surface, surface-to-air, and anti-submarine missiles, thus able to kill just about anything.