at least 70% as many capital ships as the US Navy. This ratio, Satō theorized, would enable the Imperial Japanese Navy to defeat the US Navy in one major battle in Japanese waters in any eventual conflict. Accordingly, the 1907 Imperial Defence Policy called for the construction of a battle fleet of eight modern battleships, each, and eight modern armoured cruisers, each. This was the genesis of the Eight-Eight Fleet Program, the development of a cohesive battle line of sixteen capital ships. The launch of in 1906 by the Royal Navy raised the stakes, and complicated Japan's plans. Displacing and armed with ten guns, Dreadnought rendered all existing battleships obsolete by comparison. The launch of the battlecruiser the following year was a further setback for Japan's quest for parity. When the two new s and two armoured cruisers, launched by 1911, were outclassed by their British counterparts, the Eight-Eight Fleet Program was restarted. The first battleships built for the renewed Eight-Eight Fleet Program were the two dreadnoughts of the , ordered in 1907 and laid down in 1908. In 1910, the Navy put forward a request to the Diet (parliament) to secure funding for the entirety of the program at once. Because of economic constraints, only four battlecruisers and a single battleship of the Fusō class were ultimately approved by the Diet. Three more Fusō-class ships (, , and ) were approved and all three were ordered in April 1913. While Yamashiro was laid down later that year, the IJN lacked the funding to proceed with the construction of Ise and Hyūga until the Diet authorized additional funding for the ships in July 1914. Design and description The progress of Fusōs construction, while the IJN waited for the funding to be released and foreign developments, caused the IJN to reassess the Fusō-class design. The distribution of the midships gun turrets was the most obvious flaw as they complicated the protection of the midships magazine and exposed more of the ship to the blast effects of the guns when they fired. Another issue was that Japanese sailors had problems maintaining a high rate of fire with the shells used in the manually loaded secondary guns used in the Fusō class and earlier designs. To resolve this issue, the IJN designed a smaller gun that offset its lighter shell weight with a higher rate of fire. It also decided that the barbette