I've been thinking and dreaming of something like this, not just here but for Axis & Allies War at Sea, and even Wizkids Pirates, for over a decade. (My dream was to get scans of period nautical charts and use them to build a complete global map.)

My personal thought was something like how Star Wars: Empire At War did things, where you have a Strategic Map for assembling forces and deploying them and then when the other side's forces and yours meet in a sector it zooms in to a Tactical Battle Map... except I was thinking Strategic map digital, Tactical hard on tabletop. :)