Thats before getting into the two points of...
A, The Spruance were always primarly ASW focus and had fuck all for AAW. Which as seen by the last decade.
IS NEEDED BY ALL PATROL TYPES After the Mason shot down 4 missiles. The Spraunce AA sucked and is doubtful, unless they did a DEEP MOD, that they could have stop from getting hit like the Burkes could. Hell that was the whole reason the Zumwalts were what they were, Spraunce Replacement that could do AAW half decently.
B) Does not fix today issues. The USS Hayler, was commission in 1983.
41 years ago.
With the Next youngest, thd Fletcher and her batchmates being 1980, 44 years ago.
So even Assuming they got zero time refits, and their MASSIVE corrosion issues* being a none issue...
By 2015 ALL of them be needing to retire in the near term cause they be Dock queens due to all the maintenance. Thats just a fact of over 30 year old ships. Unless you tear them down to the frames you better off buying new.
With the Shipyard issues we are having today not being fixed at all. And may even been worse due to Congress not wanting to buy new ship effect being strong cause we had so many. Resulting in even more issues now.
Basically keeping the Spraunces would not solve shit.
*The Spraunce, Kidds, and Ticos all have this issue from having steel hulls and aluminum superstructure. Basically cause a nasty case of Galivent Corrosion and was part of the reason why the Spruances got retired so fast, Basically gave them the maintenance cost of a 40 year old ship. The other two subtypes got improvements bases on the Spruances experiences but even then it was still enough of an issues that all following ships had same metal hulls and structures if not a fancy nonmetal deal like the furst 2 Zumwalts, tge third got a steel superstructure.
1) The need for substantive AAW for even "low risk"/"second-line" tasks seems to be a recent development, and arguably one that is geographically peculiar to the Red Sea and Persian Gulf since there, non-state actors are gaining access to sophisticated missile and drone weapons - and given the importance of those waterways probably can't be called a "second-line" task anyway.
Spruance type air defense was and probably remains perfectly adequate for quiet theatres like the Caribbean, where the most peculiar target set seems to be cartel semi- or full submersibles.
2) Please don't misconstrue the idea of keeping the
Spruances and older (again,
in the context of 90s) BFCs to mean keeping them to the present day i.e. 2024. Of course keeping them for 44+ years, given the long-term issues you mentioned, would be madness. But 2015 is almost as far away from 2024 as 2015 was from 2005, when the last
Spruances left.
Spruance herself reached 32yrs and the other ships built til 1977-1978 more or less reached 27 or so years, but the ships built from 1978-1983 were in many cases indeed prematurely decommissioned, with
Hayler herself being just 20yrs old upon retirement. Keeping some of these ships to a thirty or so year life span to 2015 would've been possible, and would have at least reduced the burdens on the hulls that did take up patrols IRL.
3) The problems with the shipyards, sustainment, manpower and wear and tear seem to be indicative of deeper issues, particularly of the politicians not understanding what it actually takes to sustain a strong naval force and naval presence long-term, and chasing shorter-term cuts and gains, all the while maintaining or even expanding the USN's operational commitments to the point that the US did and does waste BFCs on boondocks patrols as well as critical presence missions in Europe, Indo-Pacific and Red Sea/Persian Gulf, instead of cutting the quiet patrols out altogether or giving that job to the USCG.
Except for the DLGs, all the Cold War BFCs have been replaced virtually 1:1. So even if we were left with 50 Burkes and 31 Spruances, you’re still in the same situation we are today, too many current or former BFCs. The Flexible Transition plans fails to acknowledge that even though relative capability may decrease with time, operating costs remain the same, if not increase.
Now let’s say we still built 80-something Burkes, kept all 31 Spruances for 45 years. We have plenty of hulls to go around, but can we maintain that? Operating costs, manpower limitations, and shipyard capacity would be stretched to the limit.
Yes, costs will increase over time for an all BFC force, but that's just the price to be paid to maintain a strong global presence. If the needed hulls are too many for the budget/manpower/shipyard capacity, then the correct answer is to expand this capacity to ensure the hulls can be used to maintain commitments. Or you slash those commitments if the sticker prices are that concerning.
