JulioCompactus
Member
As I said at the start upgrading second hand ships is a fraught path but the USN is doing it for 11 hulls and has a very good mature package for doing so after a lot of lessons learned on the early ships. Unfortunately as Volkodav said all the ideal solutions are long term and the question people keep rightly asking is how long do we actually have?The USN has been trying to retire the for years, of their current ones a few are early analog systems that struggle today to see some missile threats not counting fact they are costly to operate. So they are an aging ship falling apart many of them not so advanced and expensive to operate. Quite literally to get anything out of them you would need a new hull, machinery, replace 80% of the systems and spend more time and money trying to save a few items which probably won't turn out any cheaper then going new.
Nothing we do today will get us any ships in a short time frame that can hold their own on the line. The best we can do is aim to speed up our efforts in bringing our current plans forward as much as safely possible to do so.
Between China and Russia's actions this year no nation will be selling off their kit so even if their was once a possibility of a solid purchase at low cost requiring minimal work that has well and truly passed in the last two weeks.
Given the Hunter design is still along way from even commencing build of ship 1, an additional AWD is gone as an option and up arming the OPV adds little combat power ex USN hulls is the only 'short' term option. A CG-47 would be the only option to get a meaningful number of Tomahawks to sea as well. We have dug ourselves a hole that has no easy way out.