For a fighting ship that the whole crew relies on yes, but it has
noting to do with steel Bob, BB, Red Clod. I has more to do with weapon
systems and the changing mission of the USN.

Its called Modernization:

A Matter of Resources

In spring 2003, the Navy's force of surface combatants comprised 17
Spruance-class destroyers, 27 Ticonderoga-class cruisers, 33 Oliver
Hazard Perry-class frigates, and 38 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.

With the demise of the Soviet fleet, Navy leaders have shifted their
attention to influencing events on land and operating in crowded
coastal regions. The Navy expects the next generation of ships to
reduce the risks that U.S. naval forces might face in that operating
environment (such as mines, quiet diesel-electric submarines, and
small, fast attack boats armed with antiship missiles) and to increase
the ability of those forces to attack targets on land.

The Navy's transformation plan would retire all Spruance-class
destroyers and the five oldest Ticonderoga-class cruisers by late
2006-well before the end of their expected service lives. It would also
upgrade the combat systems and reliability of the remaining
Ticonderogas and Perry-class frigates. The Navy's main focus, however,
is on buying 16 new, large multimission DD(X) destroyers, starting in
2005; 56 small, "focused mission" littoral combat ships (LCSs), also
starting in 2005; and an undetermined number of CG(X)s, the future
cruiser replacement, beginning around 2014. The envisioned inventory of
160 surface combatants would eventually consist of 88 cruisers and
destroyers capable of providing long-range air defense, as well as the
DD(X)s and LCSs.

This 160-ship plan would require greater resources than the surface
combatant force has received in recent years or would receive under the
president's budget request for fiscal year 2004. Under that plan, the
Navy would spend $3.2 billion in 2004-or about 28 percent of its
shipbuilding budget-to buy surface combatants. To implement the
160-ship plan, the Navy would need to spend an average of $5.9 billion
a year (in 2003 dollars) on procurement between 2003 and 2025, and that
amount does not include annual operating costs for surface combatants.

At the same time, other components of the Navy will also need greater
resources. Meeting the Navy's expansion goal of 375 ships would require
an average budget for ship construction of almost $20 billion in 2003
dollars a year between 2011 and 2020-or about $4 billion more than the
average required for the period from 2003 to 2010 and more than twice
what the Navy spent between 1990 and 2002. (The shortfall in the
ship-building budget since 1990 relative to the goal of building a
375-ship Navy is about $67 billion.)

In short, the Navy is proposing a major expansion of the surface
combatant force that will require considerable resources at the same
time that other ship programs will need more funding if current force
levels are to be maintained.

Joe