I was a contractor working on Navy communications systems when the LCS and DD21 (Zumwalt class) programs where in the requirements, design and build phases.
There were questions back then about trying to do too much with these platforms. The LCS in particular was designed like a Swiss army knife with all the attachments you rarely used making it harder to do the things you needed more often. Bulky Swiss army knives are shitty to use as a knife.
I get the need to retire the older ships but some of the revolutionary work cost more and breaks more than the evolutionary designs. It just seems like saving the revolutionary work for things like propulsion, communications, radars, missiles, and other attack/defense systems has a higher success rate and ROI than the hull and platform changes.
Is there a reason why the only nuke powered surface ships we have are CVNs? I know at one time it was because of port restrictions in Japan but is that still an issue? Putting a proven submarine power plant in a new Cruiser or Destroyer platform seems interesting and could be steam or electrically driven.
Apparently we have a lack of platforms for long range surface to surface missiles and rely heavily on aircraft based anti-ship missiles while our tier 1 adversaries seem to be going more long range surface to surface anti-ship missiles to negate our aircraft carrier superiority.
The Navy needs to focus on the endurance range, anti ship, and anti-sub missions based on what I understand China is doing.