You have alot of valid points, The OHP's are part of a High-low end program.
with some air deffence. Well that is what they came up with.
But they are good ASW ships, and have a better air-deffence then the
Spru-can's. It all seems to much like a disposable navy. Yes I was pissed to see alot of those higher end ships get phased out. Yes the Tico's are great air defence ships, and the A. Burks are good at both AAW/ASW. Its good to see progress but, so few ship classes. When R.Reagon was in we were close to the 500 ship navy. See the point I was trying to make is when I was in the navy and they added new ships with the older ships. Now they mothballed the Spru-cans, and this new DDX is not fully into service yet! What do they have 1-2 ships? I know the Burks are capable ships for both AAW and ASW. I guess the days of big ships is over. We will not see to many more crusiers, and lots of destroyer classes. We will just see a few destroyers and frigates.
As for the russians I did not mean it to sound like they have nothing they do, but the are having a hard time with the ships up keep. They still have 1 active Kashin class DDG, 6 Sovremennny class DDG's (which I happen to love this ship) Nine active Udaloy-I and 1 Udaloy-II. They do have the Stergushchiy class FFG 1 active,2 building and 2 planned. Along with there Krivak's I/II/III's and a few older Grisha's II/III/V's. Seems to me they keep there ships in service for longer periods of time. As you said this can be a bad thing to, which I agree with you. For safty of crews. It all seems world navys are going smaller and classes of ships.