Then why were they bought up or given to navies all over the globe? I thought they were retired because there was a cost to upgrade missile systems and because at the time the navy was capped on the number of vessels.
Um, most of them weren’t picked up by foreign navies. The supermajority were scrapped.
Turkey got eight from the US Navy and ended up having to completely rebuild them including replacing the hull plating. They could have had more but after realizing they’d basically bought the equivalent of a car that needs a complete frame off restoration they decided they didn’t want any more.
Poland got two and they’ve found they needed rebuild as well. Another “thanks but no thanks” situation.
Bahrain got one and didn’t want any more. Same thing with Pakistan - got one, supposed to get six, didn’t want any more. Egypt got six and last I recall was looking at decommissioning them as unserviceable soon.
You may be seeing a pattern.
The rest of the 51 OHP FFGs were scrapped or are to be scrapped. As I posted a couple months ago:
Some of them actually had hulls worn so thin (remember, this class was basically unarmored) that at the time they were decommissioned you could dent the hull with your fist or punch through it with a screwdriver. The shortest service life of one was about 15 years and they weren’t designed to take tech upgrades either.
Some of the few in better condition were sold off to foreign navies. Most were so bad off that there was no point to keeping or selling them and they were just scrapped. Of the 51 that served in the US Navy, we only have 12 in the mothball fleet - when they looked at reactivating 7-8 of them last year, they discovered that they would basically have to rebuild the ships with new hull plating and massive internal retrofits, which would not make economic sense. We were going to give two from the mothball fleet to the Mexican Navy and two to the Thai Navy, but during the examination prior to the transfer, the ships were found to be beyond repair and all four have been sunk as SINKEX targets or are awaiting disposal.