I've heard the same thing. At the least it might prove to be much more expensive than the $80+ million repair figure quoted in the official incident report. What you see in the 'current condition' photo is a steel dome (as opposed to the orginal fiberglass/rubber sonar dome) just to get her in good enough shape to make a surface transit back to (probably) Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
It's my belief that only there will a final determation be made as to her fate. When you consider that the entire interior and all major equipment is shock-mounted for sound isolation to the hull, and that the force of the collision likely damaged all those mounts... well, imaginge cost of essentially dismantling and reassembling the entire boat. All of which would simply get you back to 25 year old technology.
If I were CNO, I know how I'd make the call. But (thankfully) I'm just an old ex-E6 30+ years out of the service.
Thanks for your reply. I agree with you and thought the same thing that the steel dome might be a temp fix to get it back to the states. I'm almost positive I read that the sub was a complete loss but I'm not going to go back through the five or six threads on this topic.
I'm an old E-6 Army puke. REFRAD ACTDUTRA in '71 but had several years in 3 different state NG units. I'd do it all again.