Have studied the main gun turret manual. Very old fashioned system, DC motors with series resistors in the armature circuit for speed control, all right out of the 1920's, but of fine materials and workmanship. Still practical. Useful.
The United States Marine Corps wants them. Good enough for me.
But aren't they going to have to spend more to convert to the new DDX ships?
It seems to me as Novak has laid out that it would be more cost effective to the Navy to bring back the two Battle Wagons with the proper upgrades.
-The simple reason is COST. Not only would they need to be refitted, we no longer have crews to run them.-
I was involved with the re-commissioning of the BB's in the early 70's. Same arguments then by the Marines about shore bombardment. What most fail to see is the cost of manning a BB and then you get into the cost of re-arming them. Then you have the problem of limited range, 20 miles max with conventional ammo and longer with unconventional, along with less accuracy compared to A/C dropped munitions (the reverse of what we had in WWII when the BBs were more accurate).
Finally, they need to get well within shore launched missiles which may not sink them but can blind them.
All in all, you get little bang for your buck.
My dad served as the gunnery officer for the port 5 inch battery on the Iowa during the Korean war. He was a young LT then. He passed on in Dec 2003. I suspect you are correct with respect to training crews to use the old analog fire control computers. There are few living that could even train a new generation to use them.