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They had power.

I don't doubt that modern electrified ships are more vulnerable to major damage, still below the truly ship threatening level. But this is mostly a consequence of poor design and inattention to the issue.

We know how to make networks redundant and therefore survivable. The internet was designed to withstand a nuclear war. If similar principles were applied to shipboard integrated systems, keeping critical functions up despite loss of subcomponents is perfectly feasible. We do the same thing with error correcting codes in practical computing - a portion of capacity dedicated to checks is enough to damp occasional failures instead of amplifying them, as the number of interrelated components rises.

What complexity researchers call "the science of networks" is all that would be needed, along with a willingness to bring in such considerations at the design phase. There will still be levels of damage at which key functions are lost. But there is no generic necessity for lots of complicated systems intertwinned with each other, to be "touchier" rather than more robust.

People haven't seriously done this yet for shipboard integrated systems. But it is perfectly doable, if the priority given to damage control at the design stage is upped somewhat.

I agree - it will NOT be done (though the few new destroyers are better than all previous classes) those few do NOT make up for the systemic poor redundancy and poor response of support systems under battle damage.

Face it.

The USN has NOT been under battle conditions (air and Seal being the two exceptions!) since WWII.

Korea? We controlled the sea, sea approaches, and the air. No ship attacked, no ship damage of any note. No mine warfare - except Inchon defenses. No aggressive mining against us. Against our ports.

Vietnam? We controlled the sea, sea approaches, and the air. No convoys needed, no merchant or supply shipping attacked. No warship attacked, no ship damage of any note other than frag damage. Minor mine warfare against ships afloat in the rivers, but no at-sea attacks. (Gulf of Tonkin incident noted.)

Med (mid-50's till now) and Lebanon and Libya? Israeli Wars We controlled the sea, sea approaches, harbors and the air. No warship attacked, no ship damage of any note. No merchant shipping, convoys, or resupply ships attacked. No aggressive mining of sea approaches or homeports. Liberty attacked and badly damaged, but she was an unarmed WWII Liberty ship. Can't be compared to a post-WWII destroyer or cruiser.

MidEast (Iran-Iraq War, Gulf War I, No-Fly-Zone war, Gulf War II, ? No ship-ship, air-ship combat. When we did attack, we attacked successfully and strongly, BUT these attacks do NOT show the effect of battle damage against our ships. They only confirm the effectiveness of our weapons when WE control the battle planning, battle air zones, and type of fight. What DID occur in the MidEast? Isolated single ship actions that consistently (every time!) took out the destroyer-sized US warship: from dud missiles, command-detontated mines, armed missiles, and explosive-laden boats. Every attack was successfl and DID disable the ship against a second weapon. But these were single ships destroyed (at will) at isolated times. Follow-on attacks did NOT occur. So the ship survived, and instead of being used to demonstrate the problem, each "survival" of an attack and "prevention of sinking" earned praise for the captain, but NOT condemnation of the fundamental design.

The Navy hasn't learned yet. The Brit's almost lost 1/3 their fleet in a just few weeks stationed near land (but many hundreds miles from the Argentinian air bases).