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I agree about the Spruance class. I don't have a high opinion of the sonar on the FFGs and how often does anyone string the tail? The DDG and CG platform have to tie up space in their VLS with Tomahawks which with no credible air threat maybe fine, but on a Spruance the 61 cells were ready to go 60 T-LAMs and 1 T-ASM. I could understand decomming the non VLS ships, but I question the wisdom of not only decommissioning the Spruance class, but they have sunk 15 or 16 already and scrapped one, (my old ship the Hewitt). The last time I checked 3 were going to be sold, loaned, given, transferred to Turkey and Pakistan, and there were 7 or 8 depending on where you look that were going to remain mothballed, with a couple of those pending for museum donations, one more to be sold for scrap and at least one more waiting to be sunk. The bottom line is, this, the Spruance class is gone from the active fleet, 19 have been or will be sunk or cut up, 3 are going to other navies, and 2 are being used for testing and work on the DDX that's 24 of of 31 that are not available for anything, parts to activate another or a return to active duty, or anything. I wouldn't be surprised it they don't decide to send a couple more to the bottom. Sad times for DD sailors.

I'm not a tin-can sailor (I was a submarine sailor, actually), but I did have the priviledge of spending a couple of weeks aboard Hayler (DD-998) with DESRON 32. What a great ship with a great crew.

I bring that up because the flagship of the squadron was at the time USS Ramage (DDG-61)(ironically named after a submarine skipper). The DESRON couldn't embark on Ramage, nor could she support mixed-gender crews, because...

...there wasn't enough room onboard. There wasn't enough room for a helo hangar either, but that was corrected later at the expense of what, I don't know.