I agree with your emphasis on a more rational deployment of ships necessary for the tasks we’re going to need them for.
The Navy probably needs a top to bottom reassessment.
I also think that it’s vitally important that we give consideration to a situation where our carriers have suffered a devastating attack, and what your solid fall back position would be.
It’s hard to translate any sort of assessment into hulls because the time from concept to getting an actual hull into service is so hideously long. And, thanks to than length subjected to all sorts of requirements changes.
Look at the development timeline for the Zumwalts. Which will be very expensive white elephants. We’re putting upgraded (read: expensive) Burkes back into production. The previous class of surface warship to the Burkes (Ticonderogas) was an evolutionary hybrid of an existing hull (Spruance) and new weapons system (Aegis).
In order to cut development time on the LCS, existing commercial hulls were used as a starting point. To keep costs low they were designed for swappable mission modules. Neither of which worked out too well and has resulted in ships with hull issues, systems issues and a decided lack of effectiveness for every mission they were designed for.