[e_engineer]

I'm curious... why have the shipbuilding costs gone up so much, so fast?

Lots of new electronics on these ships.

[King Prout]

possible correction(?): there is a lot of electronics on these ships, developed through the usual Pentagon pork process, which is new to the Navy and remarkably expensive, but which is NOT new to the civilian market and which costs far more and works less well than the civilian equivalent available through Radio Shack.

does that about cover it?