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I'm a fraud?

The model you are looking at is a 1/700 scale Dragon Spruance kit. (Notice the new US dollar coin in the picture.) I spent 30 hours on the model. I worked rather hard to remove any sign of seams. Lots of putty and sanding sticks. I custom mixed the paint out of Gunze-Sanyo FS36260 and FS36375 (Neutral Gray and Light Ghost Gray) for the vertical surfaces, and dark gray FS36118 to simulate non-skid surfaces. The flight deck has 2 parts fs36081 and 7 parts fs36118 to make it slightly darker.

I am happy that my model was mistaken for a professionally manufactured metal model. I caught your string below, no foul.

In 1981 there was a small effort to revive the gun, it was quashed by the Battleship mafia.

It would have been a good suplement to the Iowas, and probably would have worked better.

Not every Spruance was fitted with VLS. Six Spruances fitted with the 203mm gun would have been very useful. A smaller 16 cell strike length VLS still could have been fitted. Ship self defense sized Mk41 VLS could be fitted in place of the Mk29 launcher.

The rest of the class would have paid off by now but, the six would have probably have been SLEPed to maintain a fire support capability or be in Catagory A reserve (NRF).

There was enough room for a 32 cell launcher IIRC.
I often wondered why the aft cells were not fitted in the Spruances. There was a problem with hull depth and possibly shaft lines aft but this only applied to tomahawk which was rather belatedly added to the VLS repertoire. The hull had depth for a MK26 launcher, which indicates that Standard and possibly ASROC missiles could be accommodated. With 20x20 hindsight 8" gun a 5" gun 32 tomahawks and ~256 ESSM quadpacked would be a neat asset to have.

The Spruance class had many upgrades while in service, equipment added encroached into the space reserved for the Mk26 launcher, and the VLS was extended in depth to accommodate the Tomahawk and its booster. The result is that the Spruances could not accommodate the strike length VLS in the stern location. Only the "ship self defense" version could be fit aft. The most practical refit would be 16 strike length VLS cells forward and 16 ship self-defense aft. The aft cells would be fitted for VL NATO Sea Sparrow while the fore cells would hold a mix of Tomahawk and VL ASROC. It will be a long time until the USN has enough quad packs of ESSM to meet its requirements for current Aegis ships. I do not believe a Spruance would need more than 16 ESSM for a deployment.