In ~2009 I worked with the engineering manager for this class of ship. Can confirm it was chaotic. Not in the sense that we didn't know what we were doing, but in the sense that every other week some crazy issue would come up.
At one point I had to inventory every... single... weld... on the ship because we questioned their quality.
At another time (2007), a diesel engine en route to the ship fell off a truck and crushed a car, barely missing a woman who was sleeping in the back. Nothing to do with the ship's quality, but imagine getting that news while already putting out so many fires.
On the bright side, I got to be onboard one of these ships during a multi-day sea trial, which was a lot of fun.
With all that said... It is completely unhelpful to compare the cost of a military ship to a commercial ship. The commercial ships are very simple and cookie-cutter[1], unlike military ships that are almost always new designs and involve complex, integrated systems such as communication, defense, hospitals, refueling, etc, etc.
[1] I wrote about this just last week: https://www.gkogan.co/blog/simple-systems/
At one point I had to inventory every... single... weld... on the ship because we questioned their quality.
At another time (2007), a diesel engine en route to the ship fell off a truck and crushed a car, barely missing a woman who was sleeping in the back. Nothing to do with the ship's quality, but imagine getting that news while already putting out so many fires.
On the bright side, I got to be onboard one of these ships during a multi-day sea trial, which was a lot of fun.
With all that said... It is completely unhelpful to compare the cost of a military ship to a commercial ship. The commercial ships are very simple and cookie-cutter[1], unlike military ships that are almost always new designs and involve complex, integrated systems such as communication, defense, hospitals, refueling, etc, etc.
[1] I wrote about this just last week: https://www.gkogan.co/blog/simple-systems/