USN's gold-plated fleet

For the FY2014 U.S. DOD budget the Navy is spending $9.811B on non-aircraft carrier related combat ships.

What do we get?
1 Burke-class Destroyer
4 Littoral Combat Ships
2 Virginia-class subs (outstanding platform but way over its original procurement price goals.

Now let us look at the value of this purchase by the generous tax payer. Since the Littoral Combat Ship is as much a combat ship as a BB-gun is a modern firearm we can strike them from the value list...yet that money is still spent. So the average unit price of 3 combat ships (1 DDG and 2 SSNs) is $3.27B each.

For 3 ships.

And the Navy has the brass to go to Congress and say they are short of funds.