Navwar 1/3000 Soviet and US Modern naval Spruance, Los Angeles, Ohio

A nice package of figures arrived from Navwar last week - A battle-pack  for  modern US naval forces and a selection I made of Soviet ships to augment those I already have. I get the feeling that with the demise of Devian figures there's no-one currently making up to date naval stuff in 1/3000th. After I had cleaned up and based the castings I decided to start with the US subs - Ohio and Los Angeles classes. Next in line were the Spruance class ships, so after a good search  for pics on the web I had a go at them.

Work desk overflowing with  ships

After achieving something which I was happy with (although I can see much room for improvement) I set off to find out what had happened to them since the Gulf War only to discover that before 2000 they had all been retired! I was slightly deflated to realise that not only are the current  figure manufacturers seriously lagging and that their fleets are in serious need of modernisation but that if I want up-to date fleets, unless I'm prepared to pay the comparatively high cost that 3D printers are asking for their models, I might need to do some scratch building. I guess I can still simulate conflicts up until and including the nineties, but I need to rethink if I want to explore the hypotheticals.

My now redundant Spruance Class

 I do understand that costs of new models have to be offset by sales. Perhaps there's not enough interest in this scale and genre to justify the cost of new masters and moulds. I also  understand only too well how fast the years pass and  the nineties may be recent history to many. But these ships were retired 20 years ago. Time the battle packs were updated I think and if I can make a castable master I'd be happy to let someone cast them up for sale.'If you want something done - do it yourself' comes to mind.

I think at least the Los Angeles are still in service

I suspect the Ohio Class will be around for a while yet