I don't think it's possible to find the information on the pricing of just the ships' hull/superstructure. But from one paper I found the hull of a commercial

I don't think it's possible to find the information on the pricing of just the ships' hull/superstructure. But from one paper I found the hull of a commercial ship is a pretty considerable expense (about a third of the total cost).[1] I can only imagine that the cost of a USN ship's hull is more expensive. Then there's this report from Rand: "Equipment costs range from 35 to 57 percent of construction costs for the ship types we analyzed, while material costs range from 11 to 17 percent."[2]. I don't know how much of that exactly is hull/superstructure, but I think we can assume that it's a considerable portion. Also, building a ship takes a ton of time. So the USN may think it's better to return this ship to the fleet than build a new one. That ties into another reason that maybe factors in here. It might be worthwhile in the sense that during war the USN will probably not have the time to build a new ship to fight. So giving its technicians experience in bringing a ship back into service might be helpful. [1] http://www.mar.ist.utl.pt/jgordo/Artigos%20Oficiais/091%202018.pdf http://www.mar.ist.utl.pt/jgordo/Artigos%20Oficiais/091%2020... [2] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2006/RAND_MG484.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2006/R...