Do you think developing new ships, instead of fixing old ones, is helping or hurting the Navy?

I concur with SGT David A. 'Cowboy' Groth, LTJG (Join to see); it is a complicated question that is probably ship and mission specific. As long as the "old" ship can be economically and efficiently refurbished and be successfully deployed to accomplish it's mission then it's probably better to refurbish it than design and build a new hull and superstructure. Often the problem is working space. So many conduits and pipes fitted into the small spaces it becomes difficult to access and reroute things.

It's also more fun for politicians and Admirals to build new ships and then put a new name on it.

There is a law of diminishing returns on ships. Bringing back the Perry class FFG's, in my mind, is a non starter. You would need too much money to get them to integrate with the rest of the fleet, and to put a "modern" weapons system onboard. On the other hand, modernizing the DDG's, while the early models are getting long in the tooth, are still capable platforms. My real concern with ship building, is this idea that we can't be a great superpower if we can't make our own ships. Look at the LCS program. There were imminently more capable and PROVEN ship designs that we could have bought and made our own. Instead we decided to build 2 different hulls in 2 different shipyards, neither one of which works as designed. I could go off on my soapbox here, so I will stop before I write the next great novel!!!

Tough question there sir, it depends on what the cost of refurbishing and updating would be compared to new built.