Japanese destroyers and the cost of equipping a large fleet

The Japanese destroyer comparison asks what the US Navy would put into an Arleigh Burke-derived ship if it needed only four ships instead of nearly a hundred. Features that look affordable for a small run become expensive when repeated across a large fleet. At some point, the American preference would be to buy another ship instead of adding more equipment to each hull. Japan's smaller production runs are presented as allowing more ambitious equipment choices per ship. This explains the suggested appeal of Japanese ships to a wealthy regional buyer in the Pahlavi Iran counterfactual.