Italian capital ships and the danger of planning for the wrong war

Should Italy have scrapped its older battleships rather than retain them while newer designs were built?

The older ships were still preferable to having nothing in the war that actually came, because an idealized later fleet would have faced much stronger opponents.

Ships useful in the war that actually occurred could matter more than a theoretically better force that arrived too late. Scrapping the older Italian battleships would have left the Regia Marina without those hulls while the Littorio class and projected successors advanced at a limited pace. A force designed for Mussolini's hoped-for 1945 war would also have faced a fully rearmed Royal Navy and stronger French and German carrier programmes. Procurement timing and the enemy's parallel growth are therefore essential parts of the fleet comparison.