The BHR is old as it is. I don't see it ever leaving port again after this.
pretty much the entire structure seems to be destroyed. Undoing that damage and then rebuilding what was destroyed will be effectively (if not greater than) the cost of just buying a new one.
Even if you could repair it, you don't want to. A large amount of the metal has been heated to very high and unknown temperatures. Typically, the concern is three things [0]: dimensional changes (i.e., you warped your entire ship), increased corrosion (hot metal rust faster), and permanent reduction in strength (like, >50% permanent reduction in strength). Now add in that the fire has almost certainly burned or boiled the paint off the external surfaces that are contacting sea water. That paint is the the skin of the ship, any of that underlying steel would need to be expected, cleaned, and likely repaired.
Age isn't the issue, the damage is. It would be like trying to renovate a burned out house. At some point it's not a renovation its a teardown.
EDIT: adding the obvious 'this is my opinion based on observations and I have no first hand data on this ship' qualifciation
[0] https://www.edtengineers.com/blog-post/fire-effects-steel
I assume that's some sort of contrived neutral nickname for the ship. It's the Bonny Dick to sailors and always will be.
Whether it gets repaired or not is more of a financial decision than anything else. Surely the hull has many decades left.
Steel really warps when you heat it up. Each compartment needs to be water tight. Just fixing the doorways alone would be a monumental task. Not to mention all the cabling and equipment that needs to be replaced. The amount of labor it will take to fix the steel will probably more than just laying down an entire new ship.
It'll be an interesting decision.
Unfortunately, the military is run by MBAs now. There's no excess funding available for emergencies. Every penny is allocated, and it's still not enough. I was on a smaller amphib class ship, we routinely ran out of budget for replacement parts. Every quarter was an exercise in prioritizing what was going to be fixed and what was going to not get fixed because we simply didn't have the budget for maintenance.
Another concern is the crew. You've now got 200 or so sailors with nothing to do. Are they supposed to just mill about and wait for the ship to be repaired for a couple years? The crew will need to be rotated to other assignments. Now, you have a ship with no crew, it's going to have to go basically through the entire commissioning process again, sea trials, etc.
It's all a logistical nightmare.
I don't know anything about shipbuilding, but isn't the US Navy full of much older ships that aren't considered fire hazards? Is there something special about this one? It had a halon system (that didn't work).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_ships_of_the_U...
Edit: it’s not even halfway through its projected lifecycle.
I did two years on Iwo, and BZ to the Bonny crew. They did all they could have with those fire trees with plastic nozzles until help arrived.