The USS Ascendant-a rebirth of the Vengeance

Not originally, in TOS, no. Which fits in the Abrams era with humanity's imperfections shine through, including Kirk, Pike, Marcus and the like.

In TNG, humanity was more evolved, in DS9 "Earth is a paradise."

 

Good designs for the re-vamped Dreadnought-class.

My thoughts are that if the Federation/Starfleet had a "Black ops" division, it would still be "Section-31", and they would unless he still intended to use Khan's augments to be the "spear-tip" to Section 31design their vessels/equipment/tech/etc. as radically different as possible, so that they would have ZERO blow-back to the Federation/Starfleet. It made little since that Admiral Marcus, as the head of Section 31, to helm the USS Vengeance himself. Though, I would think that Khan and his fellow Augments would be used to be Section 31's field commanders, should hostilities have commenced between the Federation and everyone hostile to the Federation. In fact, why didn't Marcus recreate aspects of the original Augment Program to create more Augments? You know, have everyone in Section 31 become "Super Soldiers"? I mean, he was able to get Khan to become "John Harrison" via gene therapy. Oh, well...

 

My personal belief was that was to be his next step. The ship was step one, allowing them to go toe to toe with any Klingon vessel. The next step is to find ways to get a soldier who is physically capable of besting Klingons no matter what.

Marcus was largely wanting to see the beginning of his war, since he figured the Enterprise would be in the middle of being destroyed.