I don't know if this is a bug or if this is supposed to work as it does but I would think it is a defect.
If you pick a ship in the shipyard then click the Upgrade button all of the components are stripped from the ship when it brings it up on the screen. This doesn't seem right to me. I would like to have the ship displayed with all of it's current weapons, modules, engines, defenses, etc so that I can upgrade the parts that I want to upgrade and leave the rest as they are.
Is this correct behavior, do I need to recreate my ships every time I want to make them a little faster or change the type of armor?