I have to soften my stance slightly as I forgot (wasn't there yet) that blueprints also can be acquired in GW store which is like a free meal with 3*4 print collections per day for older players (plus whatever they saved in GW tokens). Not as free for me really as I have to decide between farming toons for AAT raid or ships. But still, this can speed it up to less than half the time if you really want the ships.
It's only a slight softening though as something like 5 months to a 7* arena squad really still isn't competitive.