Bring Back the BBs, ’90s Edition

At the National Interest, I take a look at how the battleships were supposed to stick around longer…

No one expected the battleships to leave so quickly.

The U.S. Navy reactivated the four battleships of the Iowa class in the mid-1980s, equipping them with sea- and land-attack missiles, as well as modern electronics and similar facilities. The drive to reactivate the battleships came from a strategic interest in increasing the size of the Navy, as well as concern over the construction of the Soviet Kirov-class nuclear battlecruisers.

But in 1992, less than ten years after New Jersey had returned to service, the Navy decommissioned USS Missouri, last of the four Iowas. The second life of the class lasted, collectively, less than twenty-five years. The retirement of the battleships created a hole in U.S. seapower that the Navy struggled to fill in the 1990s, and still has not adequately addressed.