In a surprise move, the United States Navy has allowed two iconic battleships, Iowa (BB-61) and Wisconsin (BB-64), to re-enter the Naval Vessel Register, much to the excitement and volubility of advocacy groups representing these great dreadnoughts. The decision, made on 30 December 1997, has both intrigued and put the military community under scrutiny, since the vessels concerned are already obsolete, not to mention their reactivation cost, which is said to be staggering, and of very doubtful relevance to modern naval warfare.
The campaign for battleships paid off through press coverage and a deluge of persuasive letters to Congress in a 17 to 3 vote by the Senate Armed Services Committee on 29 June 1995 that the ship’s disposition was to remain in mothballs. Proponents claimed the Iowa-class battleships represent “the Navy’s only remaining potential source of around-the-clock accurate, high-volume, heavy fire support,” the Senate report stated. The Navy, though, did not reinstate them until a policy memo dated 21 January 1998, signed by Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Jay Johnson, and then by Secretary of the Navy John H. Dalton on 12 February 1998.
But the decision to bring back the battleships has already served to raise eyebrows among military experts who doubt the utility of the battleships in the very different nature of naval warfare today. Indeed, with over-the-horizon amphibious assaults using MV-22 Ospreys, helicopters, and air-cushioned landing crafts, the Iowa class, which boasts a maximum range of 27 miles, would seem a little short in the capability needed with their 16-inch guns.
Modern equivalents to the antiquated armament of the battleships include the destroyer Winston Churchill, DDG-81, armed with 5-inch/62-caliber guns with a range of 63 nautical miles, and the vertical gun for advanced ships, VEGAS, which becomes operational by 2008 with a range of around 100 nautical miles. As an example, the flexibility and range of the Army Tactical Missile System and Tomahawk variants deployable by cruisers and destroyers after 2000 are in no comparison with the guns of the battleships.
Another major issue in the context of these two battleships is that of the financial aspect of reactivation. The cost for reactivation during the four-ship fleet build-up was around $1.66 billion. The anticipated cost for Recovery of Only Two Ships: The anticipated cost of recovering two ships is over 1 billion dollars; this cost eclipses the price tag of an Aegis destroyer with 90 missiles. Added to that are the logistical problems involved in refitting battleships with modern, compatible equipment and the manning of each with a 1,600-strong crew, plus six months of at-sea training before the ships could become combat-ready. This possibly ballooned the time frame up to 18 months from order to operational status.
The future will be interesting to see how Iowa and Wisconsin fall into the debate within the military community on the pros and cons of bringing back the battleships into active duty. Their historical importance and the passion of their advocates will not be denied, but the practical considerations for bringing them back into service surely will.