Kyle Mizokami
Myers called the vessel the “Interdiction Assault Ship”. The ship could interdict enemy fleets on the high seas, particularly the Soviet Navy’s Kirov-class nuclear-powered battlecruisers that were then under construction at the Leningrad shipyards. In a wartime scenario, the U.S. Navy worried Kirov battlecruisers and their formidable missile armament could be used to target American aircraft carriers or devastate convoys of reinforcements headed to Europe.
In the early 1980s, the Reagan Administration was looking to fund high visibility defense programs. Reagan had been elected on a platform of rebuilding the armed services after the “hollowing out” of the early 1970s.One example was the reactivation of four World War II-era Iowa-class battleships, which started in 1982. Each of the four ships, Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin was refurbished, their sixteen and five-inch guns brought back online. Each battleship was also equipped with sixteen Harpoon anti-ship missiles, thirtytwo Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles and four Phalanx close-in weapon systems (CIWS) for defense.The four battlewagons were swiftly retired after the end of the Cold War because the manpower-intensive vessels each required a crew of nearly two thousand. That made them early victims of the post-Cold War drawdown as the defense budget was sharply reduced. Today, all four serve as memorials or floating museums. Retirement put an end to future upgrades, which might have included the boldest of them all.
Excerpted by Mod2
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/the-us-navy-wanted-merge-battleship-aircraft-carrier-fight-22797
