The Navy’s Best Decision Ever: $100,000,000 for an Iowa-Class Battleship

Key Points and Summary – The Iowa-class battleships cost roughly $100 million apiece to build in the 1940s—an eye-popping sum then, a bargain in hindsight.

-No other big-gun ships were pulled from retirement multiple times and modernized to fight in entirely different eras: World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the late Cold War, and Desert Storm.

Iowa-Class 5-Inch Guns. Image by Harry J. Kazianis/National Security Journal.

-Their unusual mix—30-knot speed, nine 16-inch guns, tough hulls, and room for new technology—let the Navy graft cruise missiles and modern defenses onto a World War II hull at relatively modest cost.

-Measured as cost-per-effect and cost-per-year of relevance, the Iowas may be the best dollar-for-dollar warships the United States ever built.

Iowa-Class Battleships: The Price Tag That Grew Smaller Over Time

The Iowa-class were authorized in a national emergency and built at Depression-honed shipyards working at a wartime sprint.

On paper, each ship cost about $100 million in 1940s dollars. That number can’t be taken straight across to today—the value of money has changed, and so has naval warfare—but it’s a useful starting line for an argument about value. Ask two questions: How much useful combat power did that investment buy up front?

Iowa-Class Battleship National Security Journal Visit from August 2025. Image Credit: Harry J. Kazianis.

And how much more power, over how many decades, could the Navy extract without starting from scratch?

By those tests, the Iowas did something extraordinary. They delivered a remarkable bundle of performance on Day One—speed, reach, and heavy guns—and then, repeatedly, they let the Navy turn a World War II battleship into a modern missile ship without rebuilding the hull.

You cannot separate the price from the platform’s inherent “margins”: space, power, cooling, and stability to add things future designers hadn’t imagined. The Iowas had those margins in abundance, which is why their original cost kept paying dividends.

What $100 Million Bought in 1944

Start with what the Navy actually got for that money. Each Iowa combined:

Sustained dash speed above 30 knots. That made the Pacific Ocean smaller and allowed the ships to escort fast carrier task forces rather than lag behind them.

Endurance and seakeeping. They could stay on station and fight in ugly water, which matters more than statistics.

Nine 16-inch/50-caliber guns. Those delivered long-range, high-volume naval gunfire support—steel on target that aircraft could not always provide on time or in bad weather.

A rugged, compartmentalized hull and redundant engineering. Survivability isn’t a slogan; it’s the difference between finishing today’s mission and showing up for tomorrow’s.

That package solved real problems in World War II—screening aircraft carriers, killing shore defenses ahead of amphibious landings, and deterring enemy surface raiders. It also created a platform with the volume and stability to carry future weapons the original architects didn’t know existed.

Long View of USS Iowa Guns. Image Credit: National Security Journal.

Cost-Per-Effect in World War II

It is easy to forget how expensive airpower can be when you need sustained effects day after day. Aircraft launch in cycles; weather and darkness intrude; tanker support and deck cycles govern the rhythm.

Battleships, by contrast, were persistent. When Marines needed a ridge leveled, the Iowas didn’t require a logistics ballet to drop steel where the forward observer pointed.

Shells cost money; so do crews and fuel. But in terms of cost-per-effect—dollars spent to put decisive, repeatable force on specific coordinates—the big guns were a bargain whenever commanders needed hours of heavy fire instead of a few minutes of attack sorties.

Just as important, the Iowas’ speed and endurance meant more time delivering effect and less time transiting or refueling. In war, time is money by another name.

The Mothball Dividend: Paying Once, Using Often

After victory, the Navy did not scrap the Iowas. It carefully preserved them. That choice created a second financial miracle: the reserve fleet as a banked asset. For decades, the United States held four capital ships “on the shelf,” paying a small fraction of procurement to maintain them in mothballs.

When new crises emerged, the Navy could “cash the bond”—pull a ship from reserve, spend a finite amount to modernize her, and field a ready capital ship far faster and cheaper than building new.

USS Missouri Iowa-Class Battleship. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

This is the rarely celebrated side of the Iowa story: a one-time capital expense that could be reactivated to meet new realities at far less cost than a new hull. The return on investment wasn’t linear; it was lumpy—big utility in bursts. But it was real, and it kept happening.

Korea and Vietnam: The Bargain of Persistence

The Korean War was a cold reminder that history’s “end” never lasts. Iowa-class guns once again put steel exactly where ground commanders needed it, for as long as they needed it. In Vietnam, USS New Jersey provided the same virtue: sustained, accurate naval gunfire at a scale nothing else could match.

Aircraft did the majority of the work in both wars, and rightly so; but when weather or politics clipped their wings, a battleship’s cost-per-effect was striking. No runway required. No host-nation approval for basing. No tanker plan. Just a line of fire controlled by a forward observer and a captain who could keep station.

Reactivating a mothballed hull, training a crew, and topping off magazines cost money—real money. But measured against the effect delivered and the alternatives available at the time, it was a thrifty way for Washington to add a big hammer to a theater toolkit without commissioning a brand-new ship.

The 1980s Upgrade: Buying Tomorrow Inside Yesterday’s Hull

The late Cold War refits are the keystone of the dollar-for-dollar argument. In the 1980s, the Navy pulled all four Iowas back into service and bolted tomorrow onto yesterday: Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles for long-range precision strike; Harpoon anti-ship missiles for sea control; close-in defenses to swat inbound threats; modern communications; and improved electronic-warfare systems. The big guns stayed; the ships gained modern fists and sensors.

USS Iowa Logo National Security Journal Photo. Taken August 15, 2025.

Could the Navy have spent more to build brand-new large surface combatants? Yes. Would those new ships have arrived sooner, been cheaper, or delivered more effect per dollar in the 1980s and early 1990s? Unlikely. By choosing to modernize proven hulls with enormous growth margins, the Navy bought cruise-missile arsenals and floating artillery on a schedule and at a price that fit the moment. The Iowas proved that an intelligently designed legacy platform can absorb transformational capability without swallowing the budget.

Desert Storm: A Late-Career Return on Investment

If you want a one-line ROI statement, it is this: Missouri and Wisconsin opened a modern air campaign with cruise missiles fired from World War II battleships. Then they provided gunfire where troops needed it and presence where politics demanded it.

Those Tomahawk salvos were not cheap. But the launch platforms were paid for decades earlier. The Navy harvested precision strike from the sunk costs of the 1940s, adding only the price of the launchers, the missiles, the sensors, and the training.

Measured against a new-build alternative, that is value. Measured against the effect delivered—remote, precise blows against an entrenched opponent, followed by heavy gun support that didn’t depend on weather—it is hard to find a cheaper way to achieve the same outcome at the time.

The Economics of Presence and Deterrence

Balance sheets struggle to capture presence—the power of a gray hull at the horizon to steady allies and complicate an adversary’s choices. The Iowas had presence in surplus. They were photographs sent ahead of diplomats. They were leverage without a speech. The cost to move a battleship into a tense port might be several days of fuel, hazard pay, and logistics. The value could be an averted crisis—or a crisis better shaped to America’s advantage.

Presence isn’t an alternative to capability; it is one of capability’s outputs. Because the Iowas delivered both presence and punch, their cost-per-effect included political effects that saved money and risk later.

The Honest Debits: Manpower and Maintenance

No serious argument about value can skip the costs the Iowas imposed:

Crew size. Even after automation improvements, a battleship ties up far more sailors than a modern destroyer. Salaries, training, and benefits add up.

Fuel and maintenance. Four steam plants and heavy guns require care, parts, and hours.

Opportunity cost. Every dollar spent reactivating a battleship was a dollar not spent building more escorts or submarines.

These are real debits. The point is not to wave them away but to measure them against effects that were otherwise hard to buy—persistent heavy fire, rapid global signaling, and cruise-missile capacity grafted into a proven hull. When the mission demanded those effects, the debits were acceptable. When it didn’t, the Navy did the rational thing: retire the ships again and stop paying.

Why the Iowas Beat the Alternatives on ROI

Consider the other ways the Navy could have purchased similar capabilities in the eras the Iowas actually served:

World War II. You could have built more carriers or escorts instead of an Iowa. The Navy did both. But only a fast battleship could keep up with the carriers and land heavy gunfire on demand day after day.

Korea and Vietnam. You could fly more sorties. Weather and base access often made that harder or more expensive. The battleship gave commanders a weather-proof, runway-independent way to move the needle ashore.

Late Cold War and Desert Storm. You could buy new large combatants with cruise missiles. The Navy did buy Aegis cruisers and destroyers. But none could combine Tomahawk salvos, heavy gunfire, and capital-ship presence in one hull at the price and timeline the Iowas offered when modernized.

In each case, the Iowas did not replace other ships; they reduced the marginal cost of adding a unique set of effects to the fleet. That is what “best dollar for dollar” means in a force that must do many things at once.

The Museum Dividend: Value After Service

Even in retirement, the Iowas continue to pay returns—this time to civic life. I know, I have spent a lot of time on old battleships, as anyone who reads this website knows all too well.

As museum ships, they educate, recruit, and remind. That isn’t a budget line in the Pentagon’s books, but it is part of the full accounting. A platform that serves in war, deters in peace, and later serves as a national classroom has delivered value across the entire lifecycle—military, diplomatic, and cultural.

The Design Lesson for Future Ships

The Iowas were not “cheap” in their day. They were intelligent capital investments because their design margins—space, power, stability—let future leaders add capabilities they could not predict.

Today, when the Navy thinks about arsenal ships, large surface combatants, and uncrewed motherships, the Iowa lesson is plain:

Build platforms with room to grow so you can insert tomorrow’s weapons without a new hull.

Treat the reserve fleet as a financial instrument—maintenance dollars today can be options for capability tomorrow.

Measure value in cost-per-effect across decades, not cost-per-ton on launch day.

We will never build another battleship. But we can build ships that are just as thrifty because they stay useful long after the first mission set changes.

A Clear-Eyed Bottom Line

If “best dollar for dollar” means the most capability delivered, most often, across the most years for the least additional capital, the Iowas have a formidable claim.

Their $100 million wartime price tag—large then—bought hulls that could be refitted again and again to deliver modern effects.

They solved problems in 1944 and in 1991. They signaled to allies and adversaries in ways spreadsheets struggle to value. And when they were no longer needed, the Navy had the discipline to retire them rather than chase sunk-cost ghosts.

That is what smart defense spending looks like: buy something that works now, that can be made to work differently later, and that doesn’t force you to throw it away when the world changes.

By that standard, the Iowa-class may be the thriftiest warships this country ever put to sea.

About the Author: Harry J. Kazianis 

Harry J. Kazianis (@Grecianformula) is Editor-In-Chief and President of National Security Journal. He was the former Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI), a foreign policy think tank founded by Richard Nixon based in Washington, DC. Harry has over a decade of experience in think tanks and national security publishing. His ideas have been published in the NY Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, and many other outlets worldwide. He has held positions at CSIS, the Heritage Foundation, the University of Nottingham, and several other institutions related to national security research and studies. He is the former Executive Editor of the National Interest and the Diplomat. He holds a Master’s degree focusing on international affairs from Harvard University.

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