All four were reactivated and modernized at the direction of Congress in 1981, and armed with missiles during the 1980s, as part of the 600-ship Navy initiative. During the Korean War, the battleships provided naval gunfire support (NGFS) for United Nations forces, and in 1968, New Jersey shelled Viet Cong and Vietnam People's Army forces in the Vietnam War.

In World War II, they defended aircraft carriers and shelled Japanese positions. Between the mid-1940s and the early 1990s, the Iowa-class battleships fought in four major US wars.

All older US battleships were decommissioned by 1947 and stricken from the Naval Vessel Registry (NVR) by 1963. The four Iowa-class ships were the last battleships commissioned in the US Navy. Based on wartime experience, they were to serve as fast escorts for Essex-class aircraft carriers. Like other third-generation American battleships, the Iowas followed the design pattern set forth in the preceding North Carolina-class and South Dakota-class battleships, which emphasized speed in addition to secondary and anti-aircraft batteries. Four were completed two more were laid down but canceled in 1945 at war's end, and both hulls were scrapped in 1958. The Iowa-class battleships were a class of six fast battleships ordered by the United States Navy in 19 to escort the Fast Carrier Task Forces that would operate in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

Iowa class in world of warships