Iowa-class battleships some thirty years ago, and one of the battlewagons, USS
Missouri (BB-63), was given a big-screen sendoff when she appeared in the 1992 film
Under Siege starring martial arts action star Steven Segal.
All four of the warships, which were constructed during the Second World War as a new class of "fast battleship," had been in a mothballed state since the Vietnam War era. However, in the 1980s, after President Ronald Reagan called for a 600-ship U.S. Navy, USS
Iowa (BB-61) and her three sister battleships were reactivated and upgraded with new combat systems to address the threats of the Cold War. Many of the ships' smaller five-inch guns were replaced with launchers for Harpoon anti-ship missiles, and notably Tomahawk cruise missiles. Additionally, the ships each received four Phalanx close-in weapon systems (CIWS).