In a word, no, the U.S. Navy is not reactivating the USS Missouri. The rumor that this Iowa-class battleship, first launched in 1944, surfaced on social media a few years ago, and a nasty case of the telephone game broke out. On October 10, 2023, news headlines spread that the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group was heading to the Eastern Mediterranean to deter additional groups from joining the war between Hamas and Israel.
The next day, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a Lebanese–American mathematical statistician
and former option trader turned author and scholar, commented on X (he has over one million followers) that the U.S. was sending its largest battleship to the Mediterranean. The problem with this statement is that he mistook the Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group for a battleship, which it most certainly was not. "Battleships" have not been part of the U.S. Navy since the 1990s and were last used during the Gulf War. They've all been decommissioned for decades and remain out of service.
The Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group at the time consisted of several vessels, including the Navy's largest aircraft carrier, four destroyers, and a Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser. The terminology was clearly the cause of the chaos. Unfortunately, the denizens of the World Wide Web are unforgiving, and soon claims that the "USS Missouri has apparently been recommissioned to fight Hamas" spread across the depth and breadth of social media like a tsunami.
Read more: 10 Of The Largest Navies In The World, Ranked By Self-Reported Total Naval Assets
The Mighty Mo Sits In Pearl Harbor, Not On The High Seas
Knowing how the Internet loves nothing more than to skewer people (for just about any reason), it's far more likely these bold claims about the Missouri were created facetiously to poke fun at Taleb's inaccurate use of the term "battleship," but the internet being what it is, took it as a statement of fact and ran with it. However, there's another piece to this perplexing puzzle that added to the confusion.
In early 2024, only a few months after the battleship debacle began, news broker that the restoration of the USS Missouri was finally completed after 14 years. Restoration is a very different concept from reinstatement, but because the words are strikingly similar, the two could have been confused. Its restoration (not reinstatement) began in 2010 and took 68,514 hours and $6 million ($436,500 of which came from the state of Missouri) to complete. Given the cost of mere restoration, bringing these vessels up to battle-ready preparedness is a big reason why the Navy would likely never consider reactivating a decommissioned battleship.
The USS Missouri (aka "The Mighty Mo") was where Japan surrendered in 1945, marking the end of World War II. She survived kamikaze attacks during WWII, fought in the Korean War, and launched cruise missiles in Desert Storm. As of this writing, it remains part of the Battleship Missouri Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where people can walk across its decks and learn first-hand about its place in history. A Virginia-class submarine called the USS Missouri (SSN 780) carries on her legacy.
Want the latest in tech and auto trends? Subscribe to our free newsletter for the latest headlines, expert guides, and how-to tips, one email at a time.
Read the original article on SlashGear.
