Tell me how it was over when the USS Missouri and Wisconsin were used with great effectivness during Desert Storm. Do you not think that those systems did not undergo some sort of tweeking and upgrade. They did.
This happens all the time in the military. Even our most modern systems we still have unintended collateral damage and fratricide incidents occur. It is all part of the process.
When the Pentagon brass finds that a high profile project brought out with much fanfare has gone sour, they do not announce the failure of that project with equal fanfare. They allow the project to discreetly fade away.
The role of the BB's during the Gulf War was to be featured on the network nightly news making a hell of a lot of noise lobbing 16-inch shells at a few bunkers and artillery positions near the coast as a pyrotechnic display designed to convince the Iraqis that a seaborne invasion was going to come.
As a downside, during the show, a Silkworm missile headed straight for Missouri, but was intercepted by two Sea Dart missiles from the British warship HMS Gloucester.
In short, a very expensive asset was put at risk in order to be used as a tactical feint. Such a feint could have been accomplished by B-52 carpet bombing of the coast at very little risk.
In addition, the range of the BB is extremely limited. Once the action moves 20 miles inland, the big guns of the BB are as utterly useless in the war as the guns of a 1905 era coastal artillery fort. By contrast, air-power can deliver 2000 pond GBU-31 JDAM's with a 10 meter CEP (Circular Error Probable) anywhere on the battlefield.
As a result, in 1999, the Navy concluded: