She returned home in May 1982 before undergoing an overhaul from September 1982 to July 1983, then conducted work ups for the ship's third Westpac deployment which took place from January to May 1984.

In 1988 Oldendorf deployed as part of the Seoul Olympics security force with the Nimitz battle group for which she received the Meritorious Unit Citation.

She served with distinction throughout the war earning the Combat Action Ribbon escorting the various major warships and supporting the naval blockade of Iraq.

In the namesake exercises, two Maritime Prepositioning Ships sailed from their homeport of Diego Garcia and discharged more than 1,000 tanks, artillery pieces and vehicles at the port of Shuaibah, starting 5 April.

There, they trained with the Kuwaiti Army and British Royal Marines, perfecting tactics which would delay, and perhaps turn back, any repeat of the invasion of Kuwait.

Oldendorf departed on 1 December 1995, as part of the USS Nimitz Battle Group, for a regularly scheduled Western Pacific deployment.

In March 1996, and in response to the announcement of missile tests and military live-fire exercises to be conducted by the Chinese in the waters surrounding the island of Taiwan, the United States dispatched forward deployed naval assets, including a carrier and other combatants to the area to monitor the situation.

Oldendorf arrived on station in the Persian Gulf with the Carl Vinson battle group and took part in Operation Desert Fox in December 1998.

The operation was designed to degrade Saddam Hussein's ability to deliver chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, and wage war against his neighbors.

The jet, a twin-engine Airbus A320 operated by Gulf Air which originated in Cairo, plunged into shallow water about 3 to 4 miles north of Bahrain International Airport while making its approach.

The U.S. Navy Surface Force was scheduled to begin, in the summer of 2002, an initiative to test the effectiveness of deploying a single ship for 18 months while swapping out crews at six-month intervals.

After completing their training cycle and decommissioning Kinkaid, these sailors would fly to a port in either Australia or Singapore to assume ownership of Fletcher and steam her back on-station.

The shield commemorates Admiral Oldendorf's crossing of the "T" in the epic sea Battle of Surigao Strait during World War II, which resulted in a brilliant and decisive victory for the United States.

The vertical blue bar, alluding to a narrow passage or waterway, refers to Surigao Strait, and the eight red and white sections of the background represents the total losses of the enemy in terms of the number of ships sunk, damaged or crippled.

The ship's motto, "Ad Proelium Victoriamque Futuram" (To the Fight and Victory Ahead) is the Latin translation of a line taken from Admiral Oldendorf's memoirs regarding his charge to his forces on the eve of the decisive Battle of Surigao Strait.