During the Cold War, Nato consistently prioritised strengthening its naval aviation, investing heavily in aircraft carriers and enhancing its surface fleets. At that stage of the strategic competition, the Soviets recognised they could not compete in carrier warfare, so they focused instead on submarines and anti-ship missiles.

In the early 1970s, the Soviets already fielded more than 10 different anti-ship missile models, most of them supersonic and some combat-proven in the Middle East, while the United States had none. The Harpoon entered service only in 1977 with a range of about 120 km. The Exocet appeared later with a range under 50 km. The truly alarming part is that by then the Soviets already possessed anti-ship missiles with ranges exceeding 550 km and warheads over 500 kg.

As early as the 1960s, in the kind of high-intensity conflict envisioned during the Cold War, the West would have faced severe difficulties protecting its maritime assets because of the reach of Soviet anti-ship missiles deployed on submarines since 1959 and further developed over the following decade. Anti-Ship Cruise missiles such as the P-5 and P-6 were particularly intimidating, already offering ranges of 400–500 km at that time.

The most striking fact is that even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West made only limited progress in this domain.

In practical terms, today’s Western navies have little realistic chance against the range of Chinese and Russian anti-ship ballistic missiles. Hypersonic variants offer only a slim possibility of interception, even for the US Navy’s most advanced ship missile systems.

The situation is even worse for European navies, which currently lack any ship-based defence capable of intercepting ballistic missiles, a capability that Israel and Russia, for example, have already integrated on corvettes, with systems able to intercept ballistic missiles during their terminal phase - until Mach 3.

There have been reports of successful interceptions in Red Sea operations, but these likely involved older missile versions supplied by Iran to the Houthis. Technically, no European naval defence system can currently intercept ballistic missiles reliably, which means it has a low probability of happening, especially against modern anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBM).

The development and subsequent improvement of the CAMM-MR missile family may bring better chances, and integration of the Aster missile family (ASTER B1NT) put European navies in a much better position, but implementation would take time and would only improve, rather than guarantee, interception probabilities against modern ballistic threats, especially hypersonic ones, where success rates are expected to remain low.

With much of the Western fleet lacking defences against Russian hypersonic missiles like the Zircon (700–1,000 km range) or Chinese systems like the YJ-21 (1,500 km range), and equally vulnerable to China’s ship-launched DF missile family variants capable of thousands of kilometres and speeds exceeding 9,000 km/h, the asymmetry is so profound that direct naval confrontation is effectively deterred. The West therefore relies heavily on its still-modern submarine force, which remains a serious threat to adversaries, but which the West does not have in sufficient numbers.

From the 1970s to the present, the range of most Western anti-ship missiles has remained significantly shorter than that of Soviet systems that were already operational in the 1950s.

The sole major exception is the Tomahawk Block Va, with its 1,600 km range and multimode seeker optimised for moving maritime targets. Though subsonic (Mach 0.8), it poses a significant threat and is only now entering wider US Navy service, with few ships operating these missiles.

The picture is even more concerning for other Nato anti-ship missile (AShM) guided missiles. The latest Harpoon variants reach around 300 km at best; the Swedish RBS-15 is similar in range. The Exocet now achieves 200-250 km, slightly less than the American and Swedish options, but it remains combat-proven in multiple conflicts. All three exceed the Western Naval Strike Missile (NSM), which still falls short of 200 km.

Even the air-launched Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, or LRASM (AGM-158C), a stealth air launch anti-ship cruise missile developed for the United States Air Force, under ideal conditions has a theoretical range of about 500 km.

For perspective on how outdated these figures are: the Indian Navy has operated the BrahMos for over 20 years, offering 2-4 times the range and roughly four times the speed of current Western anti-ship missiles.

Despite excellent stealth features in some Western designs, none reach even Mach 1, which gives defenders more reaction time and additional interception opportunities.

Field experience in Ukraine has also provided both Nato and Russia with valuable data on radar detection and interception of missiles and drones. It is now clear that pre-war assumptions about detecting stealth platforms have been significantly revised by real-battle results.

This overall situation, most Nato navies having minimal prospects of intercepting Russian or Chinese anti-ship missiles, while their own missiles have markedly inferior range, puts Western naval forces at high risk of being sunk long before they can even detect the enemy.

The Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) may offer some relief upon its projected mass implementation in 2028–2030. However, production will be slow, and only by the end of 2027 will it reach 400 units annually, with only a fraction of that destined for the anti-ship version.

Europe’s planned “Stratus” cruise missile is also expected to enter service gradually in 2030, probably at an even slower pace.

The limitations in defence systems, mainly against ballistic threats, hypersonic or not, and the slowness in developing and producing new longer-range anti-ship missiles have left Western navies in a weakened position.

This has placed the West in a naval checkmate and the trend points to a widening gap relative to Russia and China.