Navies all around the world must worry about increasingly advanced anti-ship missiles.
Here s What You Need to Know: Ship-to-ship naval warfare is back.
After decades of rapid innovation, the end of the Cold War and the subsequent Global War on Terror all but halted anti-ship missile development in the West. A focus on land operations in the Middle East and Central Asia sent Western navies struggling for relevance.
As a result, navies adopted an emphasis towards supporting land forces and operating in the littoral zone. For the most part, ship to ship warfare was reduced to a 9,000-ton destroyer confronting a 2-ton pirate skiff.