I'll refer to Simplicius' breakdown of ASMs/ASBMs:
Re: ASMs:
>The largest misconception most laymen make is that anti-ship operations consist of simply firing some kind of missile into the ocean and that missile somehow magically finding the aircraft carrier on its own and striking it, despite the fact that the target carrier is potentially hundreds of miles away over the horizon—which is the key point.
>During the Cold War, the doctrinal theory behind anti-ship operations, specifically against large surface ships and carrier groups, centered around having major airborne reconnaissance assets which are used as the marking vehicles to illuminate the target via radar, and guide the missile to the target.
>[...]
>Once their Kh-22 missiles were launched, the planes would still need to provide some level of mid-course guidance for the missiles, which means staying in the air and locked on to the target ships.
>[...]
>Granted, these missiles also have the ability to reach a general area via INS (Inertial Navigation System) and can begin scanning for targets independently after that. But this poses several problems.
>Firstly, if allowed to scan for random targets on its own, the missile is not guaranteed to hit the exact ship you want it to hit
>[...]
>And by the way, that is being generous with a Mach 1 missile: most anti-ship missiles do not even approach Mach 1 speeds; for instance, US’s Harpoon at Mach 0.70, Ukraine’s Neptune (subsonic), Iran’s Qader and Ra’ad missiles both at Mach 0.80, etc. One of the reasons the Soviet Kh-22 was so revolutionary and feared was that it was nearly hypersonic at Mach 4.6+, but that is not a feat most nations can repeat.
>[...]
>Most of these [ISR] drones do not even have the range to go that far out because they are controlled via ground control station not satellite—which limits their range essentially to radio horizon, which often tops out at 50-150km max, depending on altitude, topography, etc.
RE: ASBMs:
>So, what’s the problem? Firstly, Iranian anti-ship ballistics appear to have a ~300km range.
>[...]
>Iran would not launch directly from the shore itself which is already under overwatch of various US strike systems. The Iranian launcher may be pushed something like 50-150km inland, if not more.
>[...]
>So, could Iranian ASBMs potentially hit a US carrier? They suffer from the same issue of terminal guidance: lacking a dedicated active tracking platform, they would resort to discriminating targets autonomously
Obviously he's talking about carriers as that was the hot subject when he wrote it, but the general gist is still applicable. Without active guidance and target discrimination (which would definitely be a problem if you're firing at ships interdicting tankers), the killzone is more or less just the immediate area of the Strait, maybe in the Gulf, but nowhere else.
I would say the whole subject more or less returns to what I was musing about some days ago, i.e. weaponizing the tankers. Place soldiers or assets on these ships to either directly target enemies attempting to land via helicopter or provide targeting data to onshore drones missiles. But both have tremendous implications on shipping in general.
England has actively supported the operations since the first day of the attack on Iran, despite initial differences of opinion.
