>>6110978I've tried to use the real timeline as far as possible, as I will for most weapon systems that actually exist rather than having been cancelled after the Cold War, but honestly trying to follow the development of US cruise missiles has given me a headache. As in, I've literally gone crawling through congressional budgetary reports to make sure I'm understanding the timelines right to figure out which services got which variants when and on what platforms, and I'm still not sure I have it all straight.
As far as I can reliably answer, the AGM-84H/K SLAM-ER would be the and most advanced longest-ranged anti-ship cruise missile available to Enterprise ca. her final deployment in 2012. The AGM-158A JASSM was Air Force-only until later. The anti-ship RGM-109B TASM was withdrawn from service in 1994, as its utility was rather limited and not really huge improvement over existing AShMs, as the primary limitations of any anti-ship weapon are the sensory capabilities of the launch platform and not the weapon itself.
That's part of why Chinese anti-ship ballistic missiles aren't quite as bad a threat as they're made out to be, just as Soviet supersonic anti-ship missiles were during the Cold War. Certainly they're dangerous, but you still have to localise and target the enemy fleet first, which against the vastness of the sea is not as easy as it sounds. The PLA's ISR satellite capabilities are what actually make them dangerous, as they have frequent-enough and high-enough-quality satellite coverage for tactical use, which the USSR never did.
