Tomahawk and space systems give surface ships strategic reach

By the late 1990s, US cruisers and missile destroyers were striking distant land targets in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, and Kosovo. Tomahawk supplied roughly thousand-mile reach, overcoming the earlier surface fleet's inability to threaten targets far ashore. Space-based surveillance and communications extended the ship's effective horizon enough to select and service targets at that distance. Existing conventionally powered combatants could consequently perform much of the strategic strike mission once imagined for a specialized nuclear cruiser. The combination did not replace the aircraft carrier, but it gave surface ships an independent offensive role that the 1970s design could not affordably achieve.