post 1945 naval thinking shifts mostly to Littoral warfare

Close to shore and in restricted waters the fleet described here, if it has some dedicated air assets, can make life difficult for the enemy. In a NATO/WP fight the Baltic and Black Sea are going to be very bad for any surface craft - restricted waters and all of these bodies of water are readily accessible to land based maritime strike aircraft. This both for NATO and WP. If the USA is going to run carrier based strikes on Northern Fleet bases, or in support of operations in Northern Norway they will take place beyond where light forces would be effective. In the Pacific light forces could do some good in the waters between the USSR and Japan, do note that sea conditions there for a good part of the are not pleasant. Any light forces in the Med need friendly bases, and won't last long and will be effective primarily in a first strike at war initiation.

Light forces do nothing to interdict sealanes in the Atlantic or Pacific. Small ASW units will generally not be terribly effective against NATO submarines, who will only approach Soviet coasts under special circumstances.
 
Proximity fuzes did a good job until the aircraft could use missiles to make standoff attacks.

I think it's more question of aircraft speed rather than just standoff attacks. With advent of jets, particularly with surface skimming attack, the reaction speed for guns gets rather small.
 
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