Well, when I played it, I had several cases where none of the missiles hit. This might also be influenced by mods though, it was some time ago when I last played this scenario, in standard DW. I think one of the LWAMI patches lowered the detectability of TASM and harpoon a bit.

If that's the case then you ought to do even better!

Since these kinds of saturation tactics essentially take advantage of statistics to tilt the odds in your favor, success is never completely certain. Sometimes no missiles will make it through the formation's defences. That's okay, though, because that's realistic. It happens sometimes. All you can do is shrug it off and prepare for the next strike. To go back to the example I brought up before, assume again that a single missile by itself has a 1 in 10 chance of making it through the defensive screen. In that case, the chance of scoring zero hits with a salvo of 16 missiles is still about 19%.

That's okay, though. That 19% of the time I'll have to just get them on my next attack. TASM makes everything very leisurely. Sometimes I'll play it and one of the ships might just have been damaged by missiles. That's fine. Generally speaking though, they lose a ship, the Sovremenny usually, since that's the closest one. If I'm lucky I'll get one or two of the others. That's always very iffy though, since like you said, they have good SAMs. I'm happy if I sink one, though.

I have to disagree that the USN would totally pown a Russian SAG in a shootout, particularly regarding the airwings. To get close enough to drop a JDAM or launch a Maverick would put the pilot in quesion in range of a virtual wall of SAMs and gunfire of all sorts, which is precisely the reason Russian warships are so liberally equipped with such weapons. That leaves the Harpoon, a nice missile but much too slow for the modern naval warfare environment. What the Navy desperately needs in order to stay on top in the ASUW world is a super fast cruise missile like the Fasthawk idea being kicked around (with a mach 4+ top speed) or the RATTLRS technology demonstrator in development.
http://www.defensetech.org/images/RATTLRS%20art.JPG
Question is, will they stop being obsessed with land attack missiles and give the new super fast system a true anti ship capability?

The thing is, the USN isn't currently anticipating having to fight the Russians. They're really only of peripheral interest (heh, Kapitan will hate me saying that :) ). If it was, the USN probably have continued developing the TASM and Harpoon. As it stands, what we have is fine. Interestingly they do continue R&D into the next generation of anti-ship cruise missiles. They want to maintain the capability, but right now they really don't need to maintain a big inventory of missiles.

Also, you don't have to fly into a wall of SAMs to attack an enemy SAG. Surpressing and destroying air defences is something the USN, USMC and USAF have down to a science. Anti-radiation missiles put warships in a real bind. They can attempt to shoot down the missiles, in which case they generally have to radiate and risk taking a hit, or they can shut down, in which case they still might take a hit either from the missile or accompanying strike aircraft. Aircraft can jam enemy radars with standoff jammers, as well as self protection. There also exist a whole host of decoys, not just chaff, but actual air launched drones which mimic strike aircraft. Radar warning receivers can actually be configured to pick out specifically naval emissions.

You can't just fly off and start dropping guided bombs and missiles like it was nothing. Attacking enemy warships from the air requires a whole operation, with all the associated components, but it's not impossible. It requires a little thought, like pretty much all strike planning, really. There's nothing that makes it fundamentally different.

Finally, torpedoes are still pretty good against a ship. Provided you can get close enough to use them (childsplay for a nuke, anyone who can work a maneuvering board can get a sub to within whatever range he wants of a given target) a single hit will sink most warships. They only ships that can really take successive torpedo hits are big capital ships, and who has more of those than anyone else? The USN, in the form of CVNs and LHDs. Even then, I think the record is like 7 torpedo hits. So... okay... that's two salvos? That's nothing. Since a nuke can almost always get close enough to shoot a torpedo, the big problem is just locating a target to sic an SSN on. That's not too hard either.

Between the SSNs and the aircraft, there really aren't a whole lot of reasons to carry an ASCM. It'd be nice in certain situations, but it shouldn't be a dire necessity if everything is thought out smartly. It's sort of a shame, really, because the lack of ASCMs takes a lot of the glamorous work away from surface ships. Now they're all tied to protecting high value units like CVNs, LHDs and TAOEs. The best one could hope for is to be a radar picket and get a piece of the air battle.

My guess is probably not. Right now, the Navy has to justify everything to Congress in terms of how it can kill terrorists. Al Qaeda doesn't have much beyond a speed boat with a bomb in it. What they really need to do is be able to project power ashore. That means strike, special warfare and amphibious operations are the real money makers at the moment.

The China hawks can say what they want, but China, while it has made great strides forward, still can't really compare to the threat the Soviets represented. It's not even in the same universe.