WM:

That's not a half bad idea. Both it and my terrible idea depend on the capability being built into the weapon and having a lot of shots available. That is one of the things I believe ADM Greenert might have been getting at in his recent article. Both ideas would require the sea be held. Neither could tolerate hostile surface vessels hanging about.

I still like my idea but yours would be much better for protecting the tanker orbits, specific spots. The ocean is rather large so it may be to big to establish a really long BAR-CAP kind of thing. I like my idea for protecting the cargo airplanes though because you could fly them in groups, convoys sort of, and change the routing around to make it harder for the bad guys. A big missileer kind of plane could stay with them and only fly when escort was needed. That would complicate the enemy's task a lot.

The British did the sort of thing you suggest in the Falklands I believe and more recently the Malaysian Navy bought some container ships and armed them for anti-piracy work. 20,000 to 40 or 50,000 tons container ships with reasonable speed might be just the ticket. My displacement estimate was just a guess. What kind of speed would be useful, around 20 knots?