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It beggars imagination that people would argue this stuff, but not agree the basic tenet that TLAM is no magic weapon, it does not confer immediate or guarenteed success. Yet people here seek to present exaclty that idea, contrary to what is clearly the thoughts in the military circles of most nations. Outside of the USA only Russia and China are likely to afford sufficient numbers of TLAM type weapons, and none of them assume that they can rely on on them for success, but view them as part of a wider integrated whole of airpower.

Not sure that revelent Michael Hoddy, TLAM cruises at a much more 'normal' altitude for efficiencies sake, it only goes down low where necessary and at the cost of range.
Was'nt that Silkworm, and was'nt the range rather low from firing position to target compared with say launch from the Gulf to targets north of Tehran?

Its a curious thought that defence against TLAM thanks to it being effectively a superior kind of doodlebug (subsonic and visible) is just a good number of observors corps, well trained command and control people, a few old radars and prolific comunications.
In which case target No.1 becomes the mobile phone network.

Assumptions of a AD system being 'at rest' so to speak when an TLAM assault is launched is a very big assumption indeed. To assemble sufficient TLAM for such a overwhelming strike is a rather visible thing to an enemy who is watching for exactly just such a force assembling.

IF the target is the AD system fine, but you need to remove the AD system to guarentee other targets are hit properly.

TLAM is part of a wider whole, and as part of that it is very useful, no doubts about that, but its not an alternative to the wide spectrum of capabilities required, so that idea has to be squashed, lest idiot politicians who understand almost nothing about war let alone airwarfare read such ideas and end up doing a Duncan Sandys again.

AS I said numbers are key, and outside of the US I have doubts about any state producing or purchasing enough numbers to make their use en mass possible. Again idiots will assume otherwise, cut the wide spectrum of forces needed in favour of inadequet numbers of TLAM type weapons proclaiming they have secured defence when they have done the very opposite.

Numbers are key, if enough numbers of TLAM are sent then yes a AD system can be overwhelmed, assuming that AD system has'nt been designed or modified to cope with such. However it IS possible to defeat a pure TLAM only attack precisely because it has no supporting airpower giving it cover. Cover in the form of other assets like SEAD/DEAD, manned and unmanned strike aircraft, AEWACs, EW ECM etc.....

Even the routes of approach can be predicted when the missile is going low level, and consequently systems placed to ensure such an attack defeated.
Example: We know in Iraq several TLAM follwed the same course (an obvious mistake) with the result the AAA simply had to fire into the known path to bring them down. Something as simple as a net fired up into known paths could bring such weapons down. To down a TLAM does'nt require the highly sophisticated SAMs currently produced at such cost. Simpler weapons with good design can do the job. Why? Because TLAM is'nt much better speedwise to a 1950's jet aircraft.
One is reminded of the recent BAE Systems SAM aimed at UAVs for an example, far cheaper than the high performance SAMs needed to down a supersonic missile.

UK shot down V1s with 1940s technology using at best Meteors and more often high speed prop fighters under verbal direction from extremely manual (womanual really) command centers. Its quite feasable to produce a AD system aimed at the defeat of mass TLAM attack if there are no enemy fighters to shoot yours down, no enemy bombers to bomb your AAA, no EW to jam your radars, no precision strikes to knock out your comms, command etc.... TLAM on its own is very vulnerable.

Seersuckers had a short run,at most a couple of hundred miles, likely less, over reletively flat terrain, and I for one would like to know how ready the AD system was when they flew for such an attack.
We know Silkworms where brought down after detection at other times and detection was easy, so quite how these weapons where missed is a rather good question.

History? Only as part of a wider assault on a state has TLAM been used, unless we count a few sneek surprise acts that where against rather low grade AD, like in Sudan and Afghanistan (which arguably did'nt have any integrated AD system at all).

In Iraq during the Gulf War and Yugoslavia they where merely part of a much larger whole, which spanned from Apaches to B2's, they where NOT used on their own, and as far as I can see it was never an option to use them on their own.
In both cases the defenders AD system had a lot of other potential targets and threats to deal with as well as TLAM.

Poor planing on routes is not always the explanation, there are a limited number of low level routes for a weapon or aircraft to take on approach to certain types of target. That or you raise the flight level above the obsticals, which comes at another price of course.

Iran BTW being far more mountainous, both makes for better low level avoidence of interceptions and yet those very mountains limit the number of paths available to take unless the weapon rises up high over the mountains and is highly visible to AD radars.

Again TLAM only flies low level to avoid enemy radars, its price is fuel burn being higher and range reduced.

And again, TLAM is not a wonderweapon, it does not win the war alone, it does not achieve all the military goals alone, it is downright idiocy to suggest otherwise.

Picking it out is well within modern radars ability, shooting it down well within the cheaper kind of SRAAM or with modern gun aiming systems. It would be wrong to say I was suggesting a Meteor could down more than few under very good direction, but with the sort of readily available and affordable systems now out there, the ability to degrade a TLAM only assault is clear.
TLAM will have to either be aimed at that AD system or swamp it with attacks at both the AD system and the real targets together and in bulk, swamping it is not cheap. Because you have to factor in that numbers of the weapon will be shot down, which means the bare minimum is nothing like the number of targets your aiming at, but a far higher figure.

No good LO coatings are not cheap, cheap LO is not so good, and modern radars are designed precisely to look for the low level attacker in ground clutter, as are modern AAMs, both since the 1960s.