During the Cold War and after, the conventional saturation missile attack against naval and land targets was and is a much feared eventuality.
The bomber stream was a tactic pioneered by the RAF to overwhelm German air defences during the Second World War.
The tactic relied on routing a greater number of bombers through a defensive sector than the amount which Germans could generate interception sorties.
During the Cold War, United States Navy aircraft carriers were the primary target of saturation attacks from Soviet Naval Aviation.
In naval warfare, the incorporation of stealth technology in surface combatants, the general adoption of vertical launching systems, modern radar systems which can simultaneously scan, track, and engage multiple targets, and fire and forget close in defense missiles has decreased the utility of saturation attacks by unsophisticated anti-ship missiles.