Turbofan missiles are efficient and gets you further with same amount of fuel but they are the slowest jet engines.
Slow means easy to shoot down. World is moving away from subsonic missiles. America tried staying subsonic with STEALTH but even they are focusing on hypersonic. For one you can't fire a non heat shielded subsonic cruise missile from a hypersonic flying 6th or 7th gen aircraft. So any propulsion tech it is not hypersonic is a dead end and a bad investment for the future.
At least invest in easy to build, store solid fuel hypersonic glider missiles. Arm all your submarines and ships with dozens of laser proof, heat tile covered, hypersonic missiles that can hit moving targets. Who is going to mess with us if we choose to do that instead of current subsonic silliness?
There are merits to what you say. However you can not rule out the use of subsonic missiles either. Neither should you call it “silliness”.
War is governed by and is a matter of sustainability, skill and managing economics of battlefield.
A hypersonic missile like ARRW will cost 15 to 18 million dollars a piece.
A report from the Congressional Budget Office offered estimates for different Air Force and Army programs and the cost per hypersonic missile.
www.airandspaceforces.com
If you are not carrying a nuclear warhead, it is false economy to fire a hypersonic glide vehicle/missile over a thousand kilometres, unless you are aiming to sink a carrier.
We have even seen in latest news the claims of the much advertised, and estimated at 10+ million dollar a piece Zircon missile being shot down in Ukraine. So they are not infallible either.
Every piece of weapon has a use in a specific situation. Much acclaimed Storm Shadow missiles have faltered as well.
There were news earlier last year that western airforces like RAF were contemplating purchasing supersonic Rampage missiles (Israeli version of TRG300 artillery rockets fired from air) at a fraction of the cost of a Storm Shadow to take out enemy targets.
A sea skimming subsonic missile may only be visible to enemy radars in the last 80-90 seconds. Yet a terrain hugging subsonic cruise missile may not be visible to enemy radars until the last 20-30 seconds due to geographic camouflage it utilises.
So you use them accordingly.
We have subsonic sea skimming Atmaca and we have Stealthy SOM-J and SOM-C (under development) to hit sea targets. Then we have “unverified“ news of Typhoon that can travel at hypersonic speeds and hit moving sea targets.
All three have case specific attack envelopes that they utilise. It all depends on what assets of enemy you are targeting to destroy.