The real stealth surface combatants of the future are less likely to be high tech purpose built warships with designs that reduce their radar profile, like the experimental prototype shown above, and more likely to be like the ones in this Star War video excerpt that look like ordinary cargo ships, but are actually outfitted with military grade anti-ship missiles hidden away in structures that are indistinguishable from those found on ordinary cargo ships, manned by military personnel.
These secretly armed cargo ships can come quite close range with opposition warships, because they don't look like a threat, and blend in with normal merchant ship traffic, before striking opposition warships. This close range engagement can reduce the target warships' ability to employ defenses to the attack in the short moments after they realize what is going on, just as effectively as a far more sophisticated hypersonic missile attack from a much greater range fired from a conventional warship.
A recent incident where a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean sea near the entrance of the Suez Canal was struck by a 53,000 ton cargo ship with a history of prior collision incidents, illustrates how unsuspiciously the U.S. Navy currently responds to ships of this kind, even though that ship was unarmed and the collision was apparently a matter of mutual negligence rather than malice. The captain of the aircraft carrier was relieved of his command after that collision (which did significant but not disabling damage).
But it isn't clear that there has been any deeper tactical doctrine adjustment by the U.S. Navy even though the technique I describe was used with devastating effect in a U.S. Navy war game in the year 2002 whose outcome is now declassified.
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