The present invnetion desctribes techniques for performing erasure detection and power control for a transmission without error detection coding. For erasure detection, a transmitter transmits codewords via a wireless channel. A receiver computes a metric for each received codeword, compares the computed metric against an erasure threshold, and declares the received codeword to be 'erased' or 'non-erased'. The receiver dynamically adjusts the erasure threshold based on received known codewords to achieve a target level of performance. For power control, an inner loop adjusts the transmit power to maintain a received signal quality (SNR) at a target SNR. An outer loop adjusts the target SNR based on the status of received codewords (erased or non-erased) to achieve a target erasure rate. Athird loop adjusts the erasure threshold based on the status of received known codewords ('good', 'bad', or erased) to achieve a target conditional error rate.