Missiles
Cruise, ballistic, and hypersonic missile systems.
Khorramshahr-4 (Kheibar) Missile: Iran's Most Advanced Ballistic Missile Explained
A complete guide to Iran's Khorramshahr-4 (Kheibar) missile — specifications, range, speed, warhead, development history, and its role in recent conflicts.
Tomahawk Missile: Complete Guide to Range, Specs, Variants, and Combat History (2026)
The Tomahawk is a long-range, subsonic cruise missile built by Raytheon (RTX) that the U.S. Navy fires from ships and submarines to strike targets over 900 nautical miles away. Here's the complete guide to its range, specs, Block V variants, and combat history through 2026.
FGM-148 Javelin ATGM: The Complete Guide to the World's Most Combat-Proven Anti-Tank Missile
The FGM-148 Javelin is the world's most combat-proven man-portable anti-tank missile. Built by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, it uses fire-and-forget infrared guidance and a tandem HEAT warhead to defeat modern tanks. Here's how it works, its specs, combat history in Ukraine, and why production is surging.
The Flamingo (FP-5) Cruise Missile: Inside Ukraine's Homegrown Long-Range Strike Weapon
The FP-5 Flamingo is Ukraine's domestically built cruise missile, boasting a 3,000 km range and a 1,150 kg warhead. Here's how it works, who makes it, and what it means for the war.
Burevestnik: Inside Russia's Nuclear-Powered "Flying Chernobyl"
Russia's nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile — the so-called flying Chernobyl — erases fuel as its range limit by putting a nuclear reactor inside the missile, a program whose test history runs from a fatal 2019 reactor accident to a claimed 14,000 km October 2025 flight.
Iran's Cluster-Warhead Missiles: How Tehran Is Using Saturation, Not Precision, to Beat Israeli Air Defense
Tehran's cluster-equipped ballistic missiles split open mid-flight to scatter dozens of bomblets across kilometers of sky — a crude but deliberate tactic to break the math of layered missile defense through saturation rather than pinpoint accuracy.
Dark Eagle Forward: Inside America's Long-Delayed Hypersonic Arsenal
The Army's Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon made its first Indo-Pacific appearance in Exercise Valiant Shield — but behind the deployment signal, LRHW, the Navy's CPS, and the Air Force's HACM all share the same pattern of real hardware and consistent multi-year delays.
Missiles: In-Depth Analysis & Coverage
Missile technology spans cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, anti-ship missiles, air-to-air missiles, and surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems. Our missile coverage tracks hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) like China's DF-17 and Russia's Avangard, hypersonic cruise missiles like the Russian Kinzhal and Zircon, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), long-range cruise missiles like the U.S. Tomahawk and JASSM-ER, anti-ship missiles like the Harpoon and Chinese YJ-21, and air defense systems from the Patriot PAC-3 to the Russian S-400 and S-500. We analyze range, speed (Mach), guidance, warhead type, and the countermeasures designed to defeat each system.
A cruise missile flies like an aircraft — aerodynamically, powered throughout its flight, at relatively low altitude, following a programmable path to the target. A ballistic missile is rocket-powered, leaves the atmosphere (for medium and long-range types), and follows a parabolic arc, descending at very high speed. Cruise missiles (Tomahawk, Kalibr) are more precise and harder to detect; ballistic missiles (Iskander, DF-26, ICBMs) are faster and harder to intercept once in terminal phase.
A hypersonic missile travels at Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound) or faster — roughly 3,800+ mph. Hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) like the DF-17 are launched on a ballistic missile then glide to the target at hypersonic speed while maneuvering, making their trajectory unpredictable. This combination of speed and maneuverability makes them extremely difficult for existing missile defense systems to track and intercept.
The Russian S-400 Triumf is a long-range surface-to-air missile (SAM) system capable of engaging aircraft, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles at ranges up to 400 km. It is widely exported (to China, Turkey, India, and others) because it offers comprehensive air defense capability at a lower cost than Western systems like the Patriot, and because Russia is willing to sell it without the political restrictions that accompany U.S. arms sales.