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- University of Florida - History of Cruise Missiles (PDF)
- Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance - Cruise Missile Basics
- Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory - Force-Level Effectiveness Modeling for the Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missile (PDF)
- University of Florida - Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering - History of cruise missiles
- U.S. Naval Institute - Cruise Missile Warfare
- The National Museum of American History - Submarines in the Cold War - Cruise Missile
- Air and Space Forces Magazine - The Cruise Missile Question
cruise missile
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cruise missile, type of low-flying strategicguided missile. The GermanV-1 missile used inWorld War II was aprecursor of the cruise missile, which was developed by theUnited States and theSoviet Union in the 1960s and ’70s. Capable of carrying either a nuclear or a conventional warhead, the cruise missile was designed to have a very low radarcross section and to hug the ground while traveling at a relatively slow speed to its target.
Three main versions of the cruise missile were being manufactured in the United States during the mid-1980s. All were single-stage, turbofan jet-propelled missiles with a cruising speed of 885 km per hour (550 miles per hour) and weighed from 1,200 to 1,800 kg (2,700 to 3,900 pounds) each. The missiles were guided by an inertial navigation system that was updated during flight by a technique calledTercom (terraincontour matching), using contour maps stored in the system’s computerized memory. Theair-launched cruise missile (ALCM) had a length of 6.3 m (20.7 feet); it attained a range of 2,500 km (1,500 miles). It was designed for deployment on theB-52 bomber. TheTomahawk sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM) and theTomahawk ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM) had a length of 6.4 m (21 feet), a diameter of 53 cm (21 inches), and a range of 2,500 km (1,550 miles).
The Soviet Union also produced a series of sea-, air-, and ground-launched cruise missiles. It is thought that Soviet cruise missiles had a length of about 7 m (23 feet) and a range of about 3,000 km (1,860 miles); the power plant was probably a turbojet.
