A cruise missile is a guided missile that carries an explosive payload and uses a lifting wing and a propulsion system, usually a jet engine, to allow sustained flight; it is essentially a flying bomb. Cruise missiles are generally designed to carry a large conventional or nuclear warhead many hundreds of miles with high accuracy. Modern cruise missiles can travel at supersonic or high subsonic speeds, are self-navigating, and fly on a non-ballistic very low altitude trajectory in order to avoid radar detection. In general (and for the purposes of this article), cruise missiles are distinct from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in that they are used only as weapons and not for reconnaissance, the warhead is integrated into the vehicle, and the vehicle is always sacrificed in the mission
HYPERSONIC
A Hypersonic variant of the BrahMos cruise missile called the BrahMos-II is being jointly developed by India and Russia. The development of missile has already started and has been Lab Tested with speeds of Mach 5.26 Once developed it will be the first Hypersonic cruise missile and the fastest cruise missile in the world.
* BrahMos-II Hypersonic (India/ Russia) (Lab Tested with speeds of Mach 5.26)
SUPERSONIC
These missiles travel faster than the speed of sound, usually using ramjet engines. The range is typically 100-500 km, but can be greater. Guidance systems vary.
* Supersonic Low Altitude Missile (SLAM) (not to be confused with the similarly named subsonic Standoff Land Attack Missile) and SM-64 Navaho were U.S. early-cold-war era projects for strategic long-range cruise missiles. Neither was accepted into service.
* P-500 Bazalt (Soviet Union/Russia)
* P-270 Moskit "Sunburn" (Soviet Union/Russia)
* P-800 Oniks (Soviet Union)
* P-700 Granit (Soviet Union/Russia)
* 3M-54 Klub (Russia) supersonic terminal stage only
* C-101 (China)
* C-301 (China)
* C-803 (China/Pakistan) supersonic terminal stage only
* C-805 (China)
* KD-88 (China)
* YJ-91 (China)
* BrahMos (India/Russia)
Long-range subsonic
Both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. developed several long-range subsonic cruise missiles. These missiles have a range of over 1,000 km and fly at about 800 km/h.[citation needed] They typically have a launch weight of about 1,500 kg, and can carry either a conventional or a nuclear warhead. Earlier versions of these missiles used inertial navigation; later versions use much more accurate TERCOM and DSMAC systems. Most recent versions can use satellite navigation.
Medium-range subsonic
These missiles are about the same size and weight and fly at similar speeds to the above category, but the range is (officially) less than 1,000 km. Guidance systems vary.
Short-range
These are subsonic missiles which weigh around 500 kg (1,100 lb) and have a range of 70-300 km (40-200 mi. Navigation systems are usually simpler than those of larger missiles. They are not always called "cruise" missiles.
A guided missile is a self-propelled projectile used as a weapon. Missiles are typically propelled by rockets or jet engines. Missiles generally have one or more explosive warheads, although other weapon types may also be used.
Ballistic missiles are largely used for land attack missions. Although normally associated with nuclear weapons, some conventionally armed ballistic missiles are in service, such as ATACMS. The V2 had demonstrated that a ballistic missile could deliver a warhead to a target city with no possibility of interception, and the introduction of nuclear weapons meant it could do useful damage when it arrived. The accuracy of these systems was fairly poor, but post-war development by most military forces improved the basic inertial platform concept to the point where it could be used as the guidance system on ICBMs flying thousands of miles. Today the ballistic missile represents the only strategic deterrent in most military forces; the USAFs continued support of manned bombers is considered by some to be entirely political in nature. Ballistic missiles are primarily surface launched, with air launch being theoretically possible using a weapon such as the canceled Skybolt missile.
ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering a warhead (often nuclear) to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the laws of orbital mechanics and ballistics. To date, ballistic missiles have been propelled during powered flight by chemical rocket engines of various types.