Tomahawk

The BGM-109 Tomahawk Land Attack Missile is a subsonic, jet-powered cruise missile produced by Raytheon and fielded primarily from US Navy surface ships and submarines. First introduced in the early 1980s, it has become the United States military’s standard long-range precision-strike weapon against fixed and — in its latest variants — moving targets. The missile is also operated by the Royal Navy, the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Netherlands Navy, and Japan has signed an agreement to acquire 400 rounds for its own maritime forces.

Tomahawk flies at low altitude using terrain-matching guidance with GPS-aided navigation, which Raytheon says gives it accuracy against targets around 1,000 miles from the launch platform. The current production baseline is the Block V family, a modernisation of the Block IV Tactical Tomahawk, or TACTOM. Block IV introduced a two-way satellite data link that allows the weapon to loiter in a holding pattern and be re-tasked in flight — the feature that gives commanders the option to switch targets after launch. Within Block V, the Block Va variant adds a seeker intended to engage moving ships at sea, while the Block Vb carries the Joint Multi-Effects Warhead System, designed to defeat a broader range of hardened or dispersed land targets. The missile is launched from vertical launch cells on Aegis warships, from torpedo tubes on submarines through a capsule, and more recently from ground-based launchers associated with the US Army’s Typhon Mid-Range Capability — a fielding that returns a weapon class formerly covered by the INF Treaty to land. Raytheon reports more than 550 flight tests and over 2,350 operational launches across the type’s service life.

The most recent public use came in January 2024, when US and British warships fired Tomahawks at Houthi targets in Yemen following attacks on Red Sea shipping. The weapon has been used repeatedly since the 1991 Gulf War, in Iraq, the Balkans, Libya and Syria.

In August 2026 Raytheon announced a seven-year contract worth $22.9 billion to accelerate Tomahawk production for the US Navy under the Department of War’s “Arsenal of Freedom” programme. The agreement is intended to lift annual output above 1,000 missiles; Raytheon says it delivered three times as many Tomahawks in the first half of 2026 as in the first half of 2025. The ramp reflects a broader push to rebuild long-range precision-strike stocks drawn down by use in the Red Sea and by transfers to allies, and to prepare for a potential Pacific contingency in which the Army’s new ground launchers would extend the missile’s reach from land.