R-360 Neptune

Ukraine's indigenous subsonic cruise missile, born for coastal defense, that sank the Black Sea Fleet flagship and now strikes deep into Russia as a land-attack weapon in a family of variants with a claimed reach of up to 1,000 km.

Overview

The R-360 Neptune is a Ukrainian-developed subsonic cruise missile originally conceived as a coastal anti-ship weapon and later adapted for deep land-attack missions. Fielded by the Ukrainian Navy, it gained global notoriety for sinking the Russian cruiser Moskva in April 2022 and has since been continuously upgraded into a family that includes a long-range land-attack variant with a declared range of 1,000 km. The missile is the centerpiece of the RK-360MC mobile coastal defense complex, launched from truck-mounted canisters, and has become Ukraine's primary sovereign strike asset for hitting Russian military, energy and industrial targets far behind the front lines.

Development

Luch Design Bureau began Neptune in the mid-2010s as a deep modernization of the Soviet Kh-35 anti-ship missile, driven by Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, which left Ukraine’s Black Sea defenses acutely exposed, according to Wikipedia. The weapon was unveiled at the 2015 Arms and Security exhibition in Kyiv, with early flight tests from 2016 and a first successful flight on 30 January 2018; a 100 km range test followed in August 2018 Wikipedia. The first training battalion of the RK-360MC system, based on the USPU-360 truck launcher, was delivered to the Ukrainian Navy in March 2021, only months before Russia’s full-scale invasion. Wartime urgency spurred the conversion to land attack: by 2023 a modified R-360 with GPS-assisted inertial navigation and an imaging-infrared terminal seeker was striking ground targets. An extended-range program announced in April 2024 produced the visibly enlarged Long Neptune (RK-360L), shown publicly in August 2025; its 1,000 km range and 260 kg warhead were officially displayed at the Zbroya exhibition in October 2025, as documented by Defense Express and Militarnyi. An interim variant with side fuel “bulges” was revealed in October 2025, reported by TWZ.

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