Anduril's Barracuda is a family of low-cost, turbojet-powered autonomous cruise missiles — Barracuda-100, -250 and -500 — built for mass production, with a Pentagon order for at least 3,000 rounds and co-production lines planned in Poland and Taiwan.
The Paveh is Iran's 1,650 km-claimed cruise missile — the IRGC's Project 351, identical to the Houthis' Quds that hit Saudi Aramco in 2019. Used against Israel in April 2024 (0 of ~30 got through), exported to three proxy arsenals, and absent from the missile-dominated 2025–26 wars.
The S8000 Banderol is Russia's AliExpress cruise missile — a Kronshtadt-built weapon around a Chinese hobby turbojet, launched from Orion drones: 500 km range, 114 kg warhead, agility Ukrainian intelligence says beats the Kalibr. First used on Kyiv in June 2026.
South Korea's strike arsenal — the Hyunmoo family runs from Tomahawk-like cruise missiles to the Hyunmoo-5 "monster missile," a conventional ballistic weapon with an 8-tonne bunker-buster warhead built to smash North Korea's deepest command bunkers. The non-nuclear backbone of Seoul's deterrence.
The world's fastest cruise missile in service — India and Russia's BrahMos is a Mach-3 ramjet weapon that hits ships and land targets from sea, land, air and submarine. India used it in combat against Pakistan in 2025 and now exports it to the Philippines.
Japan's counterstrike missile — the upgraded Type 12 stretches a once-coastal anti-ship weapon to ~1,000 km, adds stealth shaping, terrain-following and evasive maneuvers, and can hit ships or land targets from ground launchers, ships and aircraft. The spearhead of Tokyo's new strike posture.
Norway's stealth ship-killer — a low-flying, fully passive cruise missile with an imaging-infrared seeker that emits nothing for defenders to detect, weaves around islands and terrain, and is now the West's anti-ship weapon of choice from US Navy ships to Marine truck launchers.
The cruise missile that killed the INF Treaty — a ground-launched, nuclear-capable weapon the US says flies far past the 500 km the treaty banned, and Russia insists stays just under it. The arms-control dispute became its legacy; its reported 2025 combat use in Ukraine is its grim sequel.
Russia's Mach-2.5 ramjet cruise missile and the Bastion-P coastal batteries that fire it — designed to kill ships, but used relentlessly against Ukrainian land targets because its speed makes it brutally hard to intercept. The parent design of India's BrahMos.
Ukraine's "Hell" — a jet-powered missile-drone, the faster sibling of Palianytsia. Built in under a year and already in serial production, it flies a mini-cruise-missile profile to hit Russian refineries, depots and airfields, and was used in the June 2026 Moscow oil-refinery strike.
Russia's stealthy precision cruise missile — a low-flying, low-radar-signature weapon shaped to fit inside the Su-57's bays. Launched from tactical jets with little warning, it destroyed the Trypilska power plant near Kyiv in 2024 and now spearheads the campaign against Ukraine's grid.
Ukraine's "buzz bomb" — a deliberately crude, dirt-cheap pulsejet missile built by volunteers to be fired in salvos and mixed with decoys, forcing Russia to spend million-dollar interceptors on a $3,000 target. The loudness is the point.
Ukraine's home-built jet "missile-drone" — a cruise-missile/drone hybrid named after a hearth-bread that doubles as a wartime shibboleth. Built in 18 months to hit the Russian airfields that bomb Ukrainian cities, it sidesteps the range limits on Western weapons.
Israel's air-launched turbojet loitering cruise missile — man-in-the-loop precision and multi-platform flexibility from F-16s to PULS MLRS. Combat-proven since the 2006 Lebanon War, and used to suppress Iranian air defences in the 2026 Iran campaign.
America's premier low-observable air-launched standoff cruise missile, available in short-, extended- and extreme-range variants, and the weapon that bore the heaviest consumption burden of the 2026 Iran campaign.
Russia's experimental nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile of claimed unlimited range — designed to evade missile defenses through circuitous low-altitude flight, plagued by a troubled test record and not yet in service.
A German-Swedish stealthy air-launched cruise missile designed to destroy hardened and buried targets from over 500 km, carrying the unique MEPHISTO tandem warhead and serving Germany, Spain, and South Korea.
Ukraine's homegrown deep-strike cruise missile — a 3,000 km-range, heavy-warhead missile built for mass production at low cost to hit Russian military-industrial targets.
Ukraine's indigenous subsonic cruise missile, developed for coastal defense but now a deep-strike land-attack weapon. It sank the Russian cruiser Moskva in 2022 and, in its Long Neptune form, claims a 1,000 km reach.
China's principal subsonic land-attack cruise missile — fielded from ground launchers, H-6K bombers, and warships, with reported nuclear capability and ranges exceeding 2,000 km — widely viewed as a direct counterpart to the US Tomahawk and Russian Kalibr.
Russia's mainstay sea- and submarine-launched cruise missile family, covering land-attack and anti-ship roles; first combat use in Syria (2015) and a primary weapon in the war against Ukraine's energy grid.
The British-French Storm Shadow / SCALP-EG is a stealthy, air-launched cruise missile designed to destroy hardened targets from stand-off range, and the weapon that gave Ukraine its first long-range deep-strike capability.
The BGM-109 Tomahawk is the US Navy’s primary subsonic land-attack cruise missile — a precision stand-off weapon launched from ships and submarines and used in every major US conflict since 1991.
China's second-generation nuclear attack submarine, the Type 093 Shang family, from initial torpedo-armed boats to the VLS-equipped Type 093B, forms the backbone of the PLAN's undersea force.
Russia's stealthy air-launched cruise missile — a long-range subsonic weapon carrying a 450 kg conventional warhead, the primary stand-off munition in Moscow's sustained aerial campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure.