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.
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.
Russia’s ship- and coast-launched scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missile — a carrier-killer with nuclear capability, used sparingly against Ukraine since 2024.
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 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.