The AIM-9X Sidewinder is a current-generation infrared-guided short-range missile used by combat aircraft and, through NASAMS, as a surface-launched interceptor against airborne threats.
The AIM-424 Malice is a Raytheon-built US Navy very-long-range air-to-air missile intended to engage aircraft beyond 463 km while fitting inside the F-35C's weapons bay.
The AIM-260 Joint Advanced Tactical Missile is a classified US long-range air-to-air weapon designed to replace the AIM-120 AMRAAM while retaining a form factor compatible with internal fighter weapon bays.
China's YJ-19 is a submarine-launched, air-breathing hypersonic anti-ship missile sized for standard 533 mm torpedo tubes and accepted for service aboard Type 039B Yuan-class submarines.
Russia's UMPK-PD is a jet-powered evolution of the UMPK glide-bomb kit, reportedly extending air-launched strike range to 150–200 km while keeping launch aircraft farther from Ukrainian air defenses.
Russia's UMPB D-30SN is a purpose-built, 250 kg-class guided glide bomb designed to strike targets at up to 100 km when released from high altitude.
Tiberius Invictus is an experimental ramjet-powered precision-strike family intended to deliver missile-like range from existing artillery and other launch domains, with the Invictus-200 claimed to reach 200 km at up to Mach 3.
Russia's RS-28 Sarmat is a heavy, silo-launched intercontinental ballistic missile intended to replace the R-36M2 and carry MIRVs or Avangard glide vehicles, but its operational status remains unverified after repeated test failures and delays.
Russia's R-37M is a very-long-range air-to-air missile designed to threaten fighters, support aircraft and other airborne targets at distances beyond conventional air-combat weapons.
Neros Archer is a US-made attritable FPV attack drone developed with Ukrainian and American military partners, selected by the US Army under its Purpose-Built Attritable Systems programme.
The AGM-158C LRASM is a low-observable, air-launched anti-ship cruise missile designed to identify and attack warships autonomously in contested electronic environments.
Krasnopol is a Soviet-origin family of 152 mm and 155 mm laser-guided artillery projectiles designed to strike point targets designated by ground observers or reconnaissance drones.
Izdeliye 305, or LMUR, is a Russian helicopter-launched standoff missile with an imaging seeker and two-way datalink, used operationally from Mi-28NM and Ka-52M attack helicopters in Ukraine.
GMLRS is the 227 mm precision-guided rocket fired by HIMARS and M270 launchers, combining GPS-aided inertial guidance with ranges from 70 km to more than 150 km.
The M982 Excalibur is a GPS- and inertially guided 155 mm artillery projectile that gives compatible howitzers precision-strike capability at extended range, but its performance in Ukraine has exposed the vulnerability of satellite-guided ammunition to electronic warfare.
The CJ-1000 is a Chinese road-mobile, scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missile presented for long-range land attack and anti-ship missions, although its deployment status and performance remain unverified.
Brimstone is a British precision attack missile with radar and laser guidance, designed for moving targets and adapted by Ukraine for ground launch against Russian armour.
Avangard is Russia's nuclear-capable strategic hypersonic glide vehicle, carried above the atmosphere by a heavy ICBM before manoeuvring toward its target at externally estimated speeds of up to Mach 27.
Helsing's first combat drone — a plywood-framed, AI-guided loitering munition co-produced in Ukraine. It launched badly enough that Kyiv stopped ordering, then improved enough to hit better than half its targets around Pokrovsk.
A ramjet missile that homes on the radar trying to detect it. The Kh-31P is why Ukrainian Patriot crews cannot leave their radars radiating, and why the air-defence problem in Ukraine is as much about emissions discipline as about interceptor stocks.
A 1960s anti-ship missile carrying nearly a tonne of explosive at Mach 4.6, fired at cities it was never designed to hit. Its error is measured in hundreds of metres, which is why its record in Ukraine is a record of civilian casualties.
The precision half of Russia's air-launched arsenal. Where the Kh-22 lands within half a kilometre of where it was aimed, the Kh-59MK2 is credited with metres — and it is the missile Ukrainian air defence reports intercepting one at a time.
North Korea's heavyweight Hwasong-11 — a solid-fuel ballistic missile more than ten metres long, claimed to carry a 2.5-tonne warhead roughly five times an Iskander's, transferred to Russia in 2026 and deployed within range of Ukraine.
A plywood aircraft with no warhead and a metal-coated sphere in the fuselage. The Luneburg lens makes it read on radar as a Shahed, so Ukrainian air defence must treat every one as lethal — which is the entire weapon.
The small Shahed. Half the weight of a Shahed-136 with a third of the warhead and a rotary engine, it entered Russian service as the Geran-1 in 2022 and is still a separately planned production line four years later.
The US Air Force went to two firms almost nobody had heard of, asked for a cruise missile cheap enough to run out of without regret, and got flight tests in four months. ERAM is the West's answer to the cost-exchange crisis Shahed created.
Russia's second Shahed line — built not at Alabuga but by Almaz-Antey subsidiary Kupol in Izhevsk, with Chinese engineering help. Heavier warhead than a Geran-2, now sold abroad by Rosoboronexport and fielded in Mali.
The largest and fastest member of Russia's Geran family — a 6-metre, cruise-missile-shaped "missile-drone" flying at up to 600 km/h with a 90 kg warhead, air-launchable from a Su-25 and reportedly able to carry an air-to-air missile of its own.
The Fateh-110 is an Iranian road-mobile, solid-propellant short-range ballistic missile developed for conventional theater strikes at ranges of approximately 200 to 300 km.
Thundart is the MBDA-Safran guided rocket-artillery munition and 8×8 launcher selected in June 2026 as France's sovereign FLP-T choice to replace the aging LRU — a 150 km, ITAR-free deep-strike capability France hopes to field around 2030.
The Perennial Hornet is a ~$5,000 AI-guided one-way strike drone from Eric Schmidt's Perennial Autonomy — an optically navigated fixed-wing aircraft Ukrainian units use to burn Russian supply trucks 50-150 km behind the front, the workhorse of Kyiv's "logistics lockdown" campaign.
DART is a Ukrainian balloon-launched strike missile: dropped from a stratospheric aerostat at 12-18 km, it shuts off its own navigation at ~6 km and finishes on a fixed solid-fuel course, leaving Russian jamming nothing to attack. Its graphite warhead is built to short out power grids.
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.
Ukraine's UJ-26 Bober, or Beaver, is a long-range one-way attack drone associated with HUR strikes against Moscow, Crimea and Russian military infrastructure.
The AGM-114 Hellfire is the 40-year workhorse of US precision strike — the laser-guided missile that armed the Apache against Soviet tanks, defined the armed-drone era on the Reaper, killed Soleimani, and in its bladed R9X "Ninja" form kills single targets with steel blades instead of a warhead.
The Shahed-101 is Iran's small one-way-attack drone — the quiet, catapult-launched progenitor of the Shahed-107, used by Hezbollah and Iraqi militias since 2021, confirmed in Ukraine from late 2025 (all-Iranian parts), and refielded in an electric, near-silent variant for Iran's 2026 Gulf strikes.
The Chernika-2 ("Blueberry") is Russia's foam flying-wing strike drone — 3.5 kg warhead, 100 km reach, ~$10k all-in, with Russian-claimed machine-vision navigation that flies under jamming. Over 11,000 claimed built; hitting Kharkiv since June 2025.
The Shahed-107 is Iran's mid-range strike drone reportedly built for Russia's war — announced as a 1,500 km HIMARS hunter, revealed by Ukrainian teardown as a ~300 km, 15 kg-warhead X-tail drone hitting the near rear. The gap between those two descriptions is the story.
The Roketsan Bora is Turkey's combat-proven tactical ballistic missile — fired against PKK targets in 2019, the first Turkish BM used in anger, and exported to Indonesia as the Khan: the first Turkish ballistic-missile export, deliberately sized under the MTCR threshold.
The Emad is Iran's first precision-guided ballistic missile — a Ghadr airframe with a maneuvering reentry vehicle, ~1,700 km range. It has flown in every True Promise salvo against Israel since April 2024, and the 2026 war gutted the launcher force and factories that field it.
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.
The V2U is Russia's autonomous AI strike drone — Nvidia Jetson brain, terrain-matching navigation, and late-2025 builds recovered with no radio link at all: nothing to jam. CSIS assesses Russia has likely fielded a fully autonomous weapon in combat. Maker unknown.
The Molniya is Russia's plywood-and-tape strike drone — a $300–1,600 fixed-wing weapon launched by the thousands each month against Ukrainian cities and supply roads, now spawning fiber-optic, FPV-carrier, recon and 13 kg heavy variants. Cheap mass as doctrine.
The LGM-35A Sentinel is the US ICBM replacing the 1970-vintage Minuteman III — and America's most troubled strategic program: an 81% cost breach to at least $141B, silo reuse abandoned for all-new silos, first flight slipped to 2028 and IOC to the early 2030s.
The JL-3 is China's third-generation submarine-launched ballistic missile — a ~10,000 km-class, likely MIRV-capable weapon now fielded on Jin-class submarines, which the Pentagon says ranges most of the continental US. First shown publicly at the September 2025 parade.
The DF-27 is China's ICBM-range hypersonic glide missile — per the Pentagon a fielded conventional ICBM with the world's longest-range anti-ship variant, reaching Hawaii, Alaska and much of the Pacific. Never shown or acknowledged by Beijing; nearly all data traces to one leaked US document.
The Hwasong-18 is North Korea's first solid-fuel ICBM — cold-launched, road-mobile, three-for-three in 2023 tests, with an implied 15,000 km reach covering the entire US. It compresses pre-launch warning to minutes and sparked an unresolved fight over Russian design help.
The Roketsan Tayfun is Turkey's longest-range ballistic missile — revealed by a 561 km test in 2022, in mass production since 2023, with the enlarged Block-4 marketed as Turkey's "first hypersonic missile." Range claims span 280 to 1,500 km; only the demonstration is certain.
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.
India's long-range deterrent — the Agni-V is a road-mobile, nuclear-capable ballistic missile that puts all of China within reach. In 2024 India test-fired a version carrying multiple independently-targeted warheads (MIRV), joining a small club of powers with that technology.
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.
Taiwan's "carrier killer" — the ramjet-powered Hsiung Feng III streaks toward enemy ships at around Mach 3, too fast for many defences to react. Fired from warships, coastal batteries and fighter jets, it is a core asymmetric weapon meant to make any Chinese invasion fleet pay a heavy price.
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.
Europe's air-superiority edge — the only operational ramjet air-to-air missile, whose throttleable engine keeps it accelerating to the target for a "no-escape zone" far larger than the AMRAAM's. Built by six European nations for the Typhoon, Rafale and Gripen — and now reaching Ukraine.
A clever bolt-together weapon — a small glide bomb strapped to a surplus rocket motor to give HIMARS a 150 km punch that can curve around defenses and even strike behind the launcher. On paper a bargain deep-strike round; in Ukraine, blunted badly by Russian jamming.
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.
The "bigger brother" of the Shahed-136 — Iran's large, long-range kamikaze drone, unveiled with the boast that it was built to hit Tel Aviv and Haifa. Claimed to fly ~2,000 km with an anti-radar seeker, it's real and fielded — and US forces have already blown one up.
Iran's solid-fuel medium-range ballistic missile — quick to launch, road-mobile, and tipped with a maneuvering warhead that jinks in its final seconds to dodge interceptors. It flew in Iran's 2024 barrages on Israel, and its booster later seeded the Fattah-1.
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.
Iran's hypersonic-glide evolution of the Fattah-1 — a missile pairing a solid-fuel booster with a maneuvering liquid-fuel glide vehicle, claimed to reach Mach 15 over ~1,500 km. Topical after the Israel–Iran exchanges, but its real performance is heavily disputed.
China's ship-and-air-launched anti-ship hypersonic ballistic missile — a "carrier killer" with a maneuvering glide vehicle fired from Type 055 destroyers and H-6N bombers. The core of the A2/AD picture meant to hold US carriers at risk deep in the Pacific.
Ukraine's home-built tank-killer — a tripod ATGM with one defining trick: the crew fires it by cable from up to 50 m away, in cover, while the launcher sits exposed. Cheaper than a Javelin, it became famous for killing tanks and, on video, shooting down Russian helicopters.
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.
A startup's bet that hypersonics can be cheap. Castelion — founded by ex-SpaceX engineers — is building Blackbeard, a Mach 5+ strike missile aimed at ~$300k a round and 500 a year, applying the drone war's "affordable mass" logic to a weapon legacy primes sell for $40M.
Ukraine's first home-built guided glide bomb — a clamp-on wing-and-guidance kit that turns a dumb 250-kg bomb into a stand-off precision weapon, the Ukrainian answer to Russia's devastating FAB-UMPK. Declared combat-ready in May 2026; no confirmed strike yet.
Russia's jet-powered Shahed, built to outfly the cheap interceptor drones that were knocking propeller Shaheds down. Early figures said the speed cost it range. A year of upgrades says otherwise: 850 km declared, 960 km flown, 96% of Ukraine in reach.
Anduril's man-portable VTOL loitering munition — AI-guided, returnable if no strike, and the U.S. Marine Corps' first squad-level autonomous organic precision fires system, ordered under the $249M OPF-L program.
Germany's combat-proven eVTOL loitering munition — a VTOL, AI-guided one-way attacker that pairs with reconnaissance drones for EW-resilient precision strikes.
Iran's jet-turbine loitering munition — a faster, costlier successor to the Shahed-136, fielded by Russia as the Geran-3 and by Iran itself in the Gulf.
Israel's 120 mm precision-guided mortar munition, the Iron Sting, transforms any standard smoothbore tube into a room-level, dual-mode (GPS/laser) strike asset — combat-proven since October 2023 in Gaza and Lebanon.
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.
The US Army’s containerized mid-range launcher that puts Tomahawk and SM-6 on land — restoring a 500–2,000+ km strike band after the INF Treaty, and the centerpiece of Army Pacific deterrence and an export saga that collapsed in Europe.
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.
Turkey’s man-portable quadcopter loitering munition — embedded machine-learning autonomy, swarm-capable, and the world’s most cited alleged lethal autonomous weapon system.
Israel's pioneering anti-radiation loitering munition — a delta-wing flying-wing drone that autonomously hunts and destroys radar emitters over 200 km, firing no active signal, and the genealogical root of the Harop family that reshaped SEAD in Nagorno-Karabakh and South Asia.
A canister-launched, electric-propulsion loitering munition for precision anti-armor strikes with man-in-the-loop control, adopted by the US Army and Marine Corps.
Elbit Systems’ SkyStriker — a canister-launched, electric loitering munition with a 5–10 kg warhead, 100–200+ km range, abort-and-relaunch capability, and tight integration with the PULS rocket launcher.
Israel's long-range precision strike missile — a theater quasi-ballistic system launched from mobile ground launchers, ships, or fighters, delivering a 570 kg warhead with 10-meter accuracy up to 430 km.
Israel's supersonic stand-off missile — a low-cost, quasi-ballistic strike weapon derived from the EXTRA artillery rocket that lets fighters engage high-value fixed targets from outside enemy air defenses.
Israel's GPS-independent electro-optical bomb kit and glide-weapon family — a scene-matching system that converts unguided bombs into precision stand-off munitions, proven from Balakot to Tehran.
Israel Aerospace Industries' canister-launched, man-in-the-loop loitering munition — built to hunt and kill air defenses, high-value targets and radars after hours of silent search.
Israel's multi-platform electro-optical anti-tank and precision-strike missile family — from the shoulder-fired Spike SR to the 50 km helicopter-launched Spike NLOS, the most-exported Western ATGM, in service with 39 nations.
A modular French rocket-boosted precision glide-bomb kit that transforms standard bombs into jam-resistant stand-off weapons, proving critical in Ukraine where it retains accuracy under Russian GPS denial.
The US Army’s first intermediate-range hypersonic weapon — a road-mobile boost-glide missile designed to strike defended targets at theatre depth with a speed of Mach 5+, up to 3,500 km range, and a common All-Up Round shared with the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike programme.
America's next-generation tactical ballistic missile — a HIMARS/MLRS-fired deep-strike weapon that doubles ATACMS reach, adds anti-ship capability, and made its combat debut against Iran in 2026.
Iran's first solid-fuel medium-range ballistic missile — a two-stage, road-mobile MRBM fielded by the IRGC, with a ~2,000 km range and a short-notice launch capability that marks a step beyond liquid-propellant Shahab derivatives.
Ukraine’s first indigenously developed short-range ballistic missile — free of Western range and target restrictions, and now serial-produced to strike airbases, command posts and logistics hubs deep inside Russian-controlled territory.
Low-cost multi-purpose Russian drone, a Shahed-136 lookalike used as a saturation decoy, one-way attack, reconnaissance and signal relay, forcing costly air-defense engagements at extreme cost asymmetry.
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.
Russia’s ship- and coast-launched scramjet-powered hypersonic cruise missile — a carrier-killer with nuclear capability, used sparingly against Ukraine since 2024.
China's road-mobile, solid-fuel intercontinental ballistic missile — capable of carrying multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles and reaching the continental United States from dispersed launch points inside China.
Iran's heaviest liquid-fuel medium-range ballistic missile family, derived from the North Korean Musudan, carrying large conventional warheads or submunitions out to ~2,000 km and assessed capable of 3,000 km with a lighter payload — a centrepiece of IRGC strategic strike and the subject of.
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.
Shoulder-fired, single-use anti-tank missile with overfly top-attack and fire-and-forget PLOS guidance — the weapon that defined Ukraine's close-quarters tank-killing in 2022.
China's pioneering land-based anti-ship ballistic missile — the "carrier killer" that forced the U.S. Navy to rethink its force structure, holding aircraft carriers at risk out to 1,500 km.