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The development of hypersonic missiles could, however, push out the Tomahawk down the road as the technology gets more advanced and of a size compatible with the Navy’s ubiquitous Mark 41 VLS launcher. “Between Tomahawk Block V, the SM-6 and the NSM, the Navy has a collection of attack weapons that they are happy with,” he said, adding that a long-running effort to develop a next-generation land-attack weapon has lost some of its urgency.

The combination of the SM-6, which has a surface strike mode, the new 100-plus-mile ranged anti-ship Naval Strike Missile bound for the littoral combat ships and next-generation frigate, and the Block V upgrades on Tomahawk, will give the Navy’s venerable birds a place in the service’s vertical launch system cells for some time to come, Clark said.

Navy photo by MC2 Devin Langer)Ĭlark, the Hudson analyst, agreed that the mix was important, saying that even with the arrival of faster missiles, the Tomahawk has a place. The destroyer Dewey conducts a tomahawk missile flight test while underway in the western Pacific. Not everything is going to be hypersonic or even supersonic, nor does it have to be, he argued, but the cost per salvo make it attractive as part of a varied and complex threat to present an adversary. The key to thinking about a sub-sonic cruise missile is understanding how it fits into a mix of weapons, Karako said. “The next time the President says to the Navy, ‘Hey, go schwack this terrorist training camp,’ they’re going to want Tomahawks.”ĥ. “As long as they can keep them to about a million dollars per shot, the Navy is going to want those all day long,” Karako said. Tom Karako, an expert in missile technology with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, agreed that cost is a big advantage of Tomahawk, especially for low-end missions. That’s one of the reasons why Tomahawk is going to be in the inventory for a while to come, even as it brings back that longer-range anti-ship capability that we’ve been missing for some time.” “It can be purchased in larger quantities and you can afford to lose some to defensive capabilities even as you penetrate. “The key capability of Tomahawk is the cost.” Hendrix said. In 2017, Raytheon’s Tomahawk program manager told reporters at an event at the missile plant in Tucson, Ariz., that the navigation system upgrades will ensure the missile can strike targets even if GPS is taken down. But it could, perhaps, also counter enemy radar that might be used to target it and shoot it down.” “They’ve incorporated a lot of survivability into Tomahawk over the years, this takes it a step further to make it less susceptible to jamming of its seeker or its communications. “The hardening and the electronic countermeasures they’ve put into it make it harder to find and target with radar, and that improves its survivability.

“It has greater electronic hardening to be able to work through jamming more effectively,” Clark said. This is about making it tougher to counter and detect electronically, said Bryan Clark, a retired submarine officer and senior fellow at The Hudson Institute. The first iteration of the Block V upgrades the missile’s communication and navigation systems.