Unmanned, aircraft-like missile systems designed to carry a warhead to a surface target. Cruise missile designs emerged during World War I, but the first effective operational system was the German V-1 Buzz Bomb used during World War II. After World War II, jet-propelled cruise missiles were developed as delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons, allowing strikes at night and in all weather conditions and removing concerns over aircrew survivability. The U.S. military developed a series of surface-to-surface systems such as the U.S. Air Force's intercontinental-range Snark (briefly operational in 1961) and the shorter-range theater nuclear systems Matador and Mace. These systems and the navy's Regulus missile for ship-or submarine-to-shore strikes were replaced by ballistic missiles and aircraft-delivered weapons that offered advantages in survivability, accuracy, and flexibility over the early land-based cruise missiles. The Soviet Union also developed a number of cruise missile systems for surface-to-surface theater delivery of nuclear weapons but also used cruise missiles in a broad range of ship-, submarine-, and aircraft-launched roles during the 1950s and 1960s.

The U.S. and Soviet militaries both developed cruise missiles for aircraft delivery against strategic targets. Examples of such systems included the Soviet AS-3 Kangaroo and the U.S. Air Force Hound Dog missile in the 1960s. As a strategic weapon, cruise missiles extended the range of manned bombers and could suppress enemy defenses and complicate the defensive plans of the adversary. In the 1980s, the U.S. military fielded a new generation of nuclear air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM) that extended the useful life of the B-52 bomber. The U.S. Navy also fielded a nuclear submarine-launched cruise missile called the Tomahawk, which was eventually deployed in a conventional land-attack version that was also installed on surface ships.

Cruise missile systems initially involved primarily nuclear warheads, but conventional warheads were increasingly used as guidance capabilities improved. A key nonstrategic mission was antiship attack, fielded in land-, ship-, submarine-, and air-launched systems. These cruise missiles provided smaller naval forces and coastal defensive positions the ability to challenge larger navies. The Egyptian Navy, using Soviet-made Komar-class boats and Styx ship-to-ship missiles, demonstrated the antiship potential of cruise missiles by sinking the Israeli destroyer Eilat in 1967, history's first loss of a ship to a guided missile.

The final significant nuclear role for cruise missiles in the Cold War was the mid-1980s U.S. deployment of mobile ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCM), based on the Tomahawk submarine-launched missile, to bases in Britain and on the European continent in response to the Soviet deployment of the SS-20. Combined with the deployment of the Pershing II ballistic missile, the GLCM deployment contributed to arms control negotiations that resulted in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the removal of GLCM, Pershing II, and SS-20 systems from Europe. Conventional cruise missiles grew in capability and importance during the 1980s. Their increasingly important role was ably demonstrated during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Jerome V. Martin

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Further Reading
Neufeld, Jacob. Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force, 1945–1960. Office of Air Force History. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989.; Scott, Harriet Fast, and William F. Scott. The Armed Forces of the U.S.S.R. 4th ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2002.; Werrell, Kenneth P. The Evolution of the Cruise Missile. Maxwell Air Force Base, AL: Air University Press, 1985.