Watching my earlier promise to end this quickly and without conflict fall apart, President Trump appears increasingly angry. There are even multiple signals that he is considering supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk cruise missiles in an attempt to force the Putin government back to the negotiating table.
Of course, Putin who has a reputation for toughness is not easily intimidated. Russia can counter the threat posed by these cruise missiles. But putting political rhetoric aside and looking purely from a military-technical perspective, the Tomahawk a weapon in service for more than 40 years remains menacing.
More than that, the United States has begun deploying land-based launch systems for Tomahawks in the Philippines and Japan, so this threat must also be taken seriously by China.
Many people point out that Tomahawks are not very fast roughly Mach 0,72 and they have no stealth technology, making them relatively easy to detect by radar and intercept with anti-aircraft missiles. However, that assessment relies on a key assumption: the defender happens to have air- and missile-defense systems positioned close to the incoming flight path of the Tomahawk.
Consider, for example, the 2,000-kilometer front between Russia and Ukraine, or the tens of thousands of kilometers of coastline facing China. Any point along those areas could become an entry point for enemy cruise missiles, and the area that needs defending is vast.
To intercept Tomahawks effectively, defenders must ensure their air-defense radars provide continuous coverage over the entire sector no blind spots which requires enormous resources.
That’s not all. You also have to ensure your air-defense missile units are deployed near the missile’s flight path, with launchers positioned exactly where they can engage the incoming Tomahawk. Achieving the ideal deployment that allows your best air-defense assets to cover the missile’s route is extremely difficult. If the attacker plans the cruise-missile trajectories carefully, they can strike from directions where the opponent’s defenses are weak, making defense that much harder.
As the saying goes: ten defenses, nine gaps. A Tomahawk is certainly dangerous, but that doesn’t mean it’s unbeatable. The best defense is often offense destroying enemy cruise-missile launch sites and systems in real time is the most effective way to eliminate the threat once and for all.
