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The Tomahawk cruise missile traces its guidance to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in the 1970s, when engineers needed a low-flying subsonic missile that could slip under Soviet radar long before GPS was fully operational in the mid-1990s. Their answer was TERCOM, terrain contour matching, which used a radar altimeter to compare the ground below with stored elevation maps. Block II missiles added DSMAC, which photographed the ground with a camera and even a strobe light at night, then matched low-resolution contrast maps prepared on the ground from spy satellite photos. The Block IV Tactical Tomahawk, operational around 2004, added a two-way satellite link so controllers could make it loiter, switch to one of 15 alternate targets or take new coordinates in flight.

In February 2026, during Operation Epic Fury against Iran, the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported that more than 1,000 Tomahawks were fired, nearly emptying the U.S. stockpile. A Bellingcat investigation concluded that a U.S. Tomahawk struck an elementary school in Minab on February 28, about 100 meters from an IRGC facility; Iranian authorities reported 175 casualties, most of them children, and a preliminary U.S. military investigation found the strike was likely a U.S. Tomahawk that deviated. In August 2026 the Pentagon signed a $22.9 billion contract with RTX for more than 1,000 missiles a year for seven years.

• U.S. forces fired 288 Tomahawks in the 1991 Gulf War, 802 in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and 135 against Houthi targets in early 2024.
• A Block IV cost about $1.87 million in 2017, while modernized Block V missiles run about $2.5 million each, and RTX can retrofit older missiles to Block V standards.
• The Block VA Maritime Strike Tomahawk uses passive and active radar to hunt moving ships at sea.
• Los Alamos National Laboratory has explored turning leftover JP-10 fuel into a thermobaric blast, and corn ethanol as a JP-10 alternative.
• Japan bought 400 Tomahawks but was told deliveries would slip to 2028, and Russia’s Vladimir Putin warned that U.S. Typhon launchers planned for Germany from 2026 risked a Cold War-style missile crisis.