Raytheon To Give Tomahawk A New Edge

Submarine-launched Tomahawk missile. (Photograph courtesy of Raytheon)

From Popular Mechanics:

The Tomahawk cruise missile gets a 21st-century upgrade so it can destroy enemy warships and hardened bunkers.

Last Friday, Raytheon scored a Navy contract worth more than $12.8 million to create a new warhead for the Tomahawk missile. Program officials with the company say the workhorse cruise missile will be fit with a warhead that can crack hardened targets and that could turn the Tomahawk into an intelligent ship-killer. Currently, the Tomahawk missile is fixed with a 1000-pound explosive that sprays fragments, an ideal configuration to destroy soft land targets, such as stationary infantry formations or unprotected buildings. But to take on a bunker or other shielded structures, the missile needs to have a two-stage warhead. The Tomahawk will use a shaped charge to destroy any armor, such as the concrete roof of a buried bunker or the thick steel bulkhead of a ship, allowing a second explosive behind to enter and detonate in the vulnerable interior. It will be effective for heavily fortified still or slow-moving targets.

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My Comment: This is the U.S. Navy getting ready for the future navy from China.