In today’s episode, we would like to discuss which cruise
missile is more powerful, Tomahawk or Kalibr? Since the early 1990s, the United States has
relied on Tomahawk cruise missiles launched from their warships and submarines. The missile with a
flight capability of 550 miles per hour, has been involved in wars in the Middle East, North Africa,
the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. This first cruise missile was launched from the USS
Merrill (DD-976), an American destroyer ship, in March 1980. In June of the same year, the UGM-109,
the underwater version of the Tomahawk system, ran an armament test. The development of the
military project lasted for two more years until 1983, when the missile system passed into service.
The Tomahawk cruise missiles were first used in Iraq during 1991 and became a symbol for
the American idea of non-contact warfare. When the US first tried out the Tomahawk
missiles during the operation Desert Storm, the Western media strongly praised its combat results.
However, in 1992 the New York Times and the Washington Post published an official report of
the US Department of Defense, which described the lessons learned by the US military during
the Gulf War and showed the real state of events, including the true capabilities of the Tomahawk.
Tomahawks can strike targets at distances over a thousand miles away, making them very
popular. However, now the Tomahawk has a strong competitor from Russia, the Kalibr missile.
It is regarded as an essential and distinguished capability for a naval power to have the
ability to attack long-distance strategic targets located in the depths of the land.
Until 2015, it was thought that only the USA and Britain had this capability
since they had Tomahawk cruise missiles. However, the United States and the United
Kingdom are no longer the only nations with long-range cruise-missile engaging capability.
Russian military forces first used the Kalibr cruise missile system
in Syria. The missiles were launched from warships and submarines at stationary targets.
On October 7, 2015, the Russian Gepard-class frigate Dagestan and three small Buyan-class
corvettes sailing in the Caspian Sea fired 26 missiles at 11 ISIS targets in three Syrian
governorates (Al-Raqqah, Idlib and Aleppo). The target distance was over 1500 kilometers.
The targets included weapons factories, command centers, ammunition warehouses, weapons storages,
fuel depots and terrorist training camps. On 20 November 2015, the Caspian fleet warships
launched another 18 Kalibr cruise missiles at seven terrorist targets in the same regions.
The Kalibr missile system has been tested in real combat conditions. It is too early to estimate the
cost of one missile and one launch, but the new Russian cruise missile has shown strong potential.
Kalibr missiles are currently deployed on Russian Navy Kilo-class submarines and more modern types,
including the Akula, Lada, and Yasen classes. They are also deployed on frigates and corvettes,
but so far have not been fitted on larger vessels, though such upgrades may eventually take place.
While a Russian Gepard-class frigate is armed with only eight Kalibr missiles, a missile-armed
destroyer would be able to carry dozens. There are well over a dozen different variants in the Kalibr
missile family, varying in launch platform, range, target profile, and speed, varying in
length from six to nine meters, but all packing a 990-pound warhead or a nuclear payload. The
land-attack variants, the 3M14T and 3M14K appear to lack the boost to Mach 3 on terminal approach.
In compensation, the inertia-guided missiles have a range of between one thousand and 1,500
km. Guidance is ins, GPS, and digital scene matching area correlation (DSMAC),
whereby images are taken during the flight by an onboard camera for comparison with stored ones.
The Russian Navy has been planning to upgrade 3M14 “Kalibr” cruise missile
with a longer-range “Kalibr-M” variant with a maximum firing range of more than 4,500 km.
Now let's see the Tomahawk missile, the Tomahawk is a long-range, all-weather, subsonic cruise
missile primarily used by the United States Navy and Royal Navy. Tomahawk cruise missile is capable
of navigation by an inertial navigation system, GPS enabled precision strike, flies at very low
altitude, and reprogrammable during flight to change target. Guidance is GPS, Ins, terrain
contour matching (TERCOM) navigation. This system compares the terrain underneath the cruise missile
with mapping data stored inside the missile to detect deviations from its nominal trajectory.15
alternative pre-programmed targets can be held before flight or acceptance of a
new target in-flight, delay and loiter option, battle damage assessment via two-way data link.
Tomahawk missile can take reconnaissance pictures after reaching a designated area
and send them to the HQ via SATCOM and wait for their instructions.
It can be loitered until the target is ‘clear to engage.’
With DSMAC (Digital Scene Mapping), a picture of a discrete target can be uploaded in a confined
region and have Tomahawks specifically find and hunt them down. With the modification of Block V,
Tomahawk has increased capabilities, which integrate new seeker, hitting the surface targets,
more than 1000 miles range, greater penetrating power, less susceptible to jamming of its seeker
and communication and navigation striking the target under the GPS taken down conditions.
The question is, which cruise missile is more powerful, Tomahawk or Kalibr?
The Kalibr suite was designed to compare favorably with Washington’s prolific but aging Tomahawk
cruise missiles. Whereas the original Kalibr 3M14 traded performance blows with the Tomahawk’s Block
IV revision in what amounts to an approximate draw tilted slightly in Kalibr’s favor, Kalibr-M
drastically outranges its US counterpart at 4,500 against 1,700 kilometers. The most significant
advantage of the 3M14T and its family is that they can be fired from a wider variety of smaller ships
than the American ones that usually carry the Tomahawk, making it easier to deploy.
It is also being developed to fire from fixed land bases, vehicles, and aircraft. Kalibr may not have
some of the advanced loitering and interactive data link capabilities of the current Tomahawk,
but that might well make it cheaper to mass-produce (in addition to
parts commonality with family variants). Tomahawk likely outclasses Kalibr is ECM
capability. While Tomahawk’s IV block revision included electronic counter-countermeasures,
the Kalibr family is relatively susceptible to jamming techniques. With the modification,
Block V Tomahawk has improved its capabilities. Its networking capabilities are beyond that of
most operational cruise missiles by a long margin. So, it is impossible to make a complete comparison
between two missiles with limited knowledge about KALIBR cruise missiles at this stage.
The Tomahawk has over 30 years of proven combat effectiveness, while the Kalibir only
appeared in 2012. The Tomahawk has been regularly upgraded and improved and renown for its accuracy,
but Russia does not make public the accuracy or reliability of the Kalibr missiles it has fired.
Anyhow Russian Navy has gained a strategic capability with Kalibr cruise missiles.
Thanks for watching and see you in the next videos.