President Trump has hinted that he may send Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, which would give President Volodymyr Zelensky the ability to attack Moscow with precise munitions capable of great destruction.
Mr. Trump, who will meet with Mr. Zelensky at the White House later this week, said on Tuesday that he knew the Ukrainian leader wanted the weapons.
“We have a lot of Tomahawks,” Mr. Trump added.
Because of their long range, accuracy and low cost compared to piloted warplanes, Tomahawks have long been seen as a go-to weapon in the Pentagon’s arsenal.
The United States has launched more than 2,300 Tomahawks in combat over more than four decades. The most recent versions cost roughly $2.5 million each.
What is a cruise missile?
A cruise missile is powered by a small jet engine and has wings to produce lift, allowing it to fly like an airplane that guides itself to a target.
Is the Tomahawk new?
No.
According to U.S. government histories, development of the Tomahawk began in the early 1970s.
The U.S. military first used them in combat during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and has used them in dozens of conflicts since.
How far can they fly?
More than 1,000 miles.
How far is Moscow from Kyiv?
About 500 miles.
What are some of the Tomahawk’s advantages?
When in cruise mode, they can fly low to the ground, making them more difficult to spot by radar.
They also fly relatively fast: 550 miles per hour, or roughly 70 percent the speed of sound.
And perhaps most useful for Ukraine, the United States has many hundreds of them.
How are the missiles launched?
Like any cruise missile, the Tomahawk needs some assistance before it can begin flying to a target on its own.
The U.S. Navy’s Tomahawks use a solid-fuel rocket motor to boost the missile up to about 1,500 feet above the surface. The rocket motor falls away, the missile’s wings unfold and the air intake for the jet engine opens, allowing the Tomahawk to begin flying like an airplane.
How could Ukraine launch them?
In 2024, the U.S. Army deployed a new land-based launcher for Tomahawks and other naval missiles called Typhon, which is essentially a standard 40-foot shipping container concealing four missile tubes that rotate upward to fire.
The Army first test-fired a Tomahawk from that launcher in 2023.
They would be the longest-range U.S. weapons given to Ukraine thus far.
The Pentagon developed Typhon rather quickly after the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty between Russia and the United States — which had banned land-based cruise missiles — collapsed in 2019.
Army soldiers first deployed Typhon to the Philippines in 2024 as a show of force to China. The launchers were later sent to Australia for an exercise in July and to Japan in September.
Would Ukrainian troops need a lot of training to use them?
Not really.
In the summer of 2022, Ukraine’s army quickly learned another American-made mobile launch system called HIMARS, which fires guided rockets to a range of more than 70 miles and ATACMS missiles out to 190 miles. While the Typhon system is different in some respects, it also requires soldiers to input data into a fire control computer before launch.
The Pentagon would probably also send the equipment needed to compile the flight-planning information that the missile requires, or would have to supply Ukraine with data packages for targets inside Russia.
What do Tomahawks carry?
Typically, a warhead with the explosive equivalent of about 400 pounds of TNT.
There are also cluster weapon versions of the Tomahawk, the most common of which carries 166 small failure-prone bomblets. That type was most recently used in December 2009 during a secret and botched U.S. attack on alleged Al Qaeda training camps in Yemen.
The other variant, which remains classified, is designed to temporarily disable an adversary’s electrical grid by releasing small canisters of carbon fiber filaments that blanket electrical transmission lines and cause transformers and other equipment to short.
The Navy’s newest generation of Tomahawk missiles will also be able to attack moving ships at sea.
A variant armed with a nuclear warhead was retired in 2013, according to the Congressional Research Service.
How do Tomahawks find their targets?
The Tomahawk was originally designed to use data fed into its guidance computer before launch — terrain contour maps to verify its location as well as digital photos of the target.
Later versions incorporated GPS guidance and radio antennae that allowed the missiles to be redirected to a new target after launch.
They are maneuverable weapons that can change course to fly around obstacles like enemy air defenses, buildings or mountains before they reach their target.
John Ismay is a reporter covering the Pentagon for The Times. He served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Navy.
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