Take This 1 Weapon Away from the U.S. Military and Its in Big Trouble

Robert Farley

Security,

As much as anything, the Tomahawk missile is the symbol of America’s post–Cold War military ascendancy. 

As much as anything, the Tomahawk missile is the symbol of America’s post–Cold War military ascendancy. Destroying things cheaply, risk-free has been a hallmark of U.S. military policy since the 1990s, largely because of the TLAM. In its absence, the United States might have found itself less eager to intervene in conflicts around the world.

(This first appeared last year.)

For the past three decades, America’s signature weapon of war has been the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, or TLAM. The TLAM has helped bust down the doors of air-defense networks from Iraq to Libya, and has become a favorite tool of political influence for several presidents.

But what if the TLAM had never existed, or at least not in the form that we have grown accustomed to? What if the United States had given up the TLAM in arms control negotiations with the USSR?

Land Attack Cruise Missiles:

The TLAM was hardly the first cruise missile launched from a ship, or submarine. Rudimentary anti-ship cruise missiles began to appear during World War II, and by the 1960s the Soviet Navy was arming every ship bigger than a torpedo boat with ASMs. Both the USN and the USSR developed nuclear tipped cruise missiles to attack coastal targets in the late 1950s.