Since the early 1990s, the United States has launched hundreds of Tomahawk cruise missiles from warships and submarines to strike at targets in the Middle East, North Africa, the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.
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Cruising at around 550 miles per hour—roughly the speed of an airliner—Tomahawks can strike targets more than one thousand miles away, making them a popular, though expensive, means of projecting firepower without putting U.S. troops in harm’s way.
On October 7, the Russian Gepard-class frigate Dagestan and three small Buyan-class corvettes sailing in the Caspian Sea unleashed a volley of twenty-six Kalibr cruise missiles from their Vertical Launch Systems.
The nine-meter long missiles soared nine hundred miles over Iranian and Iraqi territory before slamming into targets into eleven targets in Syria, hitting a mix of ISIS fighters and Free Syrian Army rebels. …