The Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) is a long-range, all-weather, subsonic cruise missile. Introduced by General Dynamics in the 1970s, it was designed as a medium to long-range, low-altitude missile that could be launched from a submerged submarine. It has been improved several times and, by way of corporate divestitures and acquisitions, is now made by Raytheon. Some Tomahawks were also manufactured by McDonnell Douglas. The Tomahawk missile family consists of a number of subsonic, jet engine-powered missiles for attacking a variety of surface targets. Although a number of launch platforms have been deployed or envisaged, only naval (both surface ship and submarine) launched variants are currently in service. Tomahawk has a modular design, allowing a wide variety of warhead, guidance and range capabilities. A major improvement to the Tomahawk is its network-centric warfare-capabilities, using data from multiple sensors (aircraft, UAVs, satellites, foot soldiers, tanks, ships) to find its target. It will also be able to send data from its sensors to these platforms. It will be a part of the networked force being implemented by the Pentagon. ”Tactical Tomahawk” equips the TLAM with a TV-camera for battlefield observation loitering that allows warfighting commanders to assess damage to the target and to redirect the missile to an alternative target. Additionally the Tactical Tomahawk is able to be reprogrammed in-flight to attack one of 16 predesignated targets with GPS coordinates stored in its memory or to any other GPS coordinates. Also, the missile can send data about its status back to the commander. It entered service with the Navy in late 2004. On May 2009, Raytheon Missile Systems proposed an upgrade to the Tomahawk Block IV land-attack cruise missile that would allow it to kill or disable large, hardened warships at 900 nm range. the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict, 288 Tomahawks were launched. The first salvo was fired by the cruiser USS San Jacinto on January 17, 1991. The attack submarines USS Pittsburgh and USS Louisville followed. The Louisville Slugger company gave the crew of the latter special-edition baseball bats emblazoned with an image of the submarine conducting a Tomahawk launch. The honor was repeated during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The United States Navy has a stockpile of around 3,500 Tomahawk cruise missiles of all variants. [READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE]
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