US Navy will use Tomahawks to chop enemy ships

United States naval destroyers are getting a new way to stop enemy ships at sea. Defense company RTX said its latest variant of the Tomahawk cruise missile, the Maritime Strike Tomahawk (MST), will be ready to deploy by late September.

The Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) is among the most battle-tested and combat-proven munitions on the planet. Its known range is at least 1,000 miles, which made it the go-to deep strike weapon for many combatant commanders during the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

The United States and its allies have used Tomahawks more than 2,350 times since their initial deployment. During the U.S. Navy’s opening salvo against the Houthis in Yemen in 2024, more than 80 Tomahawks were fired. 

Although it was originally designed to go after targets on land, Raytheon (an RTX subsidiary) started upgrading the Tomahawk’s capabilities when the Department of Defense started to shift its focus from the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific area of operation. During development and testing in 2015, an earlier Block IV variant of the missile successfully hit a target at sea. Since then, Raytheon upgraded the guidance and targeting systems as part of the Block 5 variant of Tomahawks.  

Bloomberg was the first to report the newly upgraded Maritime Strike Tomahawk would be ready for deployment by the end of Fiscal Year 2025. U.S. Fleet Forces Commander Admiral Daryl Caudle said the Navy is planning to buy 1,302 of the Block Va variant, which he called a “game changer” in anti-ship firepower. While Tomahawks can be fired from submarines, there is no word on when any ships in the U.S. Navy’s “Silent Service” could be getting the anti-ship variant of the weapon, which currently costs around $2 million per unit. 

While the timeline of the Maritime Strike Tomahawk’s deployment is coming into focus, it’s still not entirely clear which destroyers in the U.S. Navy’s fleet will be getting the new missile first. However, a strong argument could be made for outfitting the ships that are forward deployed to the western Pacific.

U.S. allies could also become buyers of the Block Va Tomahawk. Last December, Australia became just the third nation in the world to fire a Tomahawk after the U.S. and U.K. The Royal Australian Navy inked a deal to buy 200 Tomahawks, and Japan’s Self-Defense Force doubled that order in one of its recent weapons procurements as well. 

As Straight Arrow News reported numerous times, the U.S. military is preparing for a potential conflict with China in the western Pacific and South China Sea. China is taking increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan, and the People’s Liberation Army Navy routinely finds itself at odds with the Philippines Coast Guard over fishing grounds near the Philippines. Washington officials said these actions by Beijing threaten to disrupt the balance of power and upset the “rules-based international order” of open sea maritime navigation.