Here's a pretty scary cruise missile.
Apparently, they are developing a mach 5 cruise missile in the brahmos II.
Of course the sprint missile posted above was able to accelerate to mach 10 in 5 seconds and actually collided with the icbm reentry vehicles in the early tests which disabled the warhead so they decreased the resolution to keep the proximity fusing from being disabled by collision............back in 1972.
It was used to protect our "retaliatory strike" capability.
The current THAAD missile system get's similar speeds and trades acceleration for much longer flight and interception at longer ranges.
The cruise missiles have stealth in the form of NOE cruise altitudes that are tough to combat.
While much of our crazy spending on exotic missile systems seem wasteful on the surface, those systems are largely responsible for the soviet union spending itself into oblivion.
Threat removed......or at least diminished to a more manageable number of viable threats.
