Cruise missile

A cruise missile is a guided missile which uses a lifting wing and most often a jet propulsion system to allow sustained flight. A cruise missile is, in essence, a flying bomb. They are generally designed to carry a large conventional or nuclear warhead many hundreds of miles with excellent accuracy. Modern cruise missiles normally travel at supersonic or at high subsonic speeds, are self-navigating, and fly in a non-ballistic very low altitude trajectory in order to avoid radar detection. In general (and for the purposes of this article), cruise missiles are differentiated from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in that the weapon is integrated into the vehicle, and the vehicle is intended to be sacrificed in the mission.