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U.S. military vessels equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles are a serious threat to Russia's national security, the head of Russia's navy has said.
Deployed U.S. ships with these long-range missiles are capable of "delivering a massive strike on targets in most areas of Russia," Nikolai Yevmenov, who is the commander-in-chief of Russia's naval forces, told the Krasnaya Zvezda, or Red Star, newspaper linked to the Russian Defense Ministry, according to Russian media reports.
The Tomahawk cruise missile is a long-range precision weapon launched from the U.S. military's ships and submarines. It can "strike targets precisely from 1,000 miles away, even in heavily defended airspace," according to the missile's manufacturer, defense giant Raytheon.
The U.S. has thousands of Tomahawk missiles in its arsenal and in vessels deployed around the world. The U.S. and its allies have used the ammunition in combat more than 2,300 times, according to Raytheon, including in Syria.
There are several variations of the Tomahawk, including the new and modernized Block V series that the U.S. has spent the last few years upgrading.
Russia has its own stockpiles of submarine- or ship-launched cruise missiles, including the Kalibr type it regularly uses to target Ukraine from the Black Sea.
Tensions between Russia and the U.S. are at their highest point in decades, with Washington the single-largest provider country for military assistance to Ukraine since Moscow launched its invasion of the country.
The U.S. Navy, although stretched thin in various hotspots across the world, is nonetheless a fearsome power on the seas and underneath the surface. Russia's submarine fleet is formidable, but its surface fleet has atrophied, Western experts say, with the nearly 2-year-old war in Ukraine taking its toll on Moscow's naval capabilities.
In late December, British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps said Russia had lost 20 percent of its Black Sea fleet in the previous four months. Ukraine is known to have destroyed a Russian Kilo-class submarine, as well as damaging a number of Moscow's landing ships, such as the Minsk, the Saratov and the Olenegorsky Gornyak.
"Risks are created by the presence of groups of naval forces of foreign states in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, in the Mediterranean Sea," Yevmenov told Russian media.
The U.S. Navy moved resources, including two carrier strike groups, to the Mediterranean Sea following the attacks by Palestinian military group Hamas on Israel in October. It also maintains a robust Pacific presence, with the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group arriving in the Philippines last week.
Update 01/10/2024 9:20 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with additional information.
About the writer
Ellie Cook is a Newsweek security and defense reporter based in London, U.K. Her work focuses largely on the Russia-Ukraine ... Read more