Cruise Missiles : Cruise Missiles Cruise Missiles are guided
missiles which use a lifting wing and a jet propulsion system to
allow sustained flight. Cruise missiles are, in essence,
unmanned aircraft. They are generally designed to carry a large
conventional or nuclear warhead many hundreds of miles with
excellent accuracy. In 2001, modern cruise missiles normally
travel at sub-sonic speeds, are self-navigating, and fly low in
order to avoid defensive RADAR installations. Cruise missiles
were first developed by Nazi Germany during World War II. The
V-1 (introduced in 1944) was the first weapon to use the classic
cruise missile layout of a bomb-like fuselage with short wings
and a dorsally mounted engine, though it lacked a guidance
system and was thus more a flying bomb than a missile. The V-1
was propelled by a crude ramjet engine, the sound of which gave
the V-1 its nickname of "buzzbomb". During the Cold War, both
the United States and the Soviet Union experimented further with
the concept, deploying earl