Russia’s Missiles: A Major New Weapon in Syria Conflict

A photo taken from video published by the Russian Defense Ministry purports to show missile launches from the Caspian Sea to strike targets in Syria. CreditRussian Defense Ministry

By mounting a missile strike from warships nearly 1,000 miles away, the Russian military added a major new weapon on Wednesday to its operations in support of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria.

Q. What kind of missiles were they?

A. The Russian Defense Ministry said they were ship-launched cruise missiles. The ministry did not name a specific type, but the government news agency Tass referred to them as 3M-14 missiles, which NATO refers to as SS-N-30s. That type is known to be deployed by the Russian Navy, and the land-attack version reportedly has the range to reach Syria.

Q. What is a cruise missile?

A. Unlike a ballistic missile, which is fired on a fairly simple high-altitude arc like a cannonball, a cruise missile does most of its flying horizontally at a fairly low altitude, like an airplane or a drone, and it can trace a complex flight path to its target. Depending on their guidance systems, cruise missiles can be highly accurate and hard for enemies to detect and intercept, compared with ballistic missiles. But they are single-use weapons and are relatively complicated and expensive to manufacture.

Q. How was the strike launched?

A. The Defense Ministry said the missiles were fired from the Caspian Sea and flew across Iran and northern Iraq to reach their targets. Russia has maintained a naval flotilla in the Caspian — which is landlocked from the rest of the world’s seas — for nearly 300 years. The flotilla currently has no aircraft carriers or other large capital ships, but it has Buyan-class missile corvettes, including two that were commissioned just last year, the Grad Sviyazhsk and the Veliky Ustyug. Those ships reportedly fired cruise missiles at sea targets during a major naval exercise last month.

Q. Does the United States use similar weapons?

A. Yes, frequently. The best-known American cruise missile, the Tomahawk, has been used in both Persian Gulf wars and against targets in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Libya, Yemen and most recently Syria.