About Taimoor Missile:
- It is an air-launched cruise missile developed by Pakistan.
- It is capable of striking enemy land and sea targets with high precision.
- Features:
- It uses subsonic turbojet propulsion for long-range efficiency.
- It has a range of upto 600 kilometers, carrying a conventional warhead.
- Stealth design: Box-shaped fuselage, X-type tail, foldable wings.
- The missile is designed to fly at very low altitudes, allowing it to effectively evade hostile air and missile defence systems.
- It relies on a mix of inertial, satellite, and terrain-based guidance for accurate navigation.
What is a Cruise Missile?
- Cruise missiles are unmanned vehicles that are propelled by jet engines, much like an airplane.
- They can be launched from ground, air, or sea platforms.
- Cruise missiles remain within the atmosphere for the duration of their flight and can fly as low as a few meters off the ground.
- Flying low to the surface of the earth expends more fuel but makes a cruise missile very difficult to detect.
- Cruise missiles are capable of being launched from multiple ground, air, sea, and submarine platforms.
- Most cruise missiles are subsonic and use turbofan and turbojet engines. While less common, supersonic and hypersonic cruise missiles utilize ramjet and scramjet engines.
- Cruise missiles are self-guided and use multiple methods to accurately deliver their payload, including terrain mapping, global positioning systems (GPS), and inertial guidance, which uses motion sensors and gyroscopes to keep the missile on a pre-programmed flight path.
