THE Royal Navy are getting ‘smart’ cruise missiles that loiter above the battlefield to kill top terror targets when they emerge.
Admirals say their unique ability to be reprogrammed in mid flight make them devastatingly powerful weapons in the War on Terror.
The Sun can also reveal that the senior service’s first live test firing of the Tomahawk Land Attack Block 4 was last night declared a dramatic success.
In top secrecy, hunter-killer sub HMS Trenchant launched the weapon through a front torpedo tube while submerged somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.
More than an hour later, it smacked into a target with pin-point accuracy inside vast Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, hundreds of miles away.
To measure the high tech missile’s performance, a US F16 war jet flew alongside it at speeds faster than 500 mph.
The extraordinary sight was captured by a second top gun in a dramatic video.
Designed to fly at extremely low altitudes to avoid detection on radar, it can be seen on the film tearing through the sky just above sea level side by side with the jet.
Being able to strike at enemies immediately when they appear is vital in the counter-insurgency conflicts such Iraq and Afghanistan.
Key terror targets such as al Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden are often only detected fleetingly before they disappear without trace again.
Video:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,...tml?channel=Sun Exclusive&clipID=1347_SUN2587
Admirals say their unique ability to be reprogrammed in mid flight make them devastatingly powerful weapons in the War on Terror.
The Sun can also reveal that the senior service’s first live test firing of the Tomahawk Land Attack Block 4 was last night declared a dramatic success.
In top secrecy, hunter-killer sub HMS Trenchant launched the weapon through a front torpedo tube while submerged somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.
More than an hour later, it smacked into a target with pin-point accuracy inside vast Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, hundreds of miles away.
To measure the high tech missile’s performance, a US F16 war jet flew alongside it at speeds faster than 500 mph.
The extraordinary sight was captured by a second top gun in a dramatic video.
Designed to fly at extremely low altitudes to avoid detection on radar, it can be seen on the film tearing through the sky just above sea level side by side with the jet.
Being able to strike at enemies immediately when they appear is vital in the counter-insurgency conflicts such Iraq and Afghanistan.
Key terror targets such as al Qaeda mastermind Osama Bin Laden are often only detected fleetingly before they disappear without trace again.
Video:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,...tml?channel=Sun Exclusive&clipID=1347_SUN2587
