Kh-101 Cruise Missile

The Kh-101 is a Russian air-launched cruise missile designed by the Raduga design bureau as a successor to the Soviet-era Kh-55, with development beginning in the late 1980s, a first flight in 1998 and entry into Russian service around 2012, alongside a nuclear-armed variant designated Kh-102. Guided by inertial navigation updated against a stored terrain map and carrying a roughly 400-kilogram conventional warhead over a range of about 3,500 kilometers at high subsonic speed, the missile is designed to be launched from strategic bombers well outside the range of an enemy's air defenses. It was first used in combat over Syria in 2015 and has since been used extensively by Russia during its invasion of Ukraine beginning in 2022, with reported upgrades to its guidance and decoy systems during that conflict.