Tomahawk Cruise missiles are known for their reliability and pinpoint accuracy however their only negative point is its max speed of 550 mph. The speed issue was bought to light in Aug. 20, 1998, when the USS Abraham Lincoln Battle Group, stationed in the Arabian Sea, launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at an Al Qaeda training camp in eastern Afghanistan, hoping to take out Osama Bin Laden, the cruise missiles took 2 hours to make the 1100 mile trip and by then Bin Laden was gone. The Pentagon is now developing a critical new weapon for hitting elusive targets and the result is the X-51 hypersonic cruise missile which could travel 600 miles in 10 minutes thereby giving strike capability anywhere in the world in less than an hour. The X-51 destroys its targets by simply crashing into them at hypersonic speeds.

The X-51 hypersonic cruise missile, which is designed to hit Mach 5 — roughly 3600 mph. The goal, according to the U.S. Strategic Command's deputy commander Lt. Gen. C. Robert Kehler, is "to strike virtually anywhere on the face of the Earth within 60 minutes."
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