Hey everyone, how are you all ? hope you all are doing fine. in todays blog we will quickly understand the difference between a Ballistic missile and a Cruise missile.
The difference is very simple. Cruise missile fly in an almost straight line and at a lower altitude. look at the word cruise, it means that the missile has to fly smoothly in the air before hitting the target. Cruise missile has an inbuilt Jet Engine that helps the missile to fly in the air most of the time. In addition to that these missiles also have inbuilt navigation and they can travel at a very low altitude to avoid enemy detection.
On the other hand if you look at a Ballistic missile, a Ballistic missile has a rocket engine it does not have jet engine. The difference between a Jet engine and a Rocket engine is that Jets get the oxygen from the air whereas Rocket carry their own air which allows them to operate in space. when launched it follows a ballistic trajectory which is in the shape of a parabola. So basically you launch a ballistic missile, it goes in the air and forms a parabola, then it hits the target, here the gravity also comes into play. Cruise missiles also form a comparatively smaller parabola. after that it goes straight and perform a variety of maneuvers that it was supposed to do as per settings.
A ballistic missile can go up to an altitude of 1500 to 2000 km which is in the lower earth orbit. This altitude depends on how far is your target, based on that certain altitude will be needed. On the other hand, a cruise missile can go up to the altitudes of few hundred kilometers, or even less. It again has to come down at a lower altitude to cruise in the air before hitting the target.
Now ballistic missiles don't have an option of cruising. The International Space Station is located at an altitude of 400 km, a ballistic missile goes higher than the ISS, but the cruise missiles altitude is lower than the ISS.
Now suppose there is a ground based radar placed on the ground by the enemy. A radar has a certain view and there is a maximum range at which targets can be detected using a radar. So imagine that there is one enemy radar at a certain distance from you, the radar will cover a certain view as it is its function. The ballistic missile will be detected much earlier than a cruise missile. so this is the advantage of cruising at a lower altitude, the harder it would be for a radar to detect.
The maximum velocity of a ballistic missile can achieve is around 24,000km/hr. this is a rough estimate. An ICBM can strike a target within a 10,000 km range in about 30 to 35 minutes. A cruise missile can fly more than the speed of sound, that is Mach 1 to Mach 3. The most well known supersonic missile is the Indian Brahmos missile. It is currently the fastest, operational supersonic missile capable of flying at a speed of 3,700 km/hr.
So these are the broad differences between a Ballistic and a Cruise missile. I hope you found this blog informative.
Thankyou 🌼
