The Washington Post

Missiles are developing so quickly that the old conventions for naming them no longer suffice, according to a new report, which suggests scrapping catchall descriptors like cruise, ballistic and hypersonic and moving to a more precise taxonomy for characterizing both U.S. and foreign missiles.

The report from the Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit space research corporation in California, argues that the boundaries between the established categories of missiles are blurring as technology advances, and in many cases blurred many years ago, underscoring the “need for more nuanced distinctions.”

One example the authors cite is China’s DF-100 anti-ship missile. Though described as a cruise missile, it travels at speeds and distances traditionally associated with ballistic missiles and uses a large rocket booster to launch akin to those that power ballistic missiles. Simply dubbing it a cruise missile would fail to capture its full range of capabilities, the authors suggest.

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