US Threatens Russia with Tomahawk Cruise Missiles Amid Latest Escalation

October 17, 2025 (NEO – Brian Berletic) - US President Donald Trump in recent weeks has repeatedly mentioned the possibility of sending long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine, following a now-revealed US-directed drone campaign targeting Russian energy production deep inside Russian borders, all after US attempts to deceive Russia into a “Minsk 3.0” freeze has categorically failed. 

The predictable escalation confirms for Russia the necessity of continuing military operations into the near and intermediate future to end the conflict on the battlefield in Ukraine rather than at the negotiation table. 

The introduction of Tomahawk cruise missiles will constitute a further escalation amid a war current US President Trump both accused previous US President Joe Biden of unnecessarily starting and had campaigned for office in the first place by promising to end within “24 hours.” 

It is also a war the US continues escalating current US Secretary of State Marco Rubio himself has described as a US proxy war fought against Russia through Ukraine.

While Russia has reacted to each US provocation with patience and persistence in pursuit of its national security objectives, the Tomahawk cruise missile represents another step closer to provoking direct conflict between Russia and either Europe and/or the US itself.  

Predictable Escalation Amid Predictable Continuity of Agenda 

Despite claims of wanting to end the conflict, the Trump administration had no intention of ever doing so, and simply sought to freeze it as it prioritized containing China before circling back to restart hostilities with Russia once Ukraine’s battered armed forces were reconstituted and Western military industrial production sufficiently ramped up. 

Even before the 2024 election, then US Vice President nominee JD Vance simply prioritized war with China over proxy war with Russia and sought the creation of a “heavily fortified demilitarized zone” at the existing line of contact – not actually resolving the conflict – so the US could divert resources toward confrontation with China. 

Following the 2024 US presidential election, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in a February directive delivered to Europe in Brussels told European nations to double down on both military industrial production and arms shipments to Ukraine as well as prepare European and non-European troops to enter into Ukraine to enforce what was essentially a “Minsk 3.0” freeze to the conflict despite explicitly claiming the directive “must not be Minsk 3.0.” 

Secretary Hegseth also mentioned Russian energy production and its role in funding the “Russian war machine,” claiming: 

To further enable effective diplomacy and drive down energy prices that fund the Russian war machine, President Trump is unleashing American energy production and encouraging other nations to do the same. Lower energy prices coupled with more effective enforcement of energy sanctions will help bring Russia to the table.

While Secretary Hegseth publicly mentioned American energy production and sanctions as  means to lower energy prices and target Russian energy production, the Financial Times has since revealed that Ukrainian drones striking at Russian energy production to further this stated US policy objective were overseen by the US itself and was enabled by US intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) without which such drone strikes would not be possible.  

While the FT article confirmed the US’ role in drone strikes deep inside Russia, it was by no means a revelation.

The New York Times last year admitted that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deployed its officers to Ukraine directly after the US overthrew the elected government in 2014. Since then, it has built a network of bases, trained entire units of Ukrainian intelligence agents, and has directed Ukrainian intelligence operations – including throughout the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO) beginning in 2022. 

Since the CIA oversees Ukrainian intelligence units like the SBU involved in drone strikes on Russia, utilizing US ISR,the US is all but carrying out these strikes itself. 

This means that as US President Trump invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to the US state of Alaska in August for “peace talks,” the Trump administration had already initiated a deep strike drone campaign targeting Russian energy production in an attempt to cripple both Russia’s energy industry and Russia’s economy, in the hopes of forcing Moscow to concede to a ceasefire under a defacto “Minsk 3.0” framework. 

Having failed to achieve this, the US is continuing escalations further, including with the threat of deploying Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine to extend the range and impact of ongoing US-directed deep strikes into Russia together with growing threats to the maritime shipments of Russian energy exports.  

The Tomahawk: Dangerous but Not Decisive 

The Tomahawk cruise missile, with a range of up to 2,500 km, could strike targets well beyond Moscow itself, including as far as the legendary Uralvagonzavod tank factory in Russia’s city of Nizhny Tagil. It also places a larger number of Russian energy production facilities at risk – and for facilities already within range of Ukrainian drone and missile strikes, the Tomahawk possesses a much larger warhead with greater destructive capacity which could deal out potentially greater damage to these facilities. 

Before the first Trump administration withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019, the Tomahawk missile was launched from surface naval vessels and submarines and played pivotal roles in US wars of aggression from the Gulf War in the 1990s, the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s, and the US wars on Libya and Syria from 2011 onward. 

Following the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty, development and deployment of ground-launched missile systems capable of firing the Tomahawk began, producing the Typhon system currently deployed by the US Army including in the Philippines aimed at China, as well as the Long Range Fires (LRF) Launcher developed for testing by the US Marines until last year when the US Marines abandoned it.

Citing difficulties in using the LRF Launcher in austere conditions US Marines would likely operate in on islands across the Asia-Pacific region, the US Marines adopted the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) launching the smaller, shorter-range Naval Strike Missile. However, the working LRF Launchers are now being considered by the US Army for testing as early as next year, and are likely capable of being sent to Ukraine as the most likely candidate for launching Tomahawks into Russia. 

The LFR Launcher uses only one Mk 41 vertical launching system (VLS) cell per launcher (versus 4 cells for the Typhon launcher) and would require reloading after firing each missile. Possibly used together with other truck-mounted prototypes in the US military’s inventory, only a small handful of Tomahawk missiles could be fired from Ukraine into Russia at a time. 

Ordinarily, well-protected targets would require large numbers of Tomahawk missiles as demonstrated in the 2017 US strike on Syria’s Al Shayrat airfield involving up to 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles. 

Because salvos on this scale launched from ground launchers in Ukraine are unachievable, the US would likely combine the use of Tomahawk missiles together with Western air-launched cruise missiles, drones, and decoys. These less-capable systems would be sent in waves ahead of the Tomahawk missiles in an attempt to saturate Russian air defenses before the Tomahawks themselves are launched. 

Similar tactics have been used with limited success in conjunction with Western air-launched cruise missiles like the British Storm Shadow and French equivalent (SCALP).

Like many other weapon systems the West has transferred to Ukraine over the course of the SMO, small-scale deployments of the Tomahawk could be expanded by sending more missiles and more improved and more numerous ground launcher systems in the near future.

Among these may be replacements the US Army is already seeking out for its existing Typhon system. Naval News in its article, “Oshkosh Ground-Based Tomahawk Launcher Breaks Cover,” reports on the development of a much more mobile and autonomous ground launcher capable of carrying up to 4 Tomahawk cruise missiles versus the currently deployed and very cumbersome Typhon and the more mobile but limited LRF Launcher. The article doesn’t mention when these systems may be available, but manned variants of these trucks could be developed and tested within a year or two, with autonomous systems being rolled out later, with the LRF Launcher used in the interim. 

The real bottleneck has been and will continue to be the annual production rate of US munitions with the Tomahawk cruise missile being no exception. 

Reuters in a recent article noted that only about 55 to 90 Tomahawk missiles are produced per year, compared to estimates of Russia’s equivalent Kalibr cruise missile ranging from 300-360 a year together with hundreds of other types of cruise missiles and tens of thousands of long-range strike drones like the Geran-2. Another Reuters article from 2023 noted that Russia had – at that point – fired a total of 7,400 missiles and 3,700 drones into Ukraine since the beginning of the SMO in 2022. 

Considering the effect of Russia’s missile and drone campaign on Ukraine and the much larger geographical size of Russia and the much larger scale of Russian industry and energy production, an equal or greater number of missiles and drones would be required to significantly affect Russia’s military industrial and energy production on a similar or greater scale.

Reports vary regarding the impact of the ongoing US-directed deep strikes on Russian energy production. The introduction of Tomahawk cruise missiles would likely increase this impact, but to what extent remains to be seen. 

With or Without Tomahawks, Escalation Continues 

Whether the US deploys Tomahawks to Ukraine or not, the US will continue escalating its proxy war with Russia. As US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth laid out in February of this year, the US is urging Europe to prepare to fill the void created by Ukraine’s incrementally collapsing fighting capacity. 

While the US seeks to redirect its resources toward its growing confrontation with China in the Asia-Pacific, it continues to oversee its proxy war in Ukraine – the latest example being the long-range drone strike campaign targeting Russia’s energy production facilities.

While many analysts agree there is little likelihood Ukraine and its Western sponsors can turn the tide in this conflict, it should be noted that as early as 2019 in a RAND Corporation paper titled, “Extending Russia,” it was made clear Ukraine had little chance of winning in the first place. 

The goal, as the title of the paper suggests, was simply “extending Russia” along a number of pressure points, Ukraine being only one. Since the SMO began in 2022, the US has taken advantage of Russia’s commitment in Ukraine to topple the Syrian government amid a US regime-change war fought there previously stalled by Russian military intervention. The collapse of Syria has been used to pave the way toward direct US-Israeli conflict with Iran – a Russian ally – who now finds itself precariously isolated in the Middle East as well.

The ongoing attacks on Russia’s energy sector ( including possible use of Tomahawk cruise missiles) will, on their own, not “win” the war with Russia, but will contribute to this larger strategy of “extending Russia” even further. 

Washington will continue its strategy of overextending Russia and attempting to pick apart its interests along its near abroad through a division of labor and strategic sequencing. At the same time, Russia will attempt to outpace this US strategy by continuing to expand its military and industrial capabilities along with its coordinated response with allies like China, North Korea, and Iran to first paralyze US interference across Eurasia and beyond, then roll it back. 

Both the US and Russia are operating at the near limits of their material, military, and political power, playing to their respective strengths. While Russia’s strengths appear to lie in terms of military power and industrial production, the US excels as projecting its military power globally along with its still potent ability to politically coerce and capture targeted nations enabled by its near monopoly over global information space. 

The future world order will be decided by which has greater staying power and utilizes their own strengths while neutralizing those of their adversary most effectively. Will the US and its network of client states match or exceed Russia’s military industrial power before Russia and its allies expand their traditional military and industrial expertise to effectively counter US political interference and its monopoly over information space? Only time will tell. 

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.