What is KH-22 Missile?

About KH-22 Cruise Missile:

• It is a Soviet-era long-range airborne supersonic cruise missile.
• It is also known by the NATO reporting name AS-4 ‘Kitchen’.
• The Kh-22 family was developed in the USSR in the 1960s and specifically designed to be launched from Tupolev-22 bombers.
• This missile was intended primarily to destroylarge naval targets like aircraft carriers, using either conventional or nuclear warheads.
• It boasts impressive specifications, including a speed of up to Mach 4.6 and a range of approximately 600 kilometers.
• It weighs 5,820 kilograms.
• A total of approximately 3,000 such missiles were produced in the USSR.
• After the USSR collapsed, quite a few of them remained in Ukraine. However, soon after independence in 1991, Ukraine gave up its nuclear and strategic aviation arsenal.
• In 2000,Ukraine transferred 386 Kh-22 missiles to Russia as an installment against the gas debt.
• The successor to the Kh-22 became the Kh-32, which can be carried by the new Russian Tu-22M3M bombers. 
  • The new missile features a conventional warhead, an improved rocket motor, and a new radar imaging terminal seeker. It has a longer range but a smaller warhead.

Q1: What are cruise missiles?

Cruise missiles are unmanned vehicles that are propelled by jet engines, much like an airplane. They can be launched from ground, air, or sea platforms. Cruise missiles remain within the atmosphere for the duration of their flight and can fly as low as a few meters off the ground. Flying low to the surface of the earth expends more fuel but makes a cruise missile very difficult to detect. 

Source: New Escalation! Russian Tu-22M3 Bomber Blasts Snake Island Garrison Using “Invincible” KH-22 Missiles