How Iran's Capture of U.S. Tomahawk Missiles Could Shift Global Military Power

U.S. precision-strike weapons have landed intact in central Iranian territory and been recovered by Iranian forces, a development that presents a stark and potentially costly intelligence windfall for Tehran.

Local outlets report that U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles and the deep-penetration GBU-57 bunker buster, fired during recent clashes in the Middle East, fell into desert areas undetonated. Iran says it has retrieved the weapons and begun systematic reverse-engineering efforts.

Tens of billions of KRW become free textbooks

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claims that more than 15 advanced U.S. missiles that landed on Iranian soil in the past 40 days failed to detonate.

Iran is publicly crediting its electronic warfare systems with deliberately degrading the missiles' guidance software, causing them to fall intact.

The real danger for the United States is strategic: unexploded, intact munitions are invaluable technical references for Iranian engineers. A Tomahawk cruise missile—roughly 2.7 billion KRW (approximately $202,500)—is a precision weapon designed to strike targets hundreds of kilometers away.

Authorities also say a GBU-57 bunker buster—valued at roughly 4.8 billion KRW (approximately $3.6 million) and built to destroy deeply buried facilities—has been turned over to Iran's technical-analysis units.

Having both weapon systems in Tehran's hands could have sizable consequences. Detailed study of the Tomahawk's small turbofan engine and terrain-contour-matching guidance could help Iranian cruise missiles and strike drones gain substantial improvements in endurance and accuracy.

Likewise, dissecting the GBU-57's warhead architecture and fuzing mechanisms could offer Tehran insights into how U.S. forces plan to attack underground nuclear facilities or missile sites—potentially exposing operational vulnerabilities that Iran could exploit.

A history of repeated reverse engineering — China and Russia stand to benefit

For U.S. defense planners, the episode echoes painful precedents. Iran has decades of experience reverse engineering captured U.S. systems and producing local variants.

In the 1980s, Iranian technicians dismantled U.S. Hawk surface-to-air missiles and later fielded the domestically built Shahin air-defense system. In 2011, Iran captured a downed U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel stealth reconnaissance drone near the Afghan border.

Tehran subsequently reverse-engineered that platform and produced the Shahed series of attack drones, which it deployed operationally.

Experts warn the risks extend beyond Iran. There is concern that technical knowledge derived from captured U.S. systems could be transferred to Russia or China.

Within Iran, some officials are openly suggesting Tehran could barter captured U.S. missile technology to China or Russia in return for advanced air-defense manufacturing know-how or new surface-to-air systems.

That prospect raises broader security concerns: if technologies captured on the battlefield help upgrade Chinese or Russian air-defense networks, capabilities developed by Washington could be repurposed against U.S. forces and allies—adding new uncertainty to the global security environment.