New U.S. Short-Range Missile Fired Against Iran

April 2026

The United States has used, for the first time in combat, a new short-range ballistic missile that would have violated the defunct Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

Open-source imagery analysts identified a missile featured in a March 1 Pentagon social media post as the new Precision Strike Missile (PrSM).

Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed in a March 13 press conference that the missile had been employed in combat against Iranian targets.

It was originally designed with a range under 500 kilometers. Following the first Trump administration’s withdrawal from INF Treaty in August 2019, the missile was subsequently tested in October 2021 to a range beyond the original design target.

The INF Treaty banned the United States and Russia from possessing, producing, or flight-testing ground-launched missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. In July 2014, the United States accused Russia of violating the treaty by developing the 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile.

The PrSM system is a successor to the 300-kilometer range Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) and shares launch platforms with its predecessor.

In an Aug. 4 statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry noted that under the rules of the now-defunct INF Treaty, the use of these older platforms to launch the missile would have meant inclusion of those same platforms under the prohibitions of the treaty. (See ACT, September 2025).

The Army is developing anti-ship and extended-range variants of the missile. Army soldiers fired two of the missiles in an anti-ship mode during a June 2024 exercise in Palau, sinking a decommissioned Navy ship.—XIAODON LIANG