Travelling at three times the speed of sound and skimming the sea at wave top enemy sailors will have just three seconds to react before they are hit by the latest British-designed missile.
The Perseus missile will be the most sophisticated weapon in its class travelling at Mach 3 or 2,000 miles an hour, three times the speed of existing weapons.
In midflight it can deploy a further two baby missiles that can help it straddle a ship with devastating firepower or seek out extra targets or confuse surface-to-air missile batteries.
One engineer on the project unveiled at the Paris Air Show, said: "This is the stealth bomber of missiles and can penetrate enemy defences like nothing else."
