The now venerable cruise missile is quite different from the Predator drones. It relies on inboard programmed intelligence instead of remote piloting. Sensors of the missile scan the heavens for route correction while other sensors feed ground data to stored cartographic data.
Reporters at a hotel in one war torn capital noted that the slow-moving cruise missiles seemed to be headed for a direct strike at their hotel and then seemed to veer off as if they were reading the street signs.
There was a blow up in relations between Clinton’s White House and China when cruise missiles struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. The Chinese screamed they had painted “Chinese Embassy” on the roof. It made me think of the challenge of realtime optical character recognition (OCR} combined with interpretation of the characters to abort the mission even as it descended on the target.
It would be an uncertain challenge indeed but perhaps no greater than the efforts needed for realtime path correction.
It appears now it is just a matter of time before we see some cruising in and near Damascus. The slow-moving, low-flying cruise missiles are vulnerable to ground fire but resist radar that would much more easily take out drones.
Best, Terry