In many foreign countries, the impulse thruster (mainly combustion-gas jet type) has been widely used in some conventional munitions for trajectory correction including conventional missiles,glide bombs,cannon launched munitions and rockets and the like. In recent years,it has also been a great interest in researching the impulse thruster used for improving the ballistic accuracy of some projectiles in our country. The studies on the structures,performances and applications of some typical impulse thrusters developed by some foreign countries were simply summarized. Besides,the up-to-date progresses in this research field in our country were also introduced. In addition,some opinions on the future impulse thruster were put forward: firstly,to use semiconductor or metal-film bridge as the element for igniting,and compositions mainly used in initiators or pyrotechnics as output charge,or to use conventional propellants as output charge by improving the charging technology,may be one of the trends for future combustion-gas jet type impulse thruster; secondly,carrying out some basic researches on slug-shot type impulse thruster will be an important part in the research field of thruster in domestic and abroad in the near future.