Israel's strikes on Iran spark interest in air-launched ballistic missiles

Israel's effective use of air-launched ballistic missiles in its airstrikes against Iran is expected to pique interest elsewhere in acquiring the weapons, which most major powers have avoided in favour of cruise missiles and glide bombs.

The Israel Defense Forces said its October 26 raid knocked out Iranian missile factories and air defences in three waves of strikes. Researchers said that based on satellite imagery, targets included buildings once used in Iran's nuclear programme.

Tehran defends such targets with "a huge variety" of anti-aircraft systems, said Justin Bronk, an airpower and technology expert at London's Royal United Services Institute.

Cruise missiles are easier targets for dense, integrated air defences than ballistic missiles are. But ballistic missiles are often fired from known launch points, and most cannot change course in flight.

Experts say high-speed, highly accurate air-launched ballistic missiles such as the Rampage, developed by Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, get around problems facing ground-based ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles - weapons that use small wings to fly great distances and maintain altitude.

"The main advantage of an ALBM over an ALCM is speed to penetrate defences," said Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California. "The downside - accuracy - looks to have been largely solved."

Ground-launched ballistic missiles - which Iran used to attack Israel twice this year, and which both Ukraine and Russia have used since Russia's invasion in 2022 - are common in the arsenals of many countries. So, too, are cruise missiles.

Because ALBMs are carried by aircraft, their launch points are flexible, helping strike planners.

"The advantage is that being air-launched, they can come from any direction, complicating the task of defending against them," said Uzi Rubin, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, one of the architects of Israel's missile defences.

The weapons are not invulnerable to air defences. In Ukraine, Lockheed Martin Patriot PAC-3 missiles have repeatedly intercepted Russia's Khinzhals.

Many countries, including the United States and Britain, experimented with ALBMs during the Cold War. Only Israel, Russia and China are known to field the weapons now.

The US tested a hypersonic ALBM, the Lockheed Martin AGM-183, but it received no funding for the 2025 fiscal year. Because it has a large arsenal of cruise missiles and other types of long-range strike weapons, Washington has otherwise shown little interest in ALBMs.

A US Air Force official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ALBMs are not used in Air Force operations.

Raytheon's SM-6, an air-defence missile that has been repurposed for air-to-air and surface-to-surface missions, also has been tested as an air-launched anti-ship weapon, said a senior US defence technical analyst, who declined to be identified because the matter is sensitive.

In tests the missile was able to strike a small target on land representing the centre of mass of a destroyer, the analyst said. Publicly, the SM-6 is not meant for air-to-ground strikes.

Because ALBMs are essentially a combination of guidance, warheads and rocket motors, many countries that have precision weapons already have the capability to pursue them, a defence industry executive said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

"This is a clever way of taking a common set of technologies and components and turning it into a very interesting new weapon that gives them far more capability, and therefore options, at a reasonable price," the executive said.