Israel’s strikes on Iran spark interest in air-launched ballistic missiles By Reuters

By Gerry Doyle

(Reuters) -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 Oct. 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 (NASDAQ:) 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 (JO:), 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 (NYSE:) 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…