Israel Now Has a Supersonic Air-Launched Ballistic Missile. Here's What It Can Do.

David Axe

Security, Middle East

And why Iran should worry. 

But for a country such as Israel with fewer launching platforms, a very fast and hard-to-intercept ballistic weapon — however modest its explosive power — might be just what it needs to hold at risk certain kinds of distant targets.

Two Israeli companies together have tested a new, supersonic air-launched ballistic missile with a conventional warhead that could allow fighters to strike heavily-defended targets at long range.

But the new Rampage ALBM isn’t without its drawbacks. The weapon is bulky. Its warhead is probably small compared to other missile types.

Israel Aerospace Industries and Israel Military Industry Systems announced in June 2018 they had tested, from an F-16, the 15-feet-long, 1,200-pound, GPS-guided Rampage — and had already inked a sale contract with one customer, presumably the Israeli air force.

(This first appeared last month.)

With Rampage, the Israeli air force could join a slowly growing number of air arms developing ALBMs for non-nuclear attacks. Russia has introduced its own, much larger ALBM. China reportedly is working on one, too.

But the United States apparently doesn’t see the value in an air-launched ballistic missile. Existing cruise missiles — which already are available to U.S. forces in very large numbers — are perfectly capable of striking, in large salvos, a wide range of distant targets.

IAI said speed, range and cost are the ALBM’s main advantages. Eli Reiter, manager of IMI’s firepower division, praised Rampage’s “extraordinary cost-effectiveness ratio” but did not disclose the missile’s cost.

“It can be detected, but it is very hard to intercept,” Amit Haimovich, director of marketing for IAI’s Malam engineering unit, told The Jerusalem Post.

The Israeli air force operates a wide range of conventional guided air-to-surface munitions. But none are supersonic. And it’s likely none can match Rampage’s range. “The whole point of this missile is that it can hit targets within standoff ranges,” Haimovich said.