Experts say high-speed, highly accurate air-launched ballistic missiles (ALBM) such as the Israel Aerospace Industries’ Rampage, get around problems facing ground-based ballistic missiles and air-launched cruise missiles (ALCM) — weapons that use small wings to fly great distances and maintain altitude
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 said,
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“The main advantage of an ALBM over an ALCM is speed to penetrate defenses”
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“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 invaded Ukraine 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
Uzi Rubin, a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, one of the architects of Israel’s missile defenses,
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"The advantage is that being air-launched, they can come from any direction, complicating the task of defending against them”
The weapons are not invulnerable to air defenses In Ukraine, Lockheed Martin PAC-3 missiles have repeatedly intercepted Russia’s Khinzhals
