Global Interest in Israel's Air-Launched Ballistic Missiles

This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)
This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)
TT

Global Interest in Israel's Air-Launched Ballistic Missiles

This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)
This handout picture released by the Israeli army on October 26, 2024, shows an Israeli fighter jet departing a hangar at an undisclosed location in Israel. (Photo by AFP)

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 favor of cruise missiles and glide bombs.
The Israeli Army said its Oct. 26 raid knocked out Iranian missile factories and air defenses in three waves of strikes.
Researchers said that based on satellite imagery, targets included buildings once used in Iran's nuclear program, according to Reuters.
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 defenses 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 Israel Aerospace Industries Rampage 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 defenses,” 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,” he said.
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 defenses.
The weapons are not invulnerable to air defenses. 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-defense 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 defense 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 center 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 defense 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.

 



Blue-Collar Pennsylvania Voters Could Be ‘Deciding Factor’ in US Election

 Judge of Elections for Westmont Borough No. 1 polling place Jovel Segear oversees technical difficulties with the ballot acceptance process on Election Day at the Westmont Grove in Johnstown, Pa., Cambria County, on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Thomas Slusser/The Tribune-Democrat via AP)
Judge of Elections for Westmont Borough No. 1 polling place Jovel Segear oversees technical difficulties with the ballot acceptance process on Election Day at the Westmont Grove in Johnstown, Pa., Cambria County, on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Thomas Slusser/The Tribune-Democrat via AP)
TT

Blue-Collar Pennsylvania Voters Could Be ‘Deciding Factor’ in US Election

 Judge of Elections for Westmont Borough No. 1 polling place Jovel Segear oversees technical difficulties with the ballot acceptance process on Election Day at the Westmont Grove in Johnstown, Pa., Cambria County, on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Thomas Slusser/The Tribune-Democrat via AP)
Judge of Elections for Westmont Borough No. 1 polling place Jovel Segear oversees technical difficulties with the ballot acceptance process on Election Day at the Westmont Grove in Johnstown, Pa., Cambria County, on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. (Thomas Slusser/The Tribune-Democrat via AP)

Protecting and creating new jobs were among the most pressing issues for voters lining up to cast their ballots Tuesday in Erie, a competitive blue-collar Pennsylvania county with a formidable reputation for picking US election winners.

Mason Ken Thompson, 66, voted at Edison Elementary School in Erie, the main city in the Pennsylvania county of the same name whose 270,000 people -- voting in a tightly-contested swing state -- will have an outsized role in whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump wins the White House.

"Manufacturing jobs have gone away from Erie. It's a big problem, and Trump hasn't helped that situation at all," said Thompson, who wore a camouflage baseball cap adorned with the US flag.

"I believe that Kamala is going to help the young people with housing," he added as a DJ played a roster of all-American hits while voters streamed into the school-turned-polling station.

Nearby, the Country Fair gas station handed free donuts to voters.

Erie is one of a handful of counties to have boomeranged between Democrat and Republican, voting for former president Barack Obama twice, then narrowly for Trump, before scraping out a Democratic win for President Joe Biden in 2020.

The path to victory for both former president Trump and Vice President Harris likely runs through Pennsylvania, and largely white- and working-class Erie in the state's northwestern corner encapsulates many of its top issues.

Pennsylvania has 19 electoral college votes, more than any of the other swing states which could go for either Harris or Trump, with polls showing them locked in a dead heat.

"I don't know how we became so important around here... we are like a deciding factor," said Marchelle Beason, 46, who also cast her vote at Edison Elementary.

Proudly sporting her "I voted" sticker, she said "way, way more people" were casting their ballot than in 2020.

- 'America comes first' -

As with many swing counties in the Keystone State, Erie was once a thriving industrial hub that has been hit by outsourcing and automation.

It is now increasingly reliant on the service sector, but is still home to many blue collar jobs.

"A lot of the young people are moving out and something to keep them in Erie is what we really need," voter Chris Quest, 69, told AFP on Monday after casting her early ballot.

Darlene Taylor, 56, said she wanted to "close the border" to protect US jobs.

"We don't need another four more years of high inflation, gas prices, (and) lying," said Taylor, who wore a homemade Trump T-shirt after also casting her vote at Edison Elementary.

"America comes first, and Harris is not going to support that."

In 2019, General Electric's rail vehicle building operations shut up shop in Erie, leaving a void in the city where generations of workers had punched in and out for the sprawling US "toasters to TV shows" conglomerate.

Wabtec, formed from the storied Westinghouse corporation, stepped in to continue making trains in the city -- but with far fewer employees than GE.

Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey recently announced $48 million for the Wabtec factory to develop hydrogen batteries for rail.

The timing was no accident.

Casey is locked in a bitter contest for reelection with Republican Dave McCormick, a race which could decide which party has control of the US Senate.

Wabtec worker Henry Miller said he wanted politicians who would "start helping people in our own city."

"I like Donald Trump to a point, but then again, he wouldn't even leave when they try to put him out," he added before climbing into his black pick-up truck, referring to Trump's refusal to accept his 2020 election loss.

Some voters have complained that postal ballots have not arrived, with election officials saying they will have to vote in person, blaming a supplier issue.

David Radcliff, 72, said the fiasco had not dented his confidence in the election's integrity.

"But I will never do mail-in ballots again," he said.