combat aircraft

110 September 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net

TAKING A LOOK BEHIND THE HEADLINES

BYBY ROBERT BECKHUSEN ROBERT BECKHUSEN

XXXXXXXXX...

110 September 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net

DISPATCHES FROM THE FRONT LINE

OF AEROSPACE TECHNOLOGY

BY DAVID AXE

ISRAEL HAS

DEVELOPED

AN

AIR-LAUNCHED

BALLISTIC

MISSILE

T

WO 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 (IAI) and Israel

Military Industry Systems (IMI Systems)

announced in June they had tested, from

an F-16, the 15ft-long, 1,200lb, GPS-guided

Rampage — and had already inked a sale

contract with one customer, presumably the

Israeli Air Force.

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 US 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 stand-off

ranges’, Haimovich said.

While IAI didn’t specify the new weapon’s

reach, a similar but larger Russian weapon can

reportedly strike targets as far as 1,200 miles

away. It’s reasonable to assume the Rampage

can travel hundreds of miles.

By the same token, it’s also reasonable to

assume the Rampage comes with a relatively

small warhead. Israel’s Popeye cruise missile,

which is roughly the same length as the

Rampage, weighs 3,000lb — twice as much

as the Rampage does — and boasts a 750lb

warhead and a 50-mile range.

At half the weight of the Popeye and likely

devoting a greater proportion of its internal

capacity to fuel, the Rampage probably boasts a

much smaller warhead than the Popeye does. To

be fair, the Rampage’s high speed could lend it

kinetic energy that partially compensates for

the comparatively small warhead size.

But the Rampage’s size means that an F-15 or

F-16 probably wouldn’t carry more than two at a

time. That limits the size of the missile salvos the

Israeli Air Force could launch at some distant

hard target — say, an airfield or chemical

weapons site.

This is a familiar problem for the first operator

of ALBMs. In March 2018, Russian president

Vladimir Putin introduced the Kinzhal, an

apparent air-launched version of the Iskander

surface-launched rocket. China began testing its

own ALBM in December 2016, according to

press reports.

The Russian Air and Space Force has

reportedly modified six MiG-31 long-range

fighters to carry the 25ft-long Kinzhal. Before

the end of they year, the Kremlin is expected to

modify as many as six more MiG-31s to

carry the ALBM.

The squadron-size force of ALBM-armed MiGs

gives Russia the ability to strike heavily

defended targets at long range. But not very

many targets. ‘We’re talking about isolated

launches — two or three or six missiles at a

time’, said Pavel Podvig, an expert on the

Russian military. The same limitations could

apply to Israeli warplanes lobbing Rampages.

When it comes to long-range strikes, it clearly

isn’t worth it to the US military to trade warhead

and salvo size for the protective benefit of

speed, when it can simply launch lots of

relatively slow weapons to compensate for their

comparative vulnerability.

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.

While IAI didn’t

specify the

new weapon’s reach,

a similar but larger

Russian weapon can

reportedly strike targets

as far as 1,200 miles

away. It’s reasonable to

assume Rampage can

travel hundreds of miles

Initial images of the Rampage

show it being launched from

an Israeli Air Force F-16I, but its

reported primary use is to arm

the F-35A Adir. IAI

110 Cutting Edge C.indd 110 18/07/2018 15:39