Strike on Iran shows Israeli Air Force’s embrace of ballistic missiles

Israel’s air force has developed potent air-launched ballistic missiles such as the Blue Sparrow used for testing. It’s seen here on an F-15D.

More than 100 Israeli fighter jets attacked 20 targets inside Iran, ranging from its top air-defense systems to key missile manufacturing facilities, early on October 26. Their weapon of choice: air-launched ballistic missiles.

These allowed Israeli jets to strike largely from beyond the reach of Iran’s defenses and with fast flight paths, most likely from neighboring Iraq, that complicated efforts to shoot them down.

“Based on open-source information and satellite imagery, it appears that Israel’s use of air-launched ballistic missiles played a critical role in targeting and disabling Iran’s air-defense systems during the recent operation,” Freddy Khoueiry, a global security analyst for the Middle East and North Africa at the risk-intelligence company RANE, told B-17.

Signs of Israel’s strategy appeared shortly after the attack. Images on social media showed remnants of boosters used by the Israelis that landed on Iraqi soil. Iranian officials initially claimed Tehran countered such missiles, saying they had “very light warheads” compared with Iranian ground-launched ballistic missiles, more than 180 of which Iran fired at Israel in an enormous barrage on October 1.

Analysts assessing the aftermath of the attack questioned whether any of the Israeli jets, which included stealthy, fifth-generation F-35s, even entered Iranian airspace. Some targets were in the nearby Iranian border provinces of Khuzestan and Ilam, while the rest were in Tehran province, about 400 miles away.

Before the attack, leaked US intelligence documents mentioned a hitherto unknown Israeli air-launched ballistic missile, or ALBM, dubbed Golden Horizon and a long-range drone referred to as RA-01. Other known Israeli ALBMs, such as Rocks, Rampage, and Air LORA, have ranges of about 175 miles, enough to reach targets across Iran’s border but insufficient for striking Tehran without entering Iranian airspace. Israel’s Blue Sparrow, on the other hand, has an estimated 1,250-mile range.

“Golden Horizon likely has the range for Israeli aircraft to hit Tehran without having to enter Iranian airspace, removing a lot of risk from the equation,” Sebastien Roblin, a widely published military-aviation journalist, told B-17.

“However, Israeli officials said some IDF aircraft entered Iranian airspace,” Roblin said. “Penetrating flight may have helped with target acquisition and bomb damage assessment of certain point targets, or delivery of attacks requiring greater precision.”

It’s likely that only F-35 stealth fighters, and possibly RA-01s, entered Iranian airspace while fourth-generation F-15s and F-16 jets kept their distance.

The Rampage missile is 4.7 meters long, roughly 15 feet, meaning it cannot fit in the F-35’s internal weapons bay. The Golden Horizon is most likely a similar size, if not larger. Carrying such a weapon externally would reduce the F-35’s crucial stealth capabilities. If any F-35s entered Iranian airspace, they probably used smaller weapons carried internally.

“By targeting Iran’s best surface-to-air missiles — allegedly knocking out all of Iran’s remaining S-300s — the attacks have also paved the way for future strikes to operate closer at reduced risk,” Roblin said.

Federico Borsari, a defense expert at the Center for European Policy Analysis, noted that it was hard to provide a “conclusive breakdown of the ordnance” Israel used but said the spent-boosters evidence suggested ALBMs played a significant role.

“At the same time, Israeli sources declared that F-35s entered Iranian airspace, potentially to conduct accurate live battle damage assessment without necessarily delivering strikes,” Borsari told BI. “Given that Israel destroyed or damaged key radar and air defense sites in Iran, its F-35s could operate in a less threatening environment.”

For more than 30 years, some Israeli officials have advocated the creation of a missile corps, invariably arguing that Israel cannot wholly rely on the air force against enemy ballistic missiles. In 2018, the defense minister at the time, Avigdor Lieberman, aptly summed up this view, arguing that Israel needed an “alternative to the air force” and couldn’t “afford to put all our eggs into one basket, no matter how sophisticated that basket may be.”

The Israeli air force’s use of various ALBMs suggests some middle ground was ultimately reached.

“Now it turns out that the IDF adopted the idea of a long-range missile system with conventional warheads — but instead of establishing a separate missile corps, it mounted these missiles on the attack aircraft that will serve as flying launchpads,” a recent article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said.

“The air force vanquished all its critics and rivals and clearly maintained its primacy in the IDF,” it said.

While Israel does have an arsenal of land-based Jericho intermediate-range ballistic missiles, these are reserved for nuclear strikes. Using ALBMs for conventional strikes also has some advantages.

Israel designed its Sparrow missiles to simulate Iraqi Scud and Iranian Shahab ground-launched missiles for testing its Arrow interceptor missiles, which successfully intercepted most of the incoming Iranian ballistic missiles fired at Israel on October 1.

RANE’s Khoueiry said that while Israeli ALBMs and Iranian short-range ballistic missiles may have similar ranges, the air-launch capabilities of the former “provide greater flexibility, faster deployment,” and more-advanced precision.

Roblin pointed out that a missile launched from a fighter starts out with a “huge altitude and speed boost” compared with its ground-launched counterpart. The latter missile requires “a tremendous amount of the energy stored in its fuel lifting off the ground” while being slowed “by denser air particles” found at low altitudes, he said.

“So, a missile of the same weight, motor, and fuel capacity can go further when air-launched,” Roblin said. “ALBMs also can be released closer to target to reduce time-to-target and the reaction time available to defenses, and benefit from extended effective range courtesy of the carrying aircraft.”