Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping the way modern wars are fought, and Israel’s latest generation of air-launched ballistic missiles (ALBMs) offers one of the clearest examples yet. Battle-tested in recent strikes on Iran, these long-range precision weapons are fusing AI, advanced guidance, and stand-off employment to hunt heavily defended, high-value targets with unprecedented autonomy.
Israel has not disclosed full details of the ALBMs used in recent attacks on Iranian targets, including three Russian-made S-300 air defense systems, but three systems have been publicly exposed: the Air LORA from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the ROCKS from Rafael, and the Rampage, developed jointly by IAI and Elbit. Together, they illustrate how AI-enhanced missiles are at the center of a new phase in the drone and missile wars across the Middle East.
Air LORA: AI at Long Range
According to IAI, the Air LORA is an air-launched member of the combat-proven LORA family designed to address the unique operational challenges of long-range strike from the air. The missile is optimized for missions against high-value, heavily protected targets such as command centers, air force bases, critical infrastructure, and naval vessels operating in dense littoral environments.
By pairing precision guidance with AI-enabled targeting logic, Air LORA gives aircrews a stand-off option that can penetrate sophisticated air defenses while keeping launch platforms outside the threat envelope. It represents a shift from traditional “dumb” ballistic trajectories toward a more adaptive strike capability that can be tailored to different target sets and defensive layouts.
ROCKS: Striking in GPS-Denied Battlespace
Rafael’s ROCKS is described as a new-generation, extended stand-off range air-to-surface missile built to strike high-value stationary and relocatable targets in GPS-denied environments. Equipped with either a penetration or blast-fragmentation warhead, ROCKS is designed to destroy above-ground or deeply buried targets in heavily defended areas saturated with surface-to-air threats.
The missile relies on INS/GPS for its midcourse trajectory but transitions to advanced homing for terminal guidance, using scene-matching technology or an anti-radiation mode to home in on emitters and overcome GPS jamming and spoofing. This layered guidance approach, underpinned by AI-powered scene analysis, makes ROCKS especially relevant in modern drone and missile wars, where electronic warfare is as decisive as kinetic firepower.
Rampage: AI in the Opening Salvo
The Rampage is an air-to-ground ballistic missile that sits at the high end of this emerging class of AI-enabled stand-off weapons. This advanced missile, which uses AI extensively, was reportedly used in the initial February 28 attack on Iranian leadership targets in Tehran, an opening salvo that signaled the beginning of the ongoing joint U.S.–Israel war against Iran.
Developed by IAI and Elbit, Rampage is a supersonic, fire-and-forget precision strike weapon that relies on INS/GPS guidance to deliver stand-off attacks against high-value targets. According to some sources, it incorporates Automatic Target Recognition (ATR), enabling autonomous target identification using electro-optical, imaging infrared, and semi-active laser homing. In practice, this means AI is used to refine accuracy in complex, cluttered environments while still allowing optional man-in-the-loop control for real-time updates, blending high levels of autonomy with human oversight.
By combining speed, stand-off range, AI-enabled ATR, and flexible guidance modes, Rampage encapsulates the broader shift toward smarter, more autonomous strike systems that complement and, in some scenarios, surpass traditional drones in the modern drone wars battlespace.