The Republic of Korea (ROK) reportedly has plans to develop an air-launched ballistic missile (ALBM).
The military news website The War Zone (TWZ), citing a report in the Seoul newspaper Dong-A Ilbo, said the ROK Air Force (ROKAF) submitted data about an ALBM program in August 2025 to a lawmaker on the National Assembly’s defense committee.
The ROKAF submission confirmed that it is researching a “hypersonic air-to-ground guided missile,” as well as a “long-range blackout guided missile,” according to TWZ, quoting from the Dong-A Ilbo report.
“The hypersonic missile is a reference to an ALBM, since this kind of weapon — like many ballistic missiles — arrives at its target with a hypersonic or near-hypersonic terminal velocity. Meanwhile, the other program refers to a weapon that’s engineered to disable power distribution. To achieve this, such missiles are normally loaded with carbon-fiber strands,” TWZ reported. When spools of these highly conductive strands are dropped over communications or power infrastructure, they can cause short circuits, according to TWZ.
Such a weapon primarily would be used to knock out the power for North Korean strategic facilities, according to the Dong-A Ilbo report. “Overall, an ALBM offers significant benefits for carrying out standoff strikes, especially against highly defended, time-sensitive and hardened targets. These are very much the kinds of targets that the ROKAF would be expected to prosecute in a shooting war with North Korea,” TWZ notes.
The term ballistic is used for a variety of missiles with similar capabilities. For example, Seoul’s most powerful ballistic missile, the Hyunmoo-5, is a surface-to-surface weapon that could target North Korea, according to The Associated Press (AP). ROK forces unveiled the Hyunmoo-5 during its Armed Forces Day ceremony in 2024, according to the AP.
“The canonical definition of a ballistic missile is one that is powered in its boost phase by a rocket motor rather than an air-breathing engine and is subsequently unpowered as it follows a ballistic trajectory to its target,” explained a 2019 report from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). “An air-launched ballistic missile is one such system that is launched from an aircraft.” Much like hypersonic weapons, ALBMs are also difficult to intercept because they have some ability to maneuver during flight. While the ALBM may be new to the ROKAF, the missiles are not. The FAS report noted that China, Israel, Russia and the United States have experience with the technology, which dates to the 1960s.
A possible launch platform for the ROK’s ALBM would be the upcoming KF-21 Boramae, a fighter aircraft developed by Korea Aerospace Industries that is undergoing flight tests. Israel made extensive use of its U.S.-made F-15 and F-16 fighters to launch ALBMs against targets in Iran, where they “knocked out air defenses and struck other highly defended sites at long distances,” TWZ said.