SUPER ICE cruise missile: RAFAEL unveils the “big brother” of the ICE BREAKER with a 1,000-lb warhead

Israel’s RAFAEL Advanced Defense Systems on Wednesday, November 11 unveiled SUPER ICE, a new long-range cruise missile with a 1,000-pound (about 454 kg) warhead. The missile can be launched from aircraft, ships and ground launchers and is intended for stand-off strikes against high-value targets.

According to the company’s announcement, the warhead is compatible with the MK83 bomb. The new missile builds on ICE BREAKER technologies and belongs to the same family as that missile and SEA BREAKER. Its warhead is four times the weight of the ICE BREAKER’s, which is 250 pounds (about 113 kg).

What RAFAEL says it can do

The company describes a missile with autonomous navigation, low-altitude terrain-following flight and all-weather capability. Terminal guidance is by an electro-optical system comparing images of the target with stored data, a technology that, according to the company, ensures high accuracy.

In a video shown to journalists before the official presentation, SUPER ICE is shown hitting hardened targets, such as a shelter and a ballistic-missile launch site, as well as large ships. In the same material the missile is shown operating in an electronic-warfare environment and without a GNSS signal, at high subsonic speed.

The exact range was not announced. Company officials said only that it will be greater than that of SEA BREAKER and ICE BREAKER, for which RAFAEL declares a range of about 300 kilometres. According to Breaking Defense, the new missile is comparable in size to the American Tomahawk.

Same launchers, same mission planning

RAFAEL’s main commercial argument is the common architecture. SUPER ICE uses the same launch systems, the same mission-planning infrastructure and the same logistics support as the rest of the family, so a customer who already has the ICE BREAKER can gain greater firepower using existing infrastructure. Gad Geva, the company’s senior vice president and head of the Air Systems Division, stressed that the missile was designed to integrate with a wide range of aircraft without significant modifications. He added that the two missiles work in a complementary way, as the customer can choose the right weapon for each target.

According to the same outlet, MK83 compatibility suggests the missile could be integrated on aircraft that already carry bombs of this class, such as the F-15 and F-16. RAFAEL has not clarified whether SUPER ICE is already operational.

RAFAEL’s chairman, Yuval Steinitz, called SUPER ICE “the best cruise missile of its kind in the world” and an “ideal solution” for long-range strikes on high-value targets, “including air-defence systems”, placing it in a tradition that goes back decades with the POPEYE family. Chief executive Yoav Tourgeman said the company’s systems “played a decisive role in recent conflicts” and that the new missile meets a “real and growing global need”. Based on RAFAEL figures cited by Breaking Defense, orders for the company’s cruise missiles exceeded $1 billion in 2023, and by 2024 more than 1,000 had been sold.

The Israeli company is known in Greece too: its systems featured in the October 28 parade, as we reported in our report on the Israeli weapons of the parade. All performance claims are the manufacturer’s own.