Originally posted by thediplomat.com:

Why an Air-Launched Ballistic Missile?

Air-launched ballistic missiles are an unusual configuration for ballistic missiles. No country has inducted and deployed an ALBM as part of its strategic forces; the closest would have been the United States, which developed the GAM-87 Skybolt in the 1950s.

The Skybolt program, which also involved the participation of the United Kingdom, was ultimately cancelled in favor of the submarine-based Polaris system. U.S. President John F. Kennedy cancelled the program in the final weeks of 1962, weeks after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The United States conducted subsequent experimentation with ALBMs, including a 1974 flight-test of a Minuteman-I intercontinental-range ballistic missile off a C-5A Galaxy strategic airlifter. Today, the United States uses ALBMs dropped from C-17 Globemasters as target missiles for its tests of missile defense systems.

The Soviet Union, too, is thought to have briefly experimented with modifying its Tu-160 strategic bomber to carry a nuclear-capable ALBM, but the project foundered in the early 1980s and never proceeded to flight-testing.

China is developing and has been flight-testing a nuclear-capable air-launched ballistic missile (ALBM) along with a new long-range strategic bomber to deliver it, The Diplomat has learned.

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Originally posted by dassault-aviation.com:

MLA (Airborne Micro Launcher)

Benefits of airborne launch led Dassault Aviation to study a micro launcher, borne by a combat aircraft.

Two versions have been considered, all using an operational Rafale as carrier aircraft:

• A “single body linear version” (a solid propellant stage and a liquid propellant stage) to launch 75 kg in low Earth orbit;
• “Trimaran version” (one central body and two solid propellant first stage boosters) to launch microsatellites up to 150 kg into an 800 km sun synchronous orbit.

The MLA would constitute a responsive launch system well adapted to “Defense and Security” needs.

▲ MLA (Airborne Micro Launcher) launched by a Rafale[web.archive.org]
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