Israel’s dangerous dependence on fighter jets to strike its enemies

As ballistic missiles become more accurate, powerful and difficult to stop, Israel’s overwhelming reliance on fighter jets for long-range strikes could become a dangerous vulnerability in its next major war.

By Jonathan Pollard

The ongoing conflicts in the Middle East have shattered several long-held military assumptions, but perhaps none more decisively than the belief that sophisticated air-defense systems can reliably protect a country from large-scale missile attacks.

For decades, Western military planners placed enormous faith in multi-layered missile defenses. Recent wars, however, have demonstrated an uncomfortable reality: precision ballistic missiles have become increasingly accurate, increasingly plentiful and increasingly difficult and expensive to stop.

The Economics of Missile Warfare

The problem begins with simple economics.

Modern ballistic missiles can be produced in growing numbers, moved around on mobile launchers and fired with little warning. The defensive systems designed to stop them—including Patriot, Arrow and Aegis—are enormously expensive, while their interceptors are available only in limited quantities.

An enemy does not necessarily have to defeat the defender’s technology. It can attempt to overwhelm it simply by firing enough missiles.

That creates a dangerous imbalance. Even a technologically superior country can find itself rapidly burning through extremely expensive and difficult-to-replace interceptors while its enemy continues launching missiles.

But the threat is no longer merely about firing inaccurate missiles toward civilian population centers.

Today’s precision missiles can threaten air bases, command centers, power stations, ports, water facilities and other strategic infrastructure. Capabilities that were once largely the domain of the world’s superpowers are increasingly within reach of regional powers and even terrorist organizations.

The danger has spread to the sea as well, where anti-ship ballistic missiles can threaten naval vessels and commercial shipping far from shore.

A New Generation of Missiles

The missiles themselves are also becoming more dangerous and harder to stop.

Some newer weapons carry maneuvering warheads that can change course as they approach their targets, making interception considerably more difficult. Other technologies under development could further challenge existing defenses and potentially allow a single missile to threaten multiple targets.

Cluster warheads present another danger. Rather than delivering a single explosive charge, they can scatter numerous smaller explosives across a broad area, greatly increasing the damage that one successful missile can cause.

There has also long been concern about the potential for ballistic missiles to carry unconventional chemical or biological payloads, adding yet another dimension to the threat.

Yet the real revolution is not simply that missiles have become more sophisticated.

It is that they can now be manufactured on an industrial scale.

The ballistic missile can no longer be viewed as a scarce strategic weapon reserved for exceptional circumstances. Improved manufacturing methods, modular designs and increasingly localized supply chains are allowing countries to build large missile arsenals at a pace that would once have been impossible.

The lesson emerging from the Middle East is therefore difficult to ignore: the precision ballistic missile has become one of the most effective asymmetric weapons on the modern battlefield.

It is increasingly accurate, difficult to intercept, relatively inexpensive compared with the systems required to stop it and capable of being produced in large numbers.

Until defensive technology can reverse that equation, the attacker possesses a dangerous advantage.

Israel’s Dangerous Dependence on Fighter Jets

Nowhere should this revolution be taken more seriously than in Israel.

For three generations, the Israel Defense Forces has relied overwhelmingly on one instrument to deliver powerful conventional strikes against enemies hundreds or even thousands of kilometers away: the manned fighter aircraft.

The Israeli Air Force has deservedly earned its reputation as one of the finest air forces in the world. Its pilots and aircraft have repeatedly accomplished missions that many believed impossible.

But Israel’s overwhelming dependence on aircraft for long-range strikes has also created a dangerous single point of failure.

Aircraft need runways. They need air bases, maintenance facilities, fuel, ground crews and an enormous amount of supporting infrastructure.

And before Israeli aircraft can reach their targets, they may have to contend with enemy radar networks, surface-to-air missiles and other defenses specifically designed to keep them out.

There is another way.

Israel Needs a Second Way to Strike

A large ground-based force of long-range precision missiles could give Israel the ability to strike an enemy’s air-defense radars, command centers, missile sites and airfields almost immediately, without putting a single Israeli pilot at risk.

Those missiles would not replace the Air Force.

They would make the Air Force more powerful.

A surprise missile barrage could destroy or suppress enemy defenses before Israeli aircraft ever entered hostile airspace. Israel’s F-35I Adirs and heavily armed F-15s could then follow, operating in a far less dangerous environment.

Israel does not lack the technology to do this.

Its defense industry already produces world-class precision missiles, including the LORA long-range missile.

What Israel has lacked is the institutional willingness to build a truly independent long-range ground-based missile force.

The Air Force’s Monopoly

For decades, the IAF has fiercely guarded its position as Israel’s principal instrument for deep strategic strikes.

Within the upper echelons of the defense establishment, there have repeatedly been battles over proposals to create an independent long-range missile force. Such a force would inevitably challenge the Air Force’s institutional prestige, political influence and enormous share of the defense budget.

The result has been persistent resistance to creating a powerful second means of striking Israel’s distant enemies.

This makes little strategic sense.

A ground-based missile force would not diminish the importance of Israel’s pilots. On the contrary, it could dramatically reduce the risks they face by allowing Israel to attack enemy air defenses before sending its aircraft into hostile skies.

By insisting that deep strategic strikes remain overwhelmingly dependent upon aircraft, the defense establishment is placing both extraordinarily expensive planes and irreplaceable air crews at unnecessary risk.

In an era when precision ballistic missiles are transforming warfare, maintaining the Air Force’s virtual monopoly over Israel’s long-range conventional striking power is no longer merely outdated military thinking.

It has become a threat to Israel’s national security.

The Warning From Nevatim

Nevatim Air Base demonstrates precisely why.

Located in the Negev, Nevatim is one of the crown jewels of Israeli military power. It is home to Israel’s advanced F-35I Adir stealth fighters along with other strategically important aircraft and equipment.

But all of that extraordinary military power remains dependent upon a fixed piece of geography.

Israel’s enemies know where Nevatim is. They know where its runways are, where its hangars are and what is based there.

And they have already fired ballistic missiles at it.

During regional missile attacks, enemy ballistic missiles penetrated Israel’s celebrated multi-layered defenses and struck the base. Satellite imagery revealed multiple impacts and damage to parts of the facility, demonstrating that even one of Israel’s most important and heavily defended military installations is not untouchable.

The danger is not limited to ballistic missiles.

Recent reports have also highlighted security problems around the base, including gunfire that reached the base and struck an aircraft, as well as the growing threat posed by small drones.

Now imagine the opening minutes of a coordinated surprise attack involving ballistic missiles, precision drones and other weapons.

If runways are cratered or vital maintenance facilities disabled, aircraft sitting on the ground can quickly become extraordinarily expensive assets that cannot be used precisely when Israel needs them most.

For a country whose long-range offensive strategy depends so heavily upon aircraft, a runway is not merely a strip of concrete.

It is a strategic vulnerability.

Missiles Don’t Need Runways

A mobile ground-based missile force presents an entirely different problem for the enemy.

Long-range missiles can be dispersed throughout the country, concealed in fortified locations and moved aboard mobile launchers. They do not need a runway to take off, and they cannot be grounded simply by putting a crater in one.

If Nevatim or Tel Nof came under heavy attack, Israel would still possess an independent means of immediately striking enemy air defenses, missile arsenals, command centers and radar installations.

That is precisely the kind of redundancy a country facing existential threats should demand.

Israel has spent decades developing multiple layers of defense because no single defensive system can be trusted to protect the country.

Why should our offensive doctrine be any different?

Israel cannot afford to entrust its ability to strike distant enemies overwhelmingly to one branch of the military operating from a small number of known, fixed bases.

The era in which Israel could afford this dependence has ended.

The vulnerability of Nevatim has exposed the limits of a strategy built overwhelmingly around manned aircraft. To deter and survive the multi-front wars of the 21st century, the IDF must finally break the Air Force’s institutional veto and build a powerful, survivable, ground-launched precision missile force.

Israel should do so now—before the opening hours of its next major war demonstrate, at an unbearable cost, that its runways have become its Achilles’ heel.

The post Israel’s dangerous dependence on fighter jets to strike its enemies appeared first on World Israel News.