When asked to name one defining episode in the chronicles of the Israeli Air Force (IAF),¹ historians and professional airmen would likely recall the opening salvoes of the Six-Day War on 5 June 1967. By the end of that pivotal day, the outnumbered IAF had effectively destroyed the air forces of three hostile Arab states, enabling the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to over-whelm their foes and triple Israel’s territorial holdings within a week. The IAF called this impressive accomplishment Operation Focus—an appropriate moniker for such a determined application of aerial force against a numerically superior foe.²
Equally appropriate, the...
The IAF has traditionally placed its operational and acquisition priority on fulfilling the service’s core missions: achieving air superiority, conducting long-range strikes, and executing surface support operations in the context of large-scale warfare against a conventional foe.⁵ Each of these missions, and the IAF’s resultant force structure, foresaw the service erecting an aerial barrier around Israel and its surface forces while taking the fight to enemy territory. As intermittent diplomatic progress between Israel and “frontline” Arab states had resulted in a more distant sphere of anticipated operations, the IAF correspondingly forecast its wartime focus on increasingly longrange operations. Accordingly, it...
That latter pilot had spoken in November 2000, following six weeks of aerial operations in support of Ebb and Flow. The IAF was first called into direct action against its new and unanticipated enemy on 2 October 2000, just four days after the intifada began.11 More attacks would follow, and by January 2005 regional media and international defense sources had reported over 550 IAF attack sorties against Palestinian targets.12 Though a relatively small tally by US standards—roughly equivalent to a single day’s attack sorties during the major combat phase of Operation Iraqi Freedom, for example13—the IAF’s evolving mission...
As the IAF’s missions evolved throughout Ebb and Flow, the range of platforms and weapons employed to accomplish those missions correspondingly expanded. Initially, the IAF relied exclusively on the use of attack helicopters to provide aerial support to ground forces, express Israeli displeasure with the PA, or assassinate particularly troublesome militants.34 As the IAF’s target set began to expand, however, it found that helicopter missile and cannon fire could not effectively engage certain facilities, resulting in the first use of fighter aircraft to attack targets in the Occupied Territories since 1967. As explained by the IDF Operations Branch chief following...
The IAF’s operational evolution throughout Ebb and Flow was mirrored by the progression of its troubles, including declining confidence in the wisdom of its tasking and the consequent impact on morale. The service first encountered criticism from within its own ranks in the early “signaling” days of IAF operations. Just one month into the intifada, several Israeli officers privately expressed their belief that IAF operations had been ineffective and hamstrung by restrictive rules of engagement—including a requirement to fire warning shots before attacking PA facilities—to the extent that “such attacks cause no real damage, and therefore have no...
To ameliorate the deleterious effects of collateral damage, the IAF continually modified its tactics and operating procedures to account for the congested urban environment. “Our fighting norms have changed,” an AH-1S squadron deputy commander noted. “We are carrying out missions with the understanding that what is important is the day after. One errant missile has an influence on the entire arena.”73 Following a three-month hiatus in air operations during the winter of 2000–2001, the IAF acknowledged placing stricter limits on operations “as a result of the bad media publicity surrounding the use of helicopters.” As Halutz revealed in April...
The continual shifts in mission emphasis and platform employment, the domestic and international sensitivity to IAF operations, and the internal debates regarding targets and tactics demonstrated the challenges confronting the IAF as it attempted to apply airpower in the new context. Part of the difficulty stemmed from the realization that the IAF—which had expected to receive over 50 percent of the Israeli defense budget throughout this decade—had been relegated to a secondary role in Ebb and Flow.89 Accustomed to functioning as the sole or decisive element in past Israeli operations, the IAF found itself scrambling for the right...
Despite the setbacks, embarrassments, and outright failures the IAF suffered during Ebb and Flow, the successes it achieved— albeit belatedly—testified to impressive improvements in mission areas that will likely remain valid in any future conflict. One of the most profound IAF achievements resulted from its years-long quest to shorten the sensor-to-shooter loop. Although the IAF relied heavily on human intelligence (HUMINT) for the initial identification and location of targets, particularly individuals,105 RPAs proved themselves critical during operational execution. “[Finding] that small amount of time when the guy qualifies as a target, that’s what RPAs are all about,” 200 Squadron’s...
Despite its increasing effectiveness in ground support operations, the IAF continued to draw considerable heat for its most controversial mission—the so-called targeted killings. Like Palestinian suicide bombings, Israeli assassination operations had been a gruesome, albeit infrequent, aspect of the Arab-Israeli dynamic since the early 1990s.122 That changed in November 2000, when Israel began a systematic campaign to hunt down and neutralize individual Palestinian militants. “When we say that we will punish the murders and we will prevent terror attacks, we really mean it,” Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sheh announced the following month. “The most effective and just way to...
At the end of the day, everyone wearing a uniform, anywhere, understands that “what worked last time” is merely history. To truly understand what will work this time, in this conflict, events typically must first go wrong in epic fashion. The lessons of one conflict do not always—in fact, do not ever—translate wholesale into the conduct of another. However, even if history does not repeat itself, it sometimes rhymes, and the IAF’s hard-won experience may offer some lessons of worth to the American airpower community.
First, airpower will not always enjoy first billing despite past successes—however spectacular...
