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Middle East Eye
2 days ago
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
Israel's air superiority in Iran conflict can't be compared to either Russia or Ukraine
Israel's ability to achieve air superiority over Iran during its recent 12-day conflict has been contrasted with Russia's inability to gain control of Ukraine's skies and the US's failure to do the same during its recent attacks against Yemen's Houthi fighters. To be sure, in its surprise attack on Iran, Israel reaffirmed the value of old-school air superiority, even in the age of ballistic missile and drone warfare. 'Just ask yourself, would you want to be Ukraine or Israel?" Douglas Birkey, the executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told Middle East Eye. "Ukraine has zero ability to scare the sky for offensive or defensive purposes. It's stuck in WWI-style attrition conflict while Israel had entré to do what it wanted in the battle-space,' Birkey added. But analysts say that despite some trying to draw comparisons, all three conflicts are uniquely distinct, and drawing connections could in fact be misleading. This is especially true with the Iran-Israel outcome more uncertain, and the countries both moving to address their vulnerabilities. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters According to Andrew Curtis, a retired air commodore in Britain's Royal Air Force and associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, the "comparisons in terms of the technology and battle space are apples-to-oranges". First, Iran's US-supplied air force quickly decayed after the 1979 overthrow of the Shah. So 40 years later, Israel knew it didn't have to worry about Iranian pilots, whereas Ukraine still had 55 operational fighter jets from Soviet days when Russia invaded in early 2022. Ukraine's air defence systems - mainly S-300s and Buk batteries - were intimately familiar to the Russians. However, they failed to capitalise on this knowledge and take them out early - a misstep that military analysts say Moscow is still paying the price for. Under US guidance, the Ukrainians dispersed their air defences, making it harder for the Russians to locate them. Ukraine was then backed up with US-made Stingers and, more recently, precious Patriot air defence batteries. Israel learned from Russia's early failures by knocking out Iran's air defences on the opening day of the war, experts said. They reportedly used teams of Mossad agents with drones smuggled into Iran and fifth-generation modified F-35 warplanes to stay in the sky without refuelling to disable Iran's mix of domestic air defence, and Russian and Chinese equipment. 'If you can find, you can kill, and if you can hide, you can survive' - Andrew Curtis, former air commodore, Royal Air Force Once Iran's air defences were knocked out, Israel's more vulnerable non-stealth F-15s and F-16s were able to roam Iran's skies. The key for Israel was intelligence collection. "No one expected the F-35 to be shot down by Iran's air defences," Curtis told MEE. "But it was Israel's ability to hunt down Iran's batteries and destroy them to clear the path for more vulnerable aircraft that was key. Israel spent decades collecting intelligence on Iran's defences, whereas the Russians did not with Ukraine." Some experts expressed surprise at how quickly Israel was able to achieve air superiority over Iran, noting that the US was unable to do so against Tehran's allies, the Houthis in Yemen. Between January 2024 and May 2025, when US President Donald Trump struck a truce with the Houthis, the group was able to shoot down at least 19 US Reaper drones. "The Iranians and the Houthis have the same equipment," Birkey told MEE. "In that sense, we should not underestimate how impressive Israel's performance was." Of course, drones are easier to shoot down than jet fighters. And again, it came down to intelligence collection, experts say. "Houthi air defences have not been an intelligence collection priority for the US," a US defence official told MEE on the condition of anonymity. That leaves an opening for Iran now, as it looks to rebuild its defences, experts say. Can Israel maintain its air superiority? Sources told MEE last week that Iran was moving to rebuild its air defences and had purchased Chinese surface-to-air missile batteries since its ceasefire with Israel last month. According to the analysts, if it can plug its intelligence gaps and better disperse those systems, it will be harder for Israel to achieve air superiority next time. "It's all about hiding and finding," Curtis told MEE. "If you can find, you can kill, and if you can hide, you can survive." A former senior US official told MEE that he was sceptical Iran would learn from its mistakes. "The ayatollah still thinks he killed 200 American soldiers at al-Asad because that's what his people told him," the former US official said, referring to Iran's 2020 strike on a US base in retaliation for the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. No American deaths were reported as a result of the largely symbolic strike. "Say what you want about Israel, but I promise you the military will have an intense debate about the shortfalls of their ballistic missile defence internally. Iran is unlikely to have the same," the former senior US official added. Israel used its air superiority to knock out Iranian ballistic missile launchers on the ground. It claimed to have destroyed half of them during the conflict. Despite this, and a tiered air defence system backed up by American Terminal High Altitude Area Defence batteries and missile destroyers in the Eastern Mediterranean, Iran was able to send missiles into Israeli cities right up until a ceasefire was reached. Iran receives Chinese surface-to-air missile batteries after Israel ceasefire deal Read More » The Telegraph reported last week that Iranian missiles directly hit five Israeli military facilities. Iran's ability to do so did not go unnoticed in the region, particularly in the Arabian Gulf, where the US's allies have energy infrastructure and glitzy towers with no similar American air defence backstop. Still, Birkey said the sheer volume of Iranian missiles fired at Israel underscored that Israel's US-supported air defence "was more effective than many people would have guessed from the get-go". "The weakness is that it is an enterprise where you are at risk of running out of your magazine depth. We only have so many interceptors and the ability to produce them," he said. Having achieved air superiority over Iran once, Israel now faces its own dilemma. Air superiority is not static. Maintaining it over a small country like Lebanon, where Israel is tracking Hezbollah's movements with drones, is easier than in vast Iran. One of the Islamic Republic's first moves after the ceasefire in June was to try to rout out Israeli spies. "Hunting missile launchers is really hard. You need someone detecting them - that's spies or persistent ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance)," Fabian Hinz, a defence and military researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told MEE. With Iran receiving SAM batteries from China, Israel faces a new dilemma: whether to strike them or not. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrapped up a visit to Washington last week, which US and Arab officials tell MEE appeared to be an effort to obtain US buy-in for more strikes on Iran instead of negotiations. "I would predict the Israelis would prevent the Iranians from establishing another air defence network unless they are deterred by the US," the former senior US official told MEE.
Business Insider
21-06-2025
- Politics
- Business Insider
Wiping out surface-to-air missiles is how you win a modern air war — and Israel's gotten very good at it
Israel has been pummeling Iran's arsenal of air defenses, hitting air bases and knocking out its missiles to open the airspace up for further strikes. Targeting enemy surface-to-air missiles to secure air superiority is a critical early move in an air war like Israel's, where the primary objective is to bomb the enemy's combat capabilities, comprehensively degrading its ability to fight. It's a tactic known as suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses. Israel was instrumental in advancing this type of warfare after failure taught a hard lesson in the 70s. In the decades since, it has executed it against foes repeatedly. Last week, the Israeli military launched "Operation Rising Lion, "a combat operation aimed at destroying Iran's nuclear program, as well as severely degrading its military capabilities, including ballistic missile programs and air defenses. Israel's armed forces have targeted military leaders and critical defensive capabilities as well. The air campaign has seen the Israeli Air Force strike Iranian surface-to-air missile assets and other targets, heavily weakening Iran's ability to maintain control over its skies. Earlier this week, the Israeli Air Force said its bombing runs from fighter jets like F-35Is, F-16s, and F-15s had given it air superiority over large areas of Iran, including the capital Tehran. The unique, fifth-generation F-35 Adirs of the Israeli Air Force are, despite limited information on their activities, believed to have played a critical role in the operations against Iran, as this is exactly what the jets were made for: penetrating contested air to weaken enemy defenses. The Israeli military said recently that it had destroyed more than 70 Iranian air-defense batteries, weapons armed with surface-to-air missiles. Destroying those enemy air defenses is widely seen as absolutely imperative in modern air campaigns, Douglas Birkey, the executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, said. "The ability to access their domain unfettered is fundamental to really be able to fight competently." Crippling enemy's air defenses to clear the way for an air war is a tactic that stems from lessons learned from Israel's failures in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and US experiences in Vietnam. During its war, Israel lost 102 aircraft in the fight, many to enemy surface-to-air missile batteries. The losses spurred the development of strategies focused on suppressing enemy air defenses and destroying them. Israel masterfully demonstrated the tactic during Operation Mole Cricket 19, an operation carried out during the 1982 Lebanon War. The Syrian military had fortified eastern Lebanon with sophisticated Soviet-supplied air defense systems, effectively turning Beqaa Valley into a no-fly zone filled with surface-to-air missiles. Israel broke the enemy air defense network with decoys and deception, electronic warfare, and precision air strikes. It didn't even have the stealth aircraft it has today. The strikes on the SAM batteries cleared the way for Israeli F-15s and F-16s to break through and dominate the skies, destroying dozens of hostile fighters. Western militaries studied the Israeli operation's success, as no other military had ever done anything quite like that. In the early 1990s, the US employed the tactic in Operation Desert Storm, breaking open Iraq's skies for more permissive combat operations with air cover, and then, NATO's forces did the same in Serbia a little later that same decade. Eliminating enemy air defenses can rely on high-cost, specialized weapons able to target hidden, high-value air defense radars, explained Patrycja Bazylczyk, a program manager and research associate with the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. These include systems like anti-radition missiles. "By leveraging intelligence-gathering and pre-positioned drones within Iranian territory to target air defense assets, Israel underscores how low-cost drones can impose outsized losses on Iranian long-range strike capabilities," she added. Indeed, this kind of reconnaissance was key in Beqaa Valley as well. There are few details on Israel's operation beyond targets eliminated, but Birkey said its assault on Iran's air defenses likely included broad array of effects employed simultaneously. "That might include cyberattacks to bring down networks that could control command and control. It might be electronic warfare to jam certain radars and other communications means," he said. It could involve high-end standoff missiles, stealth aircraft, and drones, too. Taking out enemy air defense batteries is a fast, complex operation that requires insight into how the enemy thinks and operates, as well as detailed mapping out of which targets need to be hit with what and when. Now, with more control over Iran's skies, "Israeli aircraft and drones can go after military targets like a fish in a barrel," Bazylczyk said. Like Israel's experiences during the Yom Kippur War, the importance of the suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses mission isn't only seen in victories, but also failures as well. Russia's failures in the Ukraine war to wipe out enemy air defenses cost the Russian Air Force air superiority, preventing a quicker resolution, as Russian air assets have been largely unable to provide critical close air support for ground forces. It's led instead to a grinding war of attrition in which both sides are locked in something of a stalemate, burning through artillery, weapons, and soldiers. Israel's current campaign against Iran comes on the heels of strikes against Iranian defensive capabilities last fall. Its main targets are related to Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran has said is for civilian purposes, although enrichment levels and secretive nuclear activity have raised concerns in the West. US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that Iran cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon, and in recent days has increased rhetoric against Iran and its leadership. The US claims it wasn't involved in Israel's initial attacks, but Trump has signaled that he is now mulling a decision on US strikes against Iran. He has opened a two-week negotiating window. In the meantime, the US Navy has warships, including an aircraft carrier and several surface ships, stationed in and around the Middle East. Some of these assets have provided air defense for Israel, helping shield it from retaliatory Iranian missile strikes.
