Latest news with #MitchellInstituteforAerospaceStudies
Hindustan Times
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
Israel Takes Control of Iran's Skies—a Feat That Still Eludes Russia in Ukraine
Within 48 hours of starting its war on Iran, Israel said it gained air superiority over the western part of the country, including Tehran. Israeli warplanes began dropping bombs from within Iranian skies instead of relying on expensive long-range missiles. That is a feat that the giant Russian air force has been unable to achieve in Ukraine in 3½ years of war. This setback is one of the reasons why Moscow's troops have been bogged down in grinding trench warfare, sustaining staggering losses, ever since they failed to rapidly seize Kyiv in February 2022. On Sunday, Israel was exploiting its advantage, saying it had taken out dozens of surface-to-air missiles in western Iran and killed the intelligence chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, along with his deputy. The two wars are very different in many respects—for one, there is no conventional land component to the Israeli campaign in Iran. But the experience of these two conflicts, closely observed by militaries around the world, reinforces what war planners have known for decades: Control over air is everything, if you can get it. 'The two campaigns are showing the fundamental importance of air superiority in order to succeed in your overall military objectives,' said retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, who oversaw allied air operations against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001. 'In the case of Russia-Ukraine war, you see what happens when neither side can achieve air superiority: stalemate and devolution to attrition-based warfare,' he said. 'In the case of the Israel-Iran war, it allows them unhindered freedom to attack where they possess air superiority over segments of Iran.' The initial Israeli airstrikes were using the fifth-generation stealth F-35 aircraft, enhanced with Israeli modifications. Now that most of Iranian air defenses have been suppressed, older warplanes such as F-15 and F-16 are joining the fight. Israel has also started dropping short-range JDAM and Spice guided bombs, which are cheaper and much more abundant than missiles, to devastating effect. 'Over the past 24 hours, we completed an aerial route to Tehran and conducted an aerial breaching battle. IAF pilots are flying at great risk to their lives, hundreds of kilometers away from Israel, striking hundreds of different targets with precision,' said Israeli military Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir. The Israelis now have 'the ability to use the whole suite of their offensive weapons—in greater mass, more efficiently, and spreading them out,' said retired British Air Marshal Martin Sampson, who directed British air operations against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and now heads the Middle East office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. 'From Israel's side, the campaign objective is to destroy and degrade—and Iran doesn't have that ability.' The Israelis have certainly learned from Russian failures—and Ukrainian successes—as they planned their own campaign against Iran. But, military officials and analysts say, the most obvious lesson so far is that the Israeli air force is intrinsically more capable than the Russians—while Ukraine is much better at defense than Iran. 'Israel achieved surprise and overmatch over Iran's air defenses, which represented a much easier target set than Ukraine's air defenses in almost every respect,' said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and an expert on Russian and Ukrainian militaries. 'The asymmetry in qualitative capability between Israel's air force and Russia is also vast and can be easily observed.' Retired British Air Marshal Edward Stringer, who ran the air campaign in Libya in 2011 and headed operations for the British Ministry of Defense, said that the overall culture, sophisticated training and innovation of the Israeli air force, combined with its integration into intelligence and cyber capabilities, is a key reason why the Israelis succeeded where the Russians have failed. 'All the Russians have is pilots. They grow these pilots to drive flying artillery, and that's it,' he said. Just like Ukraine, whose Soviet jet fighters were badly outdated by 2022, Iran doesn't have warplanes capable of surviving air-to-air combat with its foe. Unlike Ukraine, however, Tehran has spectacularly failed to organize ground-based air defenses in ways that could have significantly impeded the ability of enemy aircraft to operate over its territory. This was, above all, the result of a fatal political miscalculation. Over decades, Tehran underinvested in air defenses and bet instead on the deterrent firepower of its own missile forces and those of its regional proxies. 'Iran never relied on air defenses alone to ward off attacks like this. The idea was always to use deterrence,' said Fabian Hinz, a military expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. But the main component of Iranian deterrence—Lebanon's Hezbollah militia—was decimated by Israel last year, and then physically severed from Iran by the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. Subsequent Israeli bombing of Syrian air-defense installations created a superhighway that Israeli aircraft can use unimpeded on their way to Iran. Ukrainian air defenses—primarily the Soviet-vintage S-300 and Buk systems—were much more robust and better integrated in 2022 than Iran's turned out to be once Israel attacked. Tehran relies on a mishmash of S-300, Chinese batteries and locally made air-defense systems. Equally critical was the element of surprise. Thanks to U.S. intelligence warnings about the impending Russian invasion, the Ukrainian military command dispersed and concealed the bulk of its mobile air-defenses in February 2022. After a handful of Russian jets were downed over Ukrainian cities, manned Russian aircraft stopped operating beyond the front line—the situation that remains in place today. To strike targets deep inside Ukraine, Russia must rely on the limited supply of cruise or ballistic missiles, or on drones, which are slow and carry a limited payload. Ukraine is using its own drones to strike back. Unlike Ukraine in 2022, Iran was caught by surprise—in part because of deceptive Israeli threats to launch the attack should U.S.-Iranian talks scheduled for June 15 fail to produce progress. Instead, the war began two days earlier. Israeli special-operations teams got into Iran covertly and destroyed key Iranian air-defense assets with short-range drones at the start of the campaign, using a method similar to how Ukrainian intelligence barely two weeks earlier blew up several Russian strategic bombers. At the same time, Israel was able to assassinate much of Iran's military leadership—another operation made possible by superior spywork. 'Basically, what Israel did with Iran is what Russia wanted to do with Ukraine: They thought they could pull off some cloak-and-dagger thing, and infiltrate and decapitate the Ukrainian regime,' said Michael Horowitz, an Israeli geopolitical analyst. 'But it turned out that the Ukrainian society has a resilience and cannot be so easily penetrated—whereas when it comes to Iran, the regime is so unpopular that it's easy to find people there who will agree to work with Israel.' Despite Israeli strikes, which resulted in numerous civilian casualties alongside military targets, Iran continues to lob ballistic-missile salvos at Israeli cities, also causing death and destruction. Time, however, now appears to be on Israel's side—at least in the immediate future. 'It's a numbers game, and it seems like Israel has the upper hand because they can now go after the missiles that are shooting at them with direct attack. After all, the best way to shoot a missile is on the ground while it's in a container, and not in the air while it's flying,' said retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Timothy Ray, a former U.S. Global Strike Command commander. 'What the Israelis are doing is just steadily leveraging an advantage.' Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives.
Mint
15 hours ago
- Politics
- Mint
Israel takes control of Iran's skies—a feat that still eludes Russia in Ukraine
Within 48 hours of starting its war on Iran, Israel said it gained air superiority over the western part of the country, including Tehran. Israeli warplanes began dropping bombs from within Iranian skies instead of relying on expensive long-range missiles. That is a feat that the giant Russian air force has been unable to achieve in Ukraine in 3½ years of war. This setback is one of the reasons why Moscow's troops have been bogged down in grinding trench warfare, sustaining staggering losses, ever since they failed to rapidly seize Kyiv in February 2022. On Sunday, Israel was exploiting its advantage, saying it had taken out dozens of surface-to-air missiles in western Iran and killed the intelligence chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, along with his deputy. The two wars are very different in many respects—for one, there is no conventional land component to the Israeli campaign in Iran. But the experience of these two conflicts, closely observed by militaries around the world, reinforces what war planners have known for decades: Control over air is everything, if you can get it. 'The two campaigns are showing the fundamental importance of air superiority in order to succeed in your overall military objectives," said retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula, dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, who oversaw allied air operations against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 2001. 'In the case of Russia-Ukraine war, you see what happens when neither side can achieve air superiority: stalemate and devolution to attrition-based warfare," he said. 'In the case of the Israel-Iran war, it allows them unhindered freedom to attack where they possess air superiority over segments of Iran." The initial Israeli airstrikes were using the fifth-generation stealth F-35 aircraft, enhanced with Israeli modifications. Now that most of Iranian air defenses have been suppressed, older warplanes such as F-15 and F-16 are joining the fight. Israel has also started dropping short-range JDAM and Spice guided bombs, which are cheaper and much more abundant than missiles, to devastating effect. 'Over the past 24 hours, we completed an aerial route to Tehran and conducted an aerial breaching battle. IAF pilots are flying at great risk to their lives, hundreds of kilometers away from Israel, striking hundreds of different targets with precision," said Israeli military Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir. The Israelis now have 'the ability to use the whole suite of their offensive weapons—in greater mass, more efficiently, and spreading them out," said retired British Air Marshal Martin Sampson, who directed British air operations against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and now heads the Middle East office of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. 'From Israel's side, the campaign objective is to destroy and degrade—and Iran doesn't have that ability." The Israelis have certainly learned from Russian failures—and Ukrainian successes—as they planned their own campaign against Iran. But, military officials and analysts say, the most obvious lesson so far is that the Israeli air force is intrinsically more capable than the Russians—while Ukraine is much better at defense than Iran. 'Israel achieved surprise and overmatch over Iran's air defenses, which represented a much easier target set than Ukraine's air defenses in almost every respect," said Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and an expert on Russian and Ukrainian militaries. 'The asymmetry in qualitative capability between Israel's air force and Russia is also vast and can be easily observed." Retired British Air Marshal Edward Stringer, who ran the air campaign in Libya in 2011 and headed operations for the British Ministry of Defense, said that the overall culture, sophisticated training and innovation of the Israeli air force, combined with its integration into intelligence and cyber capabilities, is a key reason why the Israelis succeeded where the Russians have failed. 'All the Russians have is pilots. They grow these pilots to drive flying artillery, and that's it," he said. Just like Ukraine, whose Soviet jet fighters were badly outdated by 2022, Iran doesn't have warplanes capable of surviving air-to-air combat with its foe. Unlike Ukraine, however, Tehran has spectacularly failed to organize ground-based air defenses in ways that could have significantly impeded the ability of enemy aircraft to operate over its territory. This was, above all, the result of a fatal political miscalculation. Over decades, Tehran underinvested in air defenses and bet instead on the deterrent firepower of its own missile forces and those of its regional proxies. 'Iran never relied on air defenses alone to ward off attacks like this. The idea was always to use deterrence," said Fabian Hinz, a military expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. But the main component of Iranian deterrence—Lebanon's Hezbollah militia—was decimated by Israel last year, and then physically severed from Iran by the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria. Subsequent Israeli bombing of Syrian air-defense installations created a superhighway that Israeli aircraft can use unimpeded on their way to Iran. Ukrainian air defenses—primarily the Soviet-vintage S-300 and Buk systems—were much more robust and better integrated in 2022 than Iran's turned out to be once Israel attacked. Tehran relies on a mishmash of S-300, Chinese batteries and locally made air-defense systems. Equally critical was the element of surprise. Thanks to U.S. intelligence warnings about the impending Russian invasion, the Ukrainian military command dispersed and concealed the bulk of its mobile air-defenses in February 2022. After a handful of Russian jets were downed over Ukrainian cities, manned Russian aircraft stopped operating beyond the front line—the situation that remains in place today. To strike targets deep inside Ukraine, Russia must rely on the limited supply of cruise or ballistic missiles, or on drones, which are slow and carry a limited payload. Ukraine is using its own drones to strike back. Unlike Ukraine in 2022, Iran was caught by surprise—in part because of deceptive Israeli threats to launch the attack should U.S.-Iranian talks scheduled for June 15 fail to produce progress. Instead, the war began two days earlier. Israeli special-operations teams got into Iran covertly and destroyed key Iranian air-defense assets with short-range drones at the start of the campaign, using a method similar to how Ukrainian intelligence barely two weeks earlier blew up several Russian strategic bombers. At the same time, Israel was able to assassinate much of Iran's military leadership—another operation made possible by superior spywork. 'Basically, what Israel did with Iran is what Russia wanted to do with Ukraine: They thought they could pull off some cloak-and-dagger thing, and infiltrate and decapitate the Ukrainian regime," said Michael Horowitz, an Israeli geopolitical analyst. 'But it turned out that the Ukrainian society has a resilience and cannot be so easily penetrated—whereas when it comes to Iran, the regime is so unpopular that it's easy to find people there who will agree to work with Israel." Despite Israeli strikes, which resulted in numerous civilian casualties alongside military targets, Iran continues to lob ballistic-missile salvos at Israeli cities, also causing death and destruction. Time, however, now appears to be on Israel's side—at least in the immediate future. 'It's a numbers game, and it seems like Israel has the upper hand because they can now go after the missiles that are shooting at them with direct attack. After all, the best way to shoot a missile is on the ground while it's in a container, and not in the air while it's flying," said retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Timothy Ray, a former U.S. Global Strike Command commander. 'What the Israelis are doing is just steadily leveraging an advantage." Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Air Force needs more fighter pilots for more airpower, report says
The U.S. Air Force needs to address its dwindling number of fighter pilots if it wants to remain combat ready, according to a recent report by a Washington aerospace think tank. A Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies report released this month examining the service's 'pilot crisis' recommends the Air Force grow and train its active component combat air forces, retain experienced pilots in the Air Force reserve component — such as the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve — and increase the production of fighter aircraft to bolster its battle capabilities. The think tank warned of a potential future in which the service is unable to meet the demands of warfare due to pilot shortages and airmen's inability to effectively engage in aerial combat. 'Experienced pilots have better survivability rates and mission outcomes in combat and confer those benefits to their less experienced wingmen,' the report said. 'The Air Force's combat pilot experience levels continue to drop as the service suffers from ongoing budget-driven force cuts and reduces opportunities that are essential to pilot career progression.' One source of the pitfall is the overall divesting of the service's infrastructure and force structure, the report said. In 2024, the service fell short of its airmen goal by nearly 1,850 pilots. Of those positions that needed to be filled, 1,142 were fighter pilot billets. Currently, the number of pilot retirements outnumber the number of recruits, according to the report. However, these manpower struggles aren't new for the Air Force. The service has encountered difficulty fulfilling pilot positions over the last few years for a myriad of reasons, including military flight instructor shortages and a reduced fleet, Air Force Times previously reported. Perennial pilot paucity puts Air Force in precarious position The institute also called for an increase in the production rate of fighter aircraft, such as the F-35A and F-15EX, as an influx of jets means more training opportunities for fighter pilots. 'The U.S. Air Force's combat aircraft inventory is the smallest that it has ever been in its history,' the report said. In 2024, there were roughly 160 bombers and over 2,000 fighter aircraft in the fleet. By comparison, the report states, there were 422 bombers and over 4,000 fighter aircraft during the Cold War. The report attributed the decline to infrastructure divestment. The service's fleet is also aging, as each aircraft's age averages between 30 and 50 years old, with many lacking the attributes and capabilities necessary for peer-level conflicts, according to the report. Further, collaborative combat aircraft, or unmanned aerial vehicles that utilize artificial intelligence, have raised questions about what the future of aerial combat will look like, as well as what shifts in technology and resources are necessary to accomplish evolving war fighting goals. But the report argues autonomous capabilities are unproven and cannot replace human fighter pilots in combat situations, even casting doubt on AI's decision-making abilities. 'Despite advances in artificial intelligence, autonomy will continue to have limitations and vulnerabilities that humans do not share — namely, the ability to decide and operate appropriately when presented with novel, unexpected, surprising, or ambiguous data,' the report said.
