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Current War Exposes a Shocking Reality: Israel Does Not Have True Air Superiority
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system intercepts rockets launched from the Gaza Strip, as seen from Sderot, Israel May 13, 2023 Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, experienced the London Blitz in World War II. Though he was not a military man, he well understood the significance of air superiority — and, in its absence, the weight of an air threat to the Israeli home front. When, as Israel’s first prime minister, he was about to make his historic decision on the Sinai war (1956), he set a condition for the French allies: that they place two fighter squadrons to defend Israel’s skies during the war.
Since then, air superiority has been a fundamental pillar of the Israeli security concept. Absolute control of the skies was intended to prevent the Arab air forces from hitting the Israeli home front and to ensure that in an emergency, reserve forces could be mobilized and reach the front without interruption while the limited regular forces holding the lines were being supported. The regular forces would defend, air superiority would enable, and the reserves would regain the initiative.
Over the years, the Israeli Air Force has become one of the most advanced in the world. Israel’s confidence in its air power, an offensive force at its core, left limited room for a defensive approach. In the 1960s, advanced Hawk missile batteries were purchased from the United States, despite opposition from the Air Force. Considerations of air coordination and flight safety led to the transfer of the anti-aircraft units from the Artillery Corps to the Air Force under the central control method used in it.
In June 1982, the Air Force stunned the world with a brilliant strike operation on Syrian surface-to-air missile batteries (SAMs) in Lebanon. In addition to destroying the SAM formations, the strike shot down dozens of enemy planes. Since then, no Arab air force has challenged the skies of Israel. Absolute air supremacy was achieved.
Gradually, over the following decades, two processes took place. The first was the reduction of tactical anti-aircraft formations, the main purpose of which was to provide mobile protection at the front for ground forces against enemy aircraft. Mobile formations protected the ground maneuver and shot down enemy planes and helicopters in the Yom Kippur War, and also fought in the First Lebanon War. Despite its long-lasting deployment and use against some terrorist airborne attacks from the Lebanese border in the 1980s, the formation was a low priority for the Air Force. After the Second Lebanon War, the last of these units were shut down and the anti-aircraft formation moved in full force to its new mission, which had been evolving since the 1990s: defense of the home front against missiles and rockets.
The second significant process to occur over recent decades was the development and purchase of Arrow interceptors, Iron Dome, and David’s Sling, to protect the home front from the missiles and rockets that were accumulating on the other side. This threat intensified over the years, and the air defense corps, which, in 2011, officially changed its name from Anti-Aircraft to Air and Missile Defense, adapted itself, shifting its focus to the emerging threat that had replaced the anti-aircraft mission. The working assumption was, and remains to this day, that Israel’s Air Force rules the skies. The job of air defense, therefore, is to focus on missiles and rockets.
This assumption is no longer valid.
The “Low Sky” layer
The current war illustrates what military professionals and observers already knew. After all, this development has been observed in all recent wars in the world, particularly in Ukraine.
At the beginning of this decade, a new-old threat layer gradually developed: numerous cheap, small, unmanned aircraft with a low radar signature. The world of drones and unmanned aircraft completely changed the premise of absolute air superiority. The Israeli Air Force does continue to rule the skies — but “under the noses” of the advanced fighter jets, a new air layer has been created. This is the “low sky” layer.
The enemy has found a loophole here. The Air Force (and, within it, the air defense corps) is required to defend against the combined and coordinated threats of missiles, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), and rockets (MUR).
The older precision missile threat was already a challenge. The risk of precision strikes applies not only to military and civilian infrastructure but also to the air defense system itself. This array was built over the years under the premise of Israeli air superiority. The air defense itself was not supposed to be hunted. Today, the enemy is able not only to accurately target our air defense elements but to maintain a real presence in our skies. Using UAVs, and even drones in shorter ranges, it can search for targets and strike them in real time. The enemy is able to penetrate deep into Israel and engage the air defense system in one lane while other aircraft take advantage of the diversion and penetrate in another, more covert lane. It can identify targets and strike immediately using armed or suicide UAS. Above all, it strives to locate, endanger, and destroy key elements of the air defense system itself. It is capable of all this and more. We have to defend our Air Defense.
The transition from dealing with piloted aircraft to aircraft with pre-programmed, changing routes that can perform a variety of tricks turns the aerial clash between defender and attacker into a complex professional battle. Such a battle requires additional measures. These consist mainly of finding means of detection, localization, tracking, accurate identification, and above all, faster decision-making that is based on more information in real time. As the challenge of managing the air battle increases, the air defense system, even one that is capable of successfully intercepting thousands of missiles and rockets, can engage fewer air targets at once. The array thus becomes more vulnerable and exposed.
The current war greatly accelerated the development of this threat. The enemy has spotted the breach and is daily improving the means and operational techniques at his disposal. The UAS threat can no longer be seen as separate from the ballistic, missile and rocket threats. The enemy is perfecting techniques by which to use these tools in a coordinated manner to overcome our air defense arrays, destroy them, and continue to hit targets on our front and home front.
This dangerous process, which is accelerating fast, requires quick learning, effective organization and practical preparation on Israel’s part. Here are three practical issues to be addressed, from light to heavy:
Central control
Central control is meant to enable effective, optimal and efficient decision-making. Processing information from all sensors makes it possible to launch the best interceptor from the best location at the best moment.
This approach is designed to deal mainly with quantity, on the assumption that it will be possible to see in real time where the enemy’s missiles are aimed. In a reality in which UAS appear and disappear from radar screens quickly, decentralized processes might also be required, under a central policy. This complexity will affect the scope of the threats the defense system can deal with simultaneously and also the extent of the possible savings in interceptors and management of interceptor stockpiles.
Absolute central control could also prove to be a single point of failure. The air defense control model must adapt and integrate decentralized decisions with a central policy and allow the integration of air assets like attack helicopters and fighter jets, as is the case these days.
The defense of air defense
Anyone who deals with air defense knows what “multi-layered” means. Multi-layered defense is the aerial version of the principle of operational depth in land defense. An attacking aircraft will relatively easily overcome a single SAM battery. But if, while attacking one battery, it is exposed to another one, or to a different type of radar or missile, or possibly even to a third battery, it will have much more difficulty. The principle of layered protection allows different batteries and types of detection and interception systems to back up and protect each other.
If some of the detection and interception means also change location from time to time, defend, and camouflage and scatter dummy targets, the challenge to the attacker is enhanced.
The Israeli air defense system is multi-layered, but the degree of mutual assistance and protection between the layers is relatively limited. The premise, as mentioned, was that of complete air superiority. The main challenge was to optimize the use of interceptors against a tremendous load of missiles and rockets. The result was that each tier was designed to deal with a specific type of missile or rocket. Iron Dome can’t really assist Arrow batteries or support their missions. This limitation is equally true among the other layers.
As noted, the degree of mobility, protection and hiding ability of the Israeli air defense system is inadequate. Unlike similar systems in the world, our air defense system was not built with synchronization as a critical goal. If we expect our air defense system to continue to provide the level of protection we have enjoyed so far or even close to it, it will have to go through a significant series of adjustments, and fast.
The first and most important will be the addition of another interception layer — point protection — which will enable a relatively high level of security for essential sites and assets. This layer would only be launched when it is clear that the other layers have failed and only to protect a critical asset for the country, such as an important power plant or vital component of the air defense system.
Another adjustment would be the shielding, camouflage and mobility of some of the elements of the array to make it difficult for the enemy to acquire these targets in real time. The hiding of air defense components and deception by dispersal of fake systems are common and essential methods of operation around the world.
Tactical air defense system
The air defense system must also adapt to the more demanding combat conditions at the front. This area, where ground troops from both sides are engaged in battle, will face thousands of missiles and rockets and hundreds of UAS and cruise missiles. The front is a smaller and denser area where civilian communities as well as concentrations of forces need to be defended from tens of thousands of short-range rockets, advanced anti-tank missiles, and aircraft and drones in abundance, and all in a very short time frame.
On both the home front and the battle front, our defense will depend on a prior decision on the identification of essential assets and a prioritizing of defense. The complexity will be twofold: the battle picture will be intricate and dynamic, and it will demand real-time prioritizing. Because of this, the air defense batteries will have to change position frequently for protection. The shorter ranges of the threat and defense elements will require closer coordination between the movement of air defense batteries that protect each other. Each location will have to be chosen in view of the risk from enemy ground forces and the need to protect our forces.
At the front, it will be necessary to (re)establish an organization that uses short-term, more mobile tactical measures. This flexible organization will have to be much more coordinated with the picture seen by the ground combat commanders. A tactical air defense system will be required – one not much different from the northern anti-aircraft units that were closed down almost 15 years ago.
The tactical air defense array that operates at the front will have to wear two hats. In one hat, it will protect the forces fighting on land and the vital assets in the sector. It is possible that, thanks to its radars, the array will also be an important partner in locating sources of enemy fire, producing targets for ground forces fire support. In the other hat, the array will serve as the “front layer” of the home-front air defense array. The aerial battle picture – the coordination of air operations for safety and the identification of friends and foes – will have to be managed by the centralized control of the air force.
More importantly, the relative density of the tactical air defense system at the front will make it possible to detect and stop some threats designed to penetrate deep into our territory while they are still in their early stages of flight, above the front. The array will serve as a kind of “front wall” for the defense of the home front. It will reduce the number of missiles and aircraft the home front defense will have to deal with and channel some of them to flight paths that are easier to detect and defend against within the Israeli topography.
Arrange the sky
On the eve of the Battle of France in May 1940, the Anglo-French alliance possessed more tanks and aircraft than were available to the invading force of the German Wehrmacht, and their models were superior and more modern. They were nevertheless defeated. Their defeat was not due to lack of means but to an inferior understanding of mechanized warfare. The Wehrmacht was better organized for the battle and made better use of the tanks and planes it had at its disposal.
The rapid procurement of means is not a sufficient answer to the challenge we now face. If we do not reorganize the battle for the sky, especially at the front, we can’t hope for a real improvement in the results. If we just add more measures without managing the layered defense with the required dynamism, we will experience not only waste but failure. A multi-layered and advanced air defense would not be complete without tactical capabilities for the defense of the front. Such air defense requires significant conceptual, operational and organizational adjustments to the existing structure.
Defending the country’s air space is the first mission of the Israeli Air Force. The recognition that our air superiority is not absolute is dramatic, but it must be acknowledged. Despite our control of fighter jets and traditional air superiority, our forces at the front suffer from a dangerous level of inferiority and lack of protection. The “low sky” has become a real threat.
It is vital for Israel to reestablish a tactical air defense system at the front. Israeli air superiority is incomplete without it. The sky needs to be rearranged.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Eran Ortal recently retired from military service as commander of the Dado Center for Multidisciplinary Military Thinking. His book, The Battle Before the War (MOD 2022, in Hebrew), dealt with the IDF’s need to change, innovate, and renew a decisive war approach.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Ran Kochav (RanKo) recently retired from the IDF. Among his duties he served as commander of the Air and Missile Defense Corps and IDF Spokesperson, and was a member of the General Staff forum. A version of this article was originally published by The BESA Center.
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Flip through the digital edition of the Fall 2024 print magazine from The Canadian Jewish News
We’ve produced a collection of feature articles four times a year since 2022. The next edition of this magazine will appear in mid-December, and look out for a reimagined publication with a name of its own in 2025. Get future copies delivered to your door as a thank-you for donating to The CJN.
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No Harvard Students Punished for Anti-Israel Encampments, US Congress Says in New Report
Anti-Zionist Harvard students taking part in a sit-in organized by a student group which favors the Islamist terror group Hamas. Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Nov. 16, 2023. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect
Harvard University disciplined virtually no one who was accused of perpetrating antisemitic harassment or participating in a “Gaza Solidarity” encampment last academic year, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce alleged on Thursday.
As evidence supporting its claims, the committee cited documents obtained during its ongoing investigation of Harvard University, which was prompted by a succession of antisemitic incidents in the weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel as well as allegations of antisemitism going back years. According to the committee, “not one of the 68 Harvard students referred for discipline conduct related to the encampment is suspended, and the vast majority is in good standing.”
Neither, it continued, were any of the students who chanted antisemitic slogans on campus property punished. Essentially slapped on the wrist, they were “admonished,” a verbal measure which, Harvard acknowledges, is not recorded in their records as a disciplinary sanction.
“Harvard failed, end of story. These administrators failed their Jewish students and faculty, they failed to make it clear that antisemitism will not be tolerated, and in this case, Harvard may have failed to fulfill its legal responsibilities to protect students from a hostile environment,” US Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who chairs the committee, said in a statement on Thursday. “The only thing administrators accomplished is appeasing radical students who have almost certainly returned to campus emboldened and ready to repeat the spring semester’s chaos. Harvard must change course immediately.”
The Algemeiner has previously reported that Harvard University was amnestying students charged with violating school rules which proscribe unauthorized demonstrations and disruptions of university business. During summer, it “downgraded” disciplinary sanctions it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it punished for illegally occupying Harvard Yard and roiling the campus for nearly five weeks.
For a time Harvard University talked tough about its intention to restore order and dismantle a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” — a collection of tents on campus in which demonstrators lived and from which they refused to leave unless Harvard agreed to boycott and divest from Israel — creating an impression that no one would go unpunished.
In a public statement, interim president Alan Garber denounced their actions for forcing the rescheduling of exams and disrupting the academics of students who continued doing their homework and studying for final exams, responsibilities the protesters seemingly abdicated by participating in the demonstration.
Harvard then began suspending the protesters following their rejection of a deal to leave the encampment, according to The Harvard Crimson. Before then, Garber vowed that any student who continued to occupy the section of campus would be placed on “involuntary leave,” a measure that effectively disenrolls the students from school and bars them from campus until the university decides whether they are allowed back. The disciplinary measures were levied one day after members of Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) created a sign featuring an antisemitic caricature of Garber as Satan, and accused him of duplicity.
During Harvard’s commencement ceremonies in May, reports emerged that some students had been banned from graduation and receiving their diplomas.
However, Harvard and HOOP always maintained that some protesters would be allowed to appeal their punishments, per an agreement the two parties reached, but it was not clear that the end result would amount to a victory for the protesters and an embarrassment to the university. Indeed, after the suspensions were lifted, HOOP proceeded to mock what they described as their administrators’ lack of resolve. Unrepentant, they celebrated the revocation of the suspensions on social media and, in addition to suggesting that they will disrupt the campus again, called their movement an “intifada,” alluding to two prolonged periods of Palestinian terrorism during which hundreds of Israeli Jews were murdered.
“Harvard walks back on probations and reverses suspensions of pro-Palestine students after massive pressure,” the group said. “After sustained student and faculty organizing, Harvard has caved in, showing that the student intifada will always prevail … This reversal is a bare minimum. We call on our community to demand no less than Palestinian liberation from the river to the sea. Grounded in the rights of return and resistance. We will not rest until divestment from the Israeli regime is met.”
The past year has been described by experts as a low point in the history of Harvard University, America’s oldest and, arguably, most important institution of higher education. Since the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas across southern Israel, the school has been accused of fostering a culture of racial grievance and antisemitism, while important donors have suspended funding for programs. In just the past nine months, its first Black president, Claudine Gay, resigned in disgrace after being outed as a serial plagiarist; Harvard faculty shared an antisemitic cartoon on social media; and its protesters were filmed surrounding a Jewish student and shouting “Shame!” into his ears.
According to the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Harvard has repeatedly misrepresented its handling of the explosion of hate and rule breaking, launching a campaign of deceit and spin to cover up what ultimately became the biggest scandal in higher education.
A report generated by the committee as part of a wider investigation of the school claimed that the university formed an Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG) largely for show and did not consult its members when Jewish students were subject to verbal abuse and harassment, a time, its members felt, when its counsel was most needed. The advisory group went on to recommend nearly a dozen measures for addressing the problem and offered other guidance, the report said, but it was excluded from high-level discussions which preceded, for example, the December congressional testimony of former president Claudine Gay — a hearing convened to discuss antisemitism at Harvard.
So frustrated were a “majority” of AAG members with being an accessory to what the committee described as a guilefully crafted public relations facade that they threatened to resign from it.
Currently, the university is fighting a lawsuit which accuses it of ignoring antisemitic discrimination. The case survived an effort by Harvard’s lawyers to dismiss it on the grounds that the students who brought it “lack standing.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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If Eric Adams Steps Down, New York City’s Next Acting Mayor Will Be an Anti-Israel Critic
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Photo: Screenshot
The next acting mayor of New York City might be a left-wing activist and staunch critic of the Jewish state.
US prosecutors charged New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday with soliciting illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals and bribery. Adams’s potential departure from office could prove consequential for New York City’s estimated 960,000 Jewish residents, representing roughly 10 percent of the Big Apple’s population, and supporters of Israel living in the city.
If Adams resigns as a result of the federal charges against him, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is widely expected to step into the mayoral role as his replacement. A review of Wiliams’s social media history reveals a pattern of denigrating Israel, raising questions over whether the public advocate would defend the city’s Jewish community.
Williams has condemned Israel’s defensive military operations in Gaza as a “war crime” and criticized the US Congress for inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in July.
“Aside from basic humanity, under accepted [international] Law Benjamin Netanyahu is quite literally, at this moment, engaged in [international] war crimes/human rights violations,” Williams posted on X/Twitter at the time. “Instead of Congress trying to stop it, they gave a platform.”
Williams issued a statement on Oct. 11 of last year, four days after the Hamas terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, lamenteing the terrorist attacks on the Jewish state before calling on Jerusalem not to retaliate and shifting attention to alleged “oppression” of Palestinians.
“We can, we have to be able to, at once grieve the hundreds of innocent lives taken in Israel, and oppose the escalating violence of retaliation, the endless war, the systemic violence and oppression of Palestinians too often ignored, excused, or condoned,” Williams wrote.
On Oct. 14, one week after Hamas’s brutal slaughter of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel, Williams condemned “shameful” New York elected officials that “won’t even mention [Palestine] or [Gaza].”
Five days later, less than two weeks after the largest single-day mass-murder of Jews since the Holocaust, Williams called for an immediate “ceasefire” between the Jewish state and the terrorist group. Israel had not yet launched its military offensive in neighboring Hamas-ruled Gaza to dismantle the terror group’s military capabilities and free the 251 hostages kidnapped from southern Israel on Oct. 7. He also drew an equivalency between Israel’s military operations to the Hamas atrocities.
“The moral compass of our leaders shows stunning irregularities,” Williams wrote on Instagram.
“On point in condemning horrendous attacks on Israel and demanding hostages be returned,” he added. “[Yet, failure] to recognize the [United Nation’s] description of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, let alone support de-escalation and ceasefire.”
On Oct. 24, Williams declared Gaza a “humanitarian crisis” and added that “all of us who rightly condemned Oct 7 on Israel should be rightly demanding a [ceasefire] now and before any ground invasion.”
Israel began striking Hamas targets after repelling the Oct. 7 invasion but did not launch a ground offensive into Gaza until Oct. 27.
In February, Williams appeared at a press conference conducted by the “NYC 4 Ceasefire” coalition to demand an end to Israel’s military operations in Gaza. During the event, participants referred to the Gaza war as a “genocide” and honored Palestinian “martyrs.”
“We have gathered here today to show city-wide support for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and end to the genocide in Palestine,” said Jawanza Williams, organizing director of left-wing activist group VOCALNY.
Williams harbors ties to the vehemently anti-Israel Democratic Socialists of America group (DSA). In a 2018 interview with the left-wing media outlet Jacobin, Williams said, “I have no problem saying I’m a Democratic Socialist.”
Williams has solicited an endorsement from the group while running for office in New York City. DSA has routinely praised Hamas’s so-called “armed struggle” against Israel. The group issued an explicit endorsement of Hamas, stating that the terrorist organization is a cornerstone in the “resistance” against the “Zionist project.” DSA has also accused Israel of committing “genocide” and praised the Hezbollah terrorist group for attempting to pummel the Jewish state with missiles.
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