Speaking as a former Air Force weapon system officer on F-4E Phantom fighters, my somewhat informed opinion is that there are a few problems with the Israelis carrying out this mission.

The first problem is targeting. The Iranians aren’t as dumb as the Iraqis, who put all their atom bomb eggs in one reactor that could be taken out in one air strike. The Iranians have dispersed their atom bomb program. As I understand it, it is spread across hundreds of sites. How do you get reliable intelligence about the location of these sites, the nature of their construction, and their relative importance in the program? You would need some recent high-level defectors from the program to provide reliable targeting data.

The second problem is the massive size of the air campaign to strike these targets, once located. I’m reading three hundred sorties over three days. The Israeli Air Force has about four hundred fighters, but only a fraction of them can strike that far. They would need help to service all those targets from the USAF.

The third problem is access. The direct route from Israel to Iran flies over Iraq or Saudi Arabia. Of course, to fly over Iraq the Israelis would need US permission and cooperation. We control that air space. For lots of reasons, that’s unlikely to happen.

The Saudis are our allies, at least on paper though not in fact, which means that theoretically we should not turn a blind eye to Israelis flying strike packages over Saudi Arabia. Blatantly disrespecting the Saudis (not that there is anything wrong with that) to help the Israelis wage war against fellow Muslims would stir up the Muslim and Wahhabi pot.

However, it’s within the realm of possibility that the duplicitous Saudis could strike a secret deal to allow their hated Jewish enemies to strike their hated Shia enemies in Iran. The Saudi princes could pose as surprised and outraged at the incursion, however pleased with the outcome. They’re good at lying like that.

The fourth problem is the extreme range. It looks to me to be about 1000 miles, at least, as the crow flies from Israel to the centrifuge facility at Natanz, aka the Esfahan enrichment facility. Of course, the mission will be longer than this when you allow for an indirect route to targets deep inside Iran.

The F-15E Strike Eagle has a ferry range of 2,400 miles (3,840 kilometers) with conformal fuel tanks and three external fuel tanks. Israel has bought those conformal tanks, oddly enough. However, that’s FERRY range, not the range carrying heavy bombs. I’m guessing that adding a couple 2000 pound laser-guided bombs would reduce the range of the F-15Es to less than distance required to reach their targets. It seems obvious that these fighters would need to be air-refueled, optimally just outside the Iranian border. The range problem is worse with Israel’s 324 F-16s and 50 F-4Es.

Israel only has five tankers, B707 airframes roughly similar to the KC-135. If each tanker supported a flight of four fighters, that’s only twenty fighters Israel could project to Iran. Again, Israel would need US support in the form of tankers to fuel its airborne strike force.

The bottom line is that Israel can not successfully take out the Iranian atom bomb program by itself, so the Transportation Minister’s threat is an idle one. Israel can only succeed with help from the US. However, if we must strike Iran, Israeli help is a political handicap in our foreign relations with the bigoted Middle Eastern and European states. If we must strike Iran, we must leave Israel out of it.

We have better weapons with which to strike Iran than Israel. Our stealthy aircraft such as the B-2 and F-22 can traverse Iranian airspace with little fear from the 1970s-era technology Iranian fields to defend itself. And who knows what wing of secret strike aircraft we have stashed out in the mountains of Nevada, ready to make its combat debut? Our non-stealthy B-1s, F-15Es, and F-16s would fly over the smoking remains of the Iranian defenses.

We are also better positioned to strike Iran, with air bases in the neighboring countries of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Even though I am an advocate of air power, the gains it makes are transient unless followed up by a ground campaign to secure them. Without a ground campaign, we’ve only temporarily set back the Iranian atom bomb.

I think we can stop Iranian aggression short of a war. Iran is economically fragile. Already, our financial measures have taken a toll on them. We can bring Iran to its knees without bloodshed by simply stopping it from shipping its oil and/or importing gasoline.

We can also lend support, carefully hidden, to Iran’s resistance. They could use money, training, communications equipment, et al to support their movement. Perhaps we can redirect the Iranian shaped charges we capture in Iraq back into the hands of the Iranian resistance. Let the mullahs fear the IEDs they export to harm the Great Satan.

Rather than a hard strategy of military action that would polarize Iranians against us, we might profit more by pursuing a soft strategy of support for the disaffected Iranians who want to topple the mullahs and restore ties with America.

Tantor on June 6, 2008 at 8:59 PM