The war between Israel and Iran is something new in the annals of warfare.
The “Phony War” or Sitzkrieg generally refers to eight months of very limited fighting on the western front prior to the May 1940 invasion of France, Belgium, and the Low Countries. There was much anticipation but not much actual war fighting during that time.
This period came back to me as Israel is waiting for an Iranian response to the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh just outside of Tehran. While details are still sketchy, the latest news suggests that a short-range missile was fired at the guesthouse where the Hamas chieftain was staying during the inauguration of the new Iranian president. There are claims that members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were in on the plot, which would seem like something new. The demise of Haniyeh and other terror leaders in Gaza and Lebanon would appear to rely on an extraordinary level of accurate, time-sensitive intelligence. Israel took out four top Iranians in an embassy annex in Syria and with the bombing of Beirut last week, the specific building in which Fuard Shukr was present was demolished, with other buildings around it remaining nearly untouched.
This idea of waiting for the Iranian response seems a far cry from dynamic kinetic warfare. In Gaza, there is more traditional fighting, in which every day sees attacks and counterattacks. The level of fighting might change, but nobody would expect days to pass between an action and a reaction. But this is not how things work between Israel and Iran and Iran’s other patrons. Israel waited days before killing Shukr, who was considered to be the commander behind the murder of 12 Druze children on a soccer field in Majdal Shams. There was no immediate tit-for-tat. Rather, Israel let days go by and attacked one relevant target. Now, Hezbollah has announced that it will choose the time and place for its response—independent of its dozen or so daily missile volleys that it has made as a form of support for Hamas in Gaza. To note, every Israeli who has made his way to Mt. Hermon for skiing or sight-seeing has gone right through downtown Majdal Shams.
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Since Vietnam, the US has not faced directly or indirectly any peer level enemy in the skies. F-15’s and F-16’s have kill rates that are very high, with very few planes lost to ground or enemy air fire. The US lost over a dozen B-52’s in Operation Linebacker II at the end of the Vietnam War. Today, the US would not fly a B-52 into contested airspace, but would rather use highly accurate standoff weapons that can travel up to 60 miles from launch to target. The issue of air assets is important, because in a hot war, there would be no way to replace any significant losses.
Whereas during World War 2, when US manufacture of fighters and bombers was on an extraordinary scale, with some plane types coming off the production line one a day, the US has no way to produce large numbers of planes or helicopters to cover losses in a potential war with say Russia or China. A plane like the F-16, now celebrating its 50th year, is produced in the amount of tens per year. The ability to accelerate the production is quite limited. So, if the US got into a serious shooting war and lost dozens of planes to Chinese fighters and/or SAMs, there would be no way to make up the losses during the course of the war. There is zero production of F-22’s, B-1’s, B-2’s, or B-52’s. Other planes in the US inventory are being made, but at very low copy numbers due to their complexity and extraordinary cost. These are not P-51’s flying off of an assembly line, but rather extremely complex flying computers with wildly advanced engines and flight controls. And forget about aircraft carriers and submarines. The lead time for some nuclear reactor components can be 5-7 years. The US will not be churning out aircraft carriers as it did to defeat the Japanese. What you’ve got and maybe the USS JFK in the yard is all that you will have.
The US does keep some number of fighters and bombers in ready storage in boneyards in the southwestern US. Getting them back to fighting shape would also take time, possibly a month or even longer. The Air Force and Marines have had to pull units out of long-term storage and bring them back online for their current needs.
The days between attacks and war platforms that cannot be replaced in numbers represent new territory for the United States and its allies. The Russians always had inferior technology but built a large number of planes so as to have at least a numerical advantage over the West. Israelis are not panicked but are somewhat on edge as to what the Iranians will do. Some governmental advice has been given, such as keeping the “quiet wave” radio on where only urgent instructions are given. Also, people have been told to identify the closest air raid shelter and be ready to get there in a moment’s notice. Will Iran attack tomorrow as predicted? Will Israel preempt any Iranian aerial volley? Will the nations around Israel again knock down Iranian missiles and drones, as in the previous one-off attack? The one girl seriously wounded from Iranian missile shrapnel left the hospital last week.
One area where there is some more flexibility than in manned aircraft is in the world of drones. Their price can be from a few thousand dollars to tens of millions of dollars per copy. From intelligence gathering to missile platform to all-out suicide role, drones will do a lot of the dirty work that is too dangerous for hard-to-replace, expensive manned aircraft. The cheaper drones can be produced in quantity in real time during a war, but a $30 million Reaper drone will not be replaced in any great numbers if needed. Will future dog-fighting involve pilots seeing one another or just firing an air-to-air missile over the horizon and hoping for a hit?
As war-fighting systems become more complex and expensive, warfare involves either cheaper drones and/or standoff weapons to keep pilots and airframes out of harm’s way. The pace of warfare has changed, with distant sides taking longer to choose targets and respond to previous attacks. The Houthis hit Tel Aviv, where one person died. Israel responded a few days later with an attack on an oil facility, and the Houthis have not been heard from since at least up until this time. When will Iran respond? What will Israel do? No doubt, that depends on the outcome of any Iranian and/or Hezbollah attack. Whatever Israel decides to do, don’t expect the response to be immediate. This is a war of days between volleys, something new in the annals of warfare.
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