ISRAEL CAN HIT THE MULLAHS

The Weekly Standard comments on a Time Magazine report regarding the complicated & successful aerial strike carried out by the IAF against a combination of Sudanese and Iranian Islamo-Fascist terrorists who were attempting to smuggle arms to Gaza:

Time magazine reports that Israel's January attack on an Iranian arms shipment through the Sudanese desert consisted of a strike package of "dozens of aircraft." The successful raid, which was a fusion of UAVs for recce work, F-15i fighters for air superiority, F-16's for ground attack, and tanker aircraft to extend fighter range, was thrown together with less than a week's planning. The Israeli Air Force, legendary for their boldness, even went so far as to fly their KC-130H tankers on a refueling track above the Red Sea, wedged between Egyptian and Saudi airspace -- no small feat, considering the Egyptians fly very similar variants of the Israeli F-16 and the Saudis fly AWACs guided F-15s.

Interestingly enough, the distance in nautical mileage between Israel and Khartoum is roughly the same as Israel and Tehran, demonstrating that the IAF has a combat-tested lethality at ranges of 2,000nm or more. Now that doesn't quite solve the question of a safe ingress/egress route into and out of Iranian airspace, nor does it address the issue of the sophisticated Iranian integrated air defense network. But it does prove that the Israelis have the legs (and the chutzpa) to transverse thousands of miles over hostile territory to break stuff that makes them nervous. This attack was for a weapons convoy porting small arms and short-range rockets. One can only speculate what type of strike package the IAF is dreaming up for a full blown nuclear weapons program.

NEW STUDY SAYS IAF COULD DESTROY IRANIAN NUKE FACILITIES

This Defense Tech post is one of the most heartening things we've read in a while. And it's about the inevitable eruption of war in the Middle East might not be all that bad. Thus does Middle East blogging proceed:

Some of the good folks at MIT have just figured how many bombs it would take for the Israeli Air Force to blow up Iran's entire nuclear weapons infrastructure. Apparently, it isn't so hard after all... But, according to the MIT report, there is one major catch: the air strike on Natanz could fail if Iran's air defenses succeed in downing only two of the IAF's strike package of 24 F-15Is if each is loaded with a single BLU-113. MIT concludes, however:... the IAF, after years of modernization, now possesses the capability to destroy even well-hardened targets in Iran with some degree of confidence.

The entire study is here (PDF warning). We haven't read over the whole thing, so we're not sure if it addresses the IFF issue. We also don't know if they assume that an Israeli strike might involve cruise missiles as well as air assets. If fighters get downed before they can drop their payload, one certainly assumes that Israel would launch cruise missiles to finish the job - it's try or die at that point. Here's what we don't get: if Israel can do it, then the US can certainly do it. And a US strike would have a higher probability of success (closer target, better tech, less logistical problems, etc). And it's not like Iranian nukes won't find their way into the heart of a US city eventually - the US doesn't have existential stakes in play, but they've certainly got a lot to lose. It just sounds like the US is hanging Israel out to dry because Iran has promised to nuke Israel first.

[Cross-posted to Mere Rhetoric]