Dogfights

Israeli fighter jets

In chapter three of her book The Israelis, Donna Rosenthal presents the Israeli Armed Forces and their interaction with the society. Their crucial role in the establishment of an independent Israeli State among hostile countries in the Middle East and their spectacular victories against vastly superior numerically enemies have won the respect of enemies and friends. Rosenthal provides a few examples of the achievements of the Israeli Air Force that support her position. Some of these examples are established facts, like the destruction of the Egyptian, Syrian and Jordanian Air Forces in the 1967 War or the air raid against the nuclear facility of Osirak in Iraq. On the other hand, disputed events are also presented as facts. One of those that caught my attention was the spectacular results of a joint air combat training between Israeli and US pilots. According to Rosenthal, the former "shot down" in war games 220 American fighters while they lost just 20. Considering that the US Air Force has the most sophisticated jet fighters in the world and an impressive war record, I thought I had to investigate the validity of Rosenthal’s claim.

For sure, it is challenging to find information related to results of joint military exercises. An internet search to find official results of joint exercises between the US and any of its allies revealed nothing. For example, even though the Nellis Air Base organizes the famous "Red-Flag" air combat exercise that gathers annually pilots from all over the world, its site does not publish the results. On the other hand, there is plenty of information from questionable sources related to exercises where Canadians, Australians, Israeli and other allies "taught a lesson to the arrogant Americans." In the end, the most reliable source I could find was a book by the MIT Press (a respectable publishing company) titled Lessons not Learned. In this book, one can read about the joint Israeli-American exercise mentioned by Rosenthal. The problem is that this piece of information came from Jerusalem Post. In general, it seems that since there are no official results, newspapers in Israel and other allied countries interview members of their military to get feedback about the results of these joint exercises. Considering the competitive nature of pilots all over the world, there is a problem of reliability when they leak information to their national press about their achievements in international exercises.

The reliability issue of joint training results is more complex in the absence of details and the context of these joint exercises. For example, it is not uncommon to have certain exercises designed to test air crews on specific situations under unfavorable conditions. The subject may be too technical for the average reader, but I hope the following example will make things clear. An article from ABC News describes how the American F-22 Raptor, the most expensive and advanced jet fighter in history, could be easily matched by the less sophisticated and cheaper Eurofighter flown by German pilots. However, it is obvious from the interview given by the German pilot (assuming it is accurate) that the Eurofighter can only match the Raptor in close range combat (dogfight). On the other hand, the Eurofighter is almost helpless against the American jet during long-range air combat. Still, since a certain part of the exercise was designed to test the "dogfighting" skills of the American and German pilots, it gave the latter the chance to engage their competitors in close range, where the smaller Eurofighter could outmaneuver the heavier American Raptor. However, in an actual combat situation it is doubtful if the European fighter would have the chance to close the distance and engage the American jet in tight maneuvers.

 In a similar type of reasoning, some (unidentified) individuals argued that the Israeli simply counted only the results of the close range combat where they had an "unfair advantage" and an unidentified US Navy spokesman called the Israeli victory "meaningless." Others, including the American Navy Inspector general argued that the US Navy was in bad shape. In all cases, the pieces of information come from newspaper articles. So, overall there is simply insufficient evidence to accept Rosenthal’s claim that Israeli pilots beat their American allies by 220 to 20 score-kills. Still, this does not change the general picture based on proven facts that the Israeli Air Force is among the best in the world.