Former Israeli Air Force Commander: “Even in My Wildest Dreams, I Never Imagined That We Would Be In This Scenario”

We are on the ninth day of this war. The fact that both the U.S. and Israeli militaries have air superiority over Iran, is that something that could have been predicted? Even with all your knowledge, would you have thought we could have achieved it with such relative ease?

On the one hand, this is something we have been preparing for for more than ten years. On the other hand, even in my most positive dreams, I did not imagine that we would reach this situation. That is why I am very, very proud of my former subordinates, the Air Force Commander, the people and what they are doing. I think that the fact that we are managing to wage war, and this is not the first time, this is the second time, at such far-flung ranges from home, and to bring to bear the wide range of capabilities that we have developed over the years, in order to achieve both air superiority and a very, very deep impact on the enemy, is something that is not taken for granted.

There is an operational, intelligence, operative layer here, of a great deal of training, of developing capabilities, of practice, and it is immeasurably greater, so to speak, in scope, depth and intensity than I could have imagined.

Can you take us into the cockpit and tell us what goes on in a pilot’s or squadron’s life, flying such distances, at such frequencies?

Yes. So first of all, we can see in the days that have passed that hundreds of targets have already been attacked and thousands of munitions have been dropped. I mean, the scope of the planes that are arriving in Iran, and there needs to be coordination between the Air Force planes themselves, and of course with our partners that are flying in the same airspace. And the pilots are really at the limit of their physical capacity in terms of hours of activity and rest, and more flight, and more flight, and I think the policy led by the Chief of Staff and the Air Force Commander was to start with a lot of force. I mean, really carrying out the strike forces in the first few days.

And the cooperation with the U.S. today also allows us to use U.S. refueling planes. And then the number of air refuelers that are deployed along the way, allow more planes to fly more times a day, more bombs, more targets, and therefore the scope of the attack is very broad.

This cooperation with the U.S. is something we’ve never seen before. How do you even issue orders? We see that the U.S. is busy destroying the fleet, while Israel is more busy hunting down launchers. How do you make this decision? How do you even build such a joint war plan?

To maintain such intimate cooperation, the basis is first and foremost trust. This has been built over years. For years we have been training with the US, and I think in the last decade they have seen our operational activity throughout the Middle East up close. The IDF worked very closely with U.S. Central Command.

Today, joint forces sit at the same table, plan intelligence together, plan the operation together. People sit in the Israeli pit and the American pit with headphones and talk to each other in real time, when usually the division in the sky is a geographical division. Certain areas that the American Air Force, of the U.S. Army, and certain areas that the Air Force operates in.

There is also a division of tasks. In a certain sense, they preferred to let us carry out the surprising move. I think in this area of ​​the ability to arrive secretly, surprisingly, with very intimate and precise intelligence, to carry out the assassination of dozens of commanders and leaders. This is a capability that was developed in the Air Force. The Air Force included it in the last war, we saw it in Gaza, we saw it with Nasrallah.

I want to use your knowledge and experience in everything related to the air defense campaign. How do you analyze their firing patterns? They fire volleys, a lot more volleys, but they are more limited. Is it because they are keeping ammunition or is the Air Force really managing to severely damage their firing capabilities, and in general their command and control has been damaged in a way that makes it difficult?

It is right to analyze this in the perspective of a year and see how they have behaved in the past year. Their launch capabilities, the number of missiles, the number of launchers is decreasing. They will always have a few launchers left, so we are not expected to see it reach zero. And alongside this, they are also launching quite a few missiles into the Gulf nations.

It should be said that these are different missiles, these are for different ranges. I assume that the enemy wants to harass the Israeli population, so he will try to spread this throughout the day, in order to create Red Alerts and make people go into shelters as many times as possible throughout the day, in order to influence the Israeli home front, which so far has truly shown resilience. If I may, I take my hat off to the citizens of the State of Israel for this matter.

Do you think it’s possible to reach a situation, again, within this war of almost zero launches, or is this, as we’ve seen in the last nine days, their war routine?
I think getting to zero launches is something I wouldn’t presume to say. I think we can get to a point where we can manage an emergency routine with a tolerable amount of launches. We’re not there yet, and it will take a few more days.

You opposed the transfer of the F-35s to Turkey when you were the commander of the Air Force in 2020. Today, the same deal that Trump wants to make with Turkey is on the table. How critical is Israel’s air superiority within this space?

Air superiority is a condition for any military operation. We must preserve our comparative advantage. Our comparative advantage over the years has been preserved each time by a new generation of weapons systems, of aircraft. It was the F15 and the F16. Later, these aircraft were also sold to other countries in the region, and then the F-35 arrived. And we need to preserve this advantage.

Should we try to stop Trump?

I think it would be wrong to provide Turkey with F-35s. And if we fail to stop this American move, we need to coordinate with the U.S. to see what the next layer of advantage that the U.S. allows Israel to acquire is, so that we always maintain an Israeli qualitative advantage in the Middle East.

Are ballistic missiles an existential threat to the State of Israel?

Ballistic missiles are an intolerable threat. Because the State of Israel is a small country, with few strategic sites, we are not a country spread over large areas, and therefore ballistic missiles can cause intolerable damage to the country, and this is something we cannot afford to be a constant threat to the State of Israel.

From a bird’s eye view, when you look at this campaign, is it possible to overthrow a regime from the air? The reasonable assumption is that it is. So are we going to have a few weeks of such an operation in the hope that the Iranians will take matters into their own hands, or are we simply doomed to such rounds against Iran every few months?

I think that this event is not a one-off. It is a process of weakening the regime that stems from external issues such as the economy and energy, sanctions, internal issues of the protests, and of course the severe military blows that are being inflicted on Iran, which are damaging the regime’s pillars. Therefore, the regime, I think, is on a dead end. I mean, this regime will disappear at some point in the form we know it and something else will be there.

It is difficult to predict how long it will take, which is certain that the military action is accelerating it. But this acceleration will later allow the Iranian citizens to be given the instruction, which they have currently received to stay home, to go back out into the streets. They will encounter a much weaker regime. And it will also be possible to help them, because you have air superiority over Iran. Imagine that American drones are flying over the demonstrations and securing the Iranian demonstrations.

How long do you estimate this will take?

I think it’s right to divide it into sections. At the end of the first powerful section, another military action will continue, and then another action by Iranian citizens will continue. A ground operation of internal resistance, which I hope we won’t be there at the front anymore.

Even Trump talked about an operation to remove enriched uranium from Iran. Does the Air Force have a role there or is it an institution, ground forces, in things like that?

Everything that happens in these ranges, in these areas, the Air Force has a part in this. I’m probably not sitting at the planning tables today and the Air Force commander is doing an excellent job, but bringing forces in and returning them, gathering intelligence, securing ground operations, that’s part of the Air Force’s mission.

How long do you estimate this will take?

I think it’s right to divide it into sections. At the end of the first powerful section, another military action will continue, and then another action by Iranian citizens will continue. A ground operation of internal resistance, which I hope we won’t be there at the front anymore.

Even Trump talked about an operation to remove enriched uranium from Iran. Does the Air Force have a role there or is it an institution, ground forces, in things like that?

Everything that happens in these ranges, in these areas, the Air Force has a part in this. I’m probably not sitting at the planning tables today and the Air Force commander is doing an excellent job, but bringing forces in and returning them, gathering intelligence, securing ground operations, that’s part of the Air Force’s mission.

If you were the commander of the Air Force now, would you also fly the attack flight that the current commander of the Air Force did?

Without a doubt. Our command concept, that the Air Force Commander flies every week, at a different base, in a different squadron. The Air Force Commander maintains the serviceability of all the force’s aircraft and this is part of our personal example. We don’t come once in a while for some sort of display flight – we fly every week. And on the right flight, for the right mission, I think it’s good that he did it.

Last question – the discourse in Israeli society about the place of women on the front lines, women fighters, where does that take you? What are your thoughts on that?

My worldview is that the conversation should be about quality and not about gender. 50% of the quality in Israeli society is women. Therefore, an organization that wants to be a quality organization must integrate women into the organization. There is a lot of talk about female pilots and navigators, and rightly so, but we have female air defense fighters who intercept rockets and missiles every day. We have female technicians who take an F-35 out for a flight at the age of 19, which is something that does not exist anywhere in the world. Therefore, this conversation needs to disappear from the world.

But at the end of this interview, it’s important for me to tell you that I am optimistic. For one simple reason, from the people I see around me, there are simply good people in the State of Israel. And our strategic situation at the end of the current campaign will be infinitely better than on October 6. Therefore, if we manage to take the right steps, our children and our grandchildren will live in a safer and more prosperous country.

Please note that this interview was originally conducted in Hebrew.

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