Israel Air Force [IAF] - Iron Swords
Israeli military announced that it had bombed 29,000 targets in the Gaza Strip with warplanes since the beginning of the war on October 7. According to the Hebrew newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, aircraft attacked more than 31,000 targets on all fronts, and that most of these targets - about 29,000 - were bombed in the Gaza Strip, and about 1,100 targets in the northern arena with Lebanon, without clarifying the data. Where did the rest of the attacks take place? The data published by the Israeli military meant that every square kilometer in the Gaza Strip (its total area is 365 km2) received approximately 80 raids. The Hebrew newspaper reported that about 7,000 attacks were at the request of the ground forces, and that about 26,000 attacks were carried out using warplanes, about 3,800 attacks using military helicopters, and about 3,800 attacks using drones, according to the same report.
Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported 19 February 2024 that the Israeli Air Force was beginning to conduct comprehensive internal investigations into the Air Force’s overall actions before, during, and after the events of October 7, 2023. The newspaper pointed out that "the date set by the Air Force to submit the results to the General Staff is next May, when comprehensive debriefing sessions are also expected to begin at the level of the General Staff."
Yedioth Ahronoth confirmed that various units of the Israeli army had already begun to extract information similar to that carried out by the Air Force. Last January, Israeli Army Chief of Staff Herzi Halevy decided to form a security team to begin conducting an investigation into the failures of the events of October 7, 2023, in their security, military, and intelligence aspects. Israeli media said that the investigations will also include the conduct of military operations during the war on Gaza.
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said 16 October 2023 that the Air Force began summarizing the events of the surprise attack on Israel, explaining that the state of fog in the first hours of Black Saturday did not only prevail among the fighters on the ground, but also accompanied the air teams that rushed into the skies of the Western Negev. The newspaper stated in a report that the first two combat helicopters that were on immediate alert for the Gaza Division arrived from the Ramat David camp in the north to the Gaza envelope area about an hour or more after the events began, that is, between 7:30 and 8:00 in the morning.
This is despite the fact that Apache helicopters are stationed at Camp Ramon, which is closest to the Gaza Strip. In Ramon, they quickly realized that something unusual was happening, and they sent a fighter helicopter, which reached the cover at 8:32.
The report indicated that Israeli pilots found it extremely difficult to distinguish between Hamas fighters and Israeli soldiers and civilians, so the focus shifted primarily to addressing breaches in the border fence area, with the aim of stopping the massive influx of fighters coming from the Gaza Strip.
According to the report, 28 warplanes dropped hundreds of missiles amid heavy gunfire. Later it became possible to choose targets more accurately. The report explained that the “Hamas army” deliberately misled the Israeli planes, as it was revealed through the investigation that the last instructions to the fighters before they left the Gaza Strip were to walk slowly to or inside the settlements and sites, and not to run under any circumstances, so that the Israeli pilots would believe that they were Israeli civilians.
The newspaper indicated that this deception was successful for a period before the Apache helicopters, without their pilots obtaining permission from the highest ranks in the army, took the initiative to bypass all official procedures. It continued that the air operations on the first day were disorganized, and the pilots improvised solutions to the complex and unprecedented situation, as many of the directives for firing and receiving targets from the forces that were fighting on the ground reached the pilots through phone calls or sending pictures on the WhatsApp application.
Therefore, Israeli Air Force officials, in light of the huge number of dead and kidnapped, are convinced that without carrying out these air attacks, the number of victims would have been much higher. The newspaper also pointed out that another step that helped Air Force commanders in the first hours understand the seriousness of the accident occurred at approximately 10 a.m., after the commander of Squadron 190 descended from his helicopter in Ramon to resupply with ammunition and fuel. He transcribed the complete footage recorded by the helicopter’s camera and sent it. Quickly to the Israeli Air Force headquarters.
In less than 20 minutes he was in the air again and using the information he had gleaned, he ordered the other pilots to shoot at everything they saw at the fence, and at one point he also attacked an Israeli army position with surrounded soldiers to help fighters from the 13th Fleet storm and liberate it.
In one case, the newspaper adds, as part of lifting the restrictions he imposed on himself, the commander of the 190th Squadron opened fire only 20 meters from one of the kibbutz homes to cover the deputy commander of the 80th Squadron, who was summoned from the Sinai sector, and killed 4 militants in a fierce battle.
According to the Israeli Air Force, in the first four hours of fighting, helicopters and fighter planes attacked about 300 targets, most of them “on the Israeli side of the border.” The newspaper stated in its report that the aerial bombardment is now focused on Gaza, but with a state of high alert for days of fighting already underway in the north. The Israeli army explains that the Air Force is trained and equipped to deal with two arenas simultaneously, but the preference is to focus on one main arena.
An investigation conducted by the Israeli Walla website showed that it took the Air Force several hours to realize the extent of the attack launched by the Palestinian resistance led by the Islamic Resistance Movement ( Hamas ) on Israeli military sites and settlements in the Gaza Strip on October 7th. According to what the website published on 11 January 2024, new testimonies from within the Israeli Air Force continue to indicate “serious gaps” in the army that day.
The website quoted pilots that when the missile launches began at 6:28 a.m., two fighter planes took off from Hatzerim Air Base, and as part of a normal procedure, the pilots received an order to fly patrols around the Tamar gas platform, for fear of attacking it with a drone. According to the testimonies reported by the news site, the pilots conducted air patrols for about an hour, and did not know any details about what was happening on the ground, because the Air Force control center did not inform them of the developments. The report added that immediately after the two planes landed, the squadron was astonished when it learned the details of what was happening.
Air Force officials said that if they had quickly realized the magnitude of the event taking place in the south, they would have directed fighter planes to fly in the area and cause “supersonic” explosions to intimidate and fire with “Vulcan” cannons. The report quoted unnamed army sources as saying that this was “a complete intelligence surprise for the Air Force. No one reported the unusual event to the Air Force. The entire force woke up to a nightmare, and it took some time to absorb the magnitude of the event.”
After initial information arrived from the field, what was revealed about the “plight of the Gaza Division ” and repeated calls for assistance, two combat helicopters were launched from the Ramat David base (southeast of Haifa), but they took time to reach the division’s command position. The report quoted army officials - whom it did not name - that even after the air force arrived, “it took some time to understand the full picture: who are the Israeli soldiers and who is the enemy, what is happening in the settlements, what is allowed and what is prohibited, who can be shot and from whom.”
Military officials added that "once approvals were obtained, the ammunition, missiles and Vulcan cannons quickly ran out." They continued, "When you travel far, from Ramat David to the Gaza Division, and you need enough fuel, you carry less ammunition than usual."
With the outbreak of war, the Air Force froze the annual training program, and all resources and attention were directed to the war effort. In recent weeks, the corps has gradually returned to training and now the training plan for the war year 2024 was approved in late March 2024. The training program will focus on increasing the Air Force's readiness for war in the northern arena and other arenas, while engaging in prolonged combat through the planning and implementation of operational models, scenarios relevant to the characteristics of the various sectors and threats.
As part of the training, massive, long-range attacks, flying deep into enemy territory, decision-making in war conditions will be practiced, and surprise exercises will be held for the various units. The training program includes all the formations of the corps and the operational headquarters of the air force which, in parallel with the management of the war, carries out readiness processes, ongoing training and the development of combat doctrines. The training program was coordinated so that it would not harm the continuation of the operational activity in the war in the Gaza Strip and within it the joint activity with the ground forces.
Israeli jets have been increasingly triggering these sonic booms over Lebanon since 07 October 2023, following the attack on southern Israel by Hamas. Throughout the Gaza war, however, Israel has been launching sonic booms by flying jets at low altitudes over Lebanon in an apparent effort to intimidate and terrify the population.
“We are concerned about the reported use of sonic booms by Israeli aircrafts over Lebanon that has caused great fear among the civilian population,” said Ramzi Kaiss, a Lebanon researcher for Human Rights Watch. “Parties in armed conflict should not use methods of intimidation against a civilian population.”
The use of sonic booms is part of a broader trend of psychological warfare that Israel wages against the Lebanese population, according to Lawrence Abu Hamdan, a sound expert and the founder of Earshot, a nonprofit that conducts audio analysis to track human rights abuses and state violence. Abu Hamdan said that since the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war, which lasted 34 days and left 1,100 Lebanese nationals and 165 Israelis dead, Israel has routinely violated Lebanese airspace with its fighter jets to scare civilians.
“Since the truce of 2006, there have been more than 22,000 Israeli air violations of Lebanon. In 2020 alone, there were more than 2,000 [air violations] with no response from Hezbollah, Abu Hamdan told Al Jazeera 10 August 2024. Abu Hamdan believes that, since last October, Israel has also been using sonic booms as an “acoustic reminder that [Israel] can turn Lebanon into Gaza at any point”. He said Israel’s increasing use of sonic booms reflects the escalation in conflict with Hezbollah over the past several months. “There is an escalation and we are seeing that escalation in sound. The next phase to the escalation is, of course, material destruction,” Abu Hamdan said.
The murmur of fighter jets and other blast-like noises can re-traumatise populations that have survived previous explosions and wars, Abu Hamdan said. Over the long term, recurring jet and blast sounds can even increase the risk of stroke and deplete calcium deposits in the heart, according to medical studies he cited. “Once you have been exposed to [jet or blast] sounds that have produced the sort of fear that they have in this country, then whenever you hear it – even quietly – it will produce the same stress response [in an individual],” Abu Hamdan explained.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
