Israeli strikes against Iran highlight F-35’s ability to fight tougher battles

• F-35 combat operations have often been conducted against terrorist and militant targets.
• Israel used the fighter jet in widespread strikes against Iran in late October.
• The success of this operation highlights the F-35’s ability to combat higher-level threats.

F-35 stealth fighters have been flying combat missions in the Middle East for years now, although largely in permissive airspace against lower-level targets. The plane’s recent victory against Iranian air defenses, however, highlights its ability to combat higher-level threats.

Britain’s most senior military officer said last week that when Israel used its fifth generation F-35 to execute retaliatory strikes against Iran in late October, it wiped out nearly all of Tehran’s air defenses and destroyed its missile production sites.

The suppression and destruction of enemy air defenses through penetrating strikes — this is the kind of highest-level mission the jet was designed for.

The F-35 has historically been used against weaker targets with limited or no air defenses. Israeli F-35s have already struggle Syrian surface-to-air missiles and anti-aircraft batteries have launched strikes against Iranian targets, but these expensive fighter jets have been widely used against non-state actors like ISIS, the Taliban and the Syrian armed forces. Houthis.

The recent Israeli operation against Iran, which deployed highly capable Russian-made surface-to-air missile systems, highlights how the aircraft is capable of engaging in combat at a higher level.

Mark Gunzinger, a retired US Air Force colonel who flew the B-52 Stratofortress bomber, told Business Insider that without the F-35 it likely would have been “a much riskier mission.”

The “power” of the F-35

The F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter is an advanced single-engine, multirole stealth fighter aircraft manufactured by American defense contractor Lockheed Martin. Several variants of the aircraft are used by several countries, including Israel.

Michael Bohnert, a chartered engineer at RAND Corporation, said the F-35 was designed to replace existing fighter jets like the F-117, F-16 and F/A-18 with increased stealth systems, ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) and other capabilities.

“The F-35 is a large aircraft designed from the Pax Americana of the 1990s,” Bohnert told BI.

Israel, which operates a sub-variant of the F-35A model designed for air force operations, was the first to fly a fighter plane in combat in 2018. The U.S. military has since used it in missions across the Middle East.

The F-35 fighter probably saw its most daring operation in late October, when Israel struck Iran in response to the attack on Tehran. huge missile attack at the beginning of the month.

“Israel used more than 100 aircraft, carrying less than 100 munitions, and no aircraft came within 100 miles of the target in the first wave, which destroyed almost the entire air defense system Iranian,” said Admiral Tony Radakin. , the British Chief of Defense Staff.

Radakin, speaking in London at a Dec. 4 conference hosted by the Royal United Services Institute, said Israel had demonstrated “the power” of jets and the “disproportionate advantage of modern combat methods.” in its strikes against Iran.

His remarks appear to mark the first confirmation from a Western government that Israel used the fifth-generation aircraft in the strikes. It was reported shortly after the operation that Israel flew its F-35 and fired air-launched ballistic missiles.

Radakin’s praise of the F-35 came after Elon Musk criticized the jet and discarded its stealth capabilities. The aircraft is the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program, but it is widely considered a key warfighting capability for U.S. allies and partners.

The F-35 is not just a fighter jet; it also serves as a bomber with penetrating ISR capabilities, a battlespace command and control platform, and an electronic warfare aircraft.

“The capabilities of the F-35 are not a theory, they are a reality,” said Gunzinger, director of future concepts and capability assessments at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, “and they have now been proven in combat against aircraft imported from Russia The S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries which were presented as the answer to stealth.

Bohnert said the F-35 “did exactly what it was designed to do” against Iran.

The day after strikes against Iranan Israeli security official told BI that the strikes “precisely targeted” Iran’s radar and air defense systems, putting the country at a “disadvantage.”

While the F-35 demonstrated its combat prowess against Iran, the jet would face a tougher fight in a conflict between Western powers and Russia or China, which have more air defense systems. advanced and have more advanced air defense systems. their own fifth generation aircraft.

And the F-35 is not without its challenges. The program faces increased costs And preparation issues. Mission capability rates are declining, even as program costs are increasing. Bohnert said it would be important to increase the aircraft’s maintenance and logistics capacity for any large-scale conflict.

Yet the F-35 is demonstrating its combat potential today, as Radakin and others have said. And the fighter jet’s advanced combat capabilities are not lost on Congress, where lawmakers in the House of Representatives have introduced their fiscal 2025 defense spending bill. asked for more F-35s than what the Pentagon had initially requested.

The jet’s development came with its share of challenges, but, Gunzinger said, “the F-35s are operational and ready for combat today.”