Considerable frustration was noted in the Israeli Air Force this week. The success of intercepting the Iranian drone's incursion into Israeli airspace last Saturday, the subsequent bombing of its control post and the blow dealt to Syrian air defenses was dimmed by the fact that the Syrians were able to down an Israeli F-16i fighter jet, giving an unexpected boost to the moral of the radical axis.
The findings of the inquiry into the incident will not be released before Tuesday, but it seems it was the result of pilot error. Operational missions are never without their risks, but the pilots should have been able to overcome the familiar threat posed by Syrian anti-aircraft missiles. In war, jets are shot down as part of the uncertainty of battle, but planned airstrikes set a standard by which the crew is expected to make it back safe and sound, and inside the aircraft.
Eight fighter jets took part in Saturday's strike. Four of them were at high altitude when anti-aircraft missiles were fired at them. The thick clouds made for very poor visibility and prevented the pilots from seeing the missile until it was too late.
As soon as the plane was hit the pilot operated with the expected efficiency, ejecting himself and the navigator. This happened at over 30,000 feet in the air and both suffered frostbite. The navigator is expected to return to duty next week, but the pilot still has a long period of recovery ahead of him.
This incident showed that perhaps the IAF is not as invincible as we have come to believe. The Israeli public has grown accustomed to the fact that its pilots are undefeated and that operational success is all but guaranteed. No one imagined they could be shot down. This perception is somewhat naive, not because IAF pilots fall short in their abilities, but because the expectation that every battle must be won – the expectation of a 100% success rate – is unrealistic. The fact that it has been 35 years since an Israeli jet has been shot down is the anomaly, and it attests to the magnitude of the IAF's achievement.
Over the past few years, the IAF has carried out hundreds of attacks on enemy targets. The majority of operations fall under the "campaign between the wars," a title that encompasses a host of covert and low-intensity military and intelligence efforts to prevent enemy states and terrorist organizations from becoming stronger and thwart their offensive activity, and only a handful of them were brought to public attention through foreign media reports.
These operations entail considerable risk, and as the rate of strike increased – the IAF logged dozens of operational hours in the first week of February alone – so did the risk involved. Last week saw Syrian air defenses fire dozens of anti-aircraft missiles at Israeli jets, more than all the projectiles fired at the IAF during the 1982 Lebanon war. On Saturday, several missiles even landed in the ocean.
Under the threshold of war
These numbers attest to the change in the nature of the threat on the northern border. Until recently, the IAF could do as it pleased in Syrian airspace – fly wherever it wanted, whenever it wanted and strike where it wanted, mostly targeting convoys carrying advanced weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. By the time the Syrians would figure out what happened, the Israeli pilots would be back on base, safe and sound.
This luxury no longer exists, or at the very least it has changed, including with respect to intelligence gathering flights in Lebanese airspace. With the Syrian civil war waning, President Bashar Assad is growing increasingly confident, and he has begun to retaliate. This requires the IAF to adjust its strategies so as to deal with the new challenges in this sphere, including the Russian presence in Syria.
Advanced Russian missile batteries – S-300 and S-400 – now monitor the IAF's activities over the northern borders, including in Israeli airspace, and so far, there has been no Israeli-Russian friction. On Saturday, when the Iranian drone's control post was bombed at the T-4 Airbase, west of the ancient city of Palmyra, IDF officials briefed their Russian counterparts beforehand, letting them know the strike was not targeting them.
Still, we must not get confused: As friendly and empathetic as Russia is to Israel on a diplomatic level, the Russian officers on the ground work closely with their Syrian counterparts and help them protect their skies form any threat, including the Israeli one.
The Israeli dilemma with regard to Russia is even greater. After the Israeli fighter jet was downed Saturday, it was decided to strike a wide range of targets, mostly Syrian and some Iranian. Among them were seven surface-to-air missile batteries, and there were those in Israel who wondered why the IAF did not take the opportunity to destroy Syrian air defenses in their entirety.
Iran believed it could exploit its presence in Syria, especially in T-4, where it operates under the guise of fighting the Islamic State group, because it did not believe that Israel would strike targets to close to Russian forces. Iran's activities in T-4 were not even coordinated with the Syrian forces in the area. The Islamic republic has grown so confident that it simply does whatever it wants in Syria.
In some ways, Syria was made to pay a price on Saturday through no fault of its own. Its air defenses detected an Israeli strike and retaliated, as expected. Iran, for its part, has made it clear that it has no intention of shelving its plans to cement its presence in the war-torn country.
Nevertheless, Tehran cannot look back at Saturday's events with contentment. The drone incursion was the first direct confrontation between Iran and Israel, and if until now the two countries maintained ostensibly polite hostilities on the surface while the real warfare was covert, the drone incident has forced everything out in the open. Iran no longer suffices with using its proxies in the region, namely Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it now uses its own people to target Israel directly.
The Israeli response was unequivocal: The drone's control post and its team were eliminated. This followed the interception of the drone, which was under Israeli surveillance from the moment it took off in Syria.
Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin personally supervised the drone's interception, which was carried out by a combat helicopter, to ensure the wreckage of the UAV could be collected. The Iranian drone was developed based on the specifications of the American RQ-170 stealth drone, which Iran reverse-engineered after downing one in December 2011.
The Israeli strike on the drone's control post was carried out shortly afterward. It was followed by a day of fighting that threatened, for the first time in a very long time, to spiral into the type of escalation that could have affected the entire region. This could have happened if, for example, the pilots had ejected their jet over Syria instead of over Israel.
The IAF lamented the incident, as without it, Israel would have dealt Iran a Scholar's Mate in the regional chess game. But there is no point in crying over spilled milk. The current challenge lies with the next incident: Israel's resolve to prevent Hezbollah's armament efforts and Iran's military entrenchment in Syria all but guarantees the strikes will continue. Syria's increasing confidence, coupled with the achievement of the downing of Israeli jet, ensures continued retaliation. These two together ensure that the endpoint of last weekend's events will be the starting point of the next round of hostilities.
This escalation seems inevitable. Russia will not interfere unless events affect its regional interests, and the United States is all but absent from the Middle East, which leaves Israel to fend for itself.
No one disputes Israel's qualitative advantage over its rivals in the Middle East, but if the basic definition of the "campaign between the wars" is to remain below the threshold of war, then recent developments represent the main challenge the IDF and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, who is entering his last year in office, must face, namely preventing escalation on the northern border, as well as on the Gaza border and in Judea and Samaria.
