The support that the U.S. extended to Israel after the Israeli military targeted Iranian and Syrian positions in Syria was a good indication that the U.S. has gotten the message – Israel is an efficient and irreplaceable ally, which contributes greatly to American national security and to the U.S. defense industry.
Israel may have lost a fighter jet but it upon discovering that an Iranian drone had breached Israeli airspace, the Israeli Air Force displayed exceptional skill in a great number of areas: improved electronic warfare and disruption of radar signals, intelligence capabilities, improved firepower, precision, maneuvering and achieving (dramatically) impressive results when faced with sophisticated air defense systems.
The IDF is now drawing all the necessary conclusions from the incident and applying the lessons to all the facets involved in the clash. A large number of these lessons will be relayed to the U.S. – which manufactures most of Israel's military gear.
The late U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye, one of Congress' leading Israel advocates, always stressed that Israel's battle experience regularly contributed to upgrading American national security and yielded billions of dollars in profit for U.S. firms. According to him, the conclusions that Israel was able to draw from its military confrontations, such as the demolition of 19 Soviet surface-to-air missile batteries and 97 fighter jets in June 1982, saved the American defense industry 10 or 20 years of research and development, improved the quality and competitiveness of their products and ensured American military superiority.
In addition, the lessons Israel learned in the 1982 strike were used to improve the U.S. Air Force's capabilities and the U.S.'s general power of deterrence while exposing the vulnerabilities of the Soviet weapons systems. The Israeli attack eroded the Soviet Union's status and tipped the balance of power in favor of the U.S., thereby sparing countless casualties. Inouye asserted that the intelligence the U.S. received from Israel was far greater, in scope and in quality, than the intelligence it received from all the NATO countries combined.
Last week's Israeli Air Force strikes in Syria reinforced Inouye's legacy. He viewed Israel not just as a moral ally but also as an American defense research laboratory featuring actual battle conditions. He saw Israel as a critical line of defense that saved the U.S. billions of dollars in not having to deploy its own forces in the Middle East.
When I visited the Fort Worth, Texas plant where the F-16 jets are manufactured, the plant director told me that the regular analysis reports he receives from the Israeli Air Force have yielded more than 600 upgrades to the aircraft. He appraised these upgrades to be worth "megabillions" of dollars.
It is safe to assume that the McDonnell Douglas aircraft corporation, which manufactures the F-15 fighter jet, also enjoys a similar deal. I heard an American fighter pilot say once that he derived particularly beneficial insights from training with Israeli pilots. "The Israeli pilot is within range of radars and enemy missiles even when he is just training, so the flight is characterized by a sense of survival. They become more creative and more daring than American pilots and are able to stretch the capabilities of the American-made jets beyond our routine capabilities," he said.
Last week's events on the Syrian border suggest that, contrary to conventional wisdom, Israel is not isolated. On the contrary, it only reinforced how crucial it is to the U.S. The action also proves that the fact that America supplies Israel with weapons and military gear is not really "foreign aid" but rather an investment in a country that yields fantastic dividends for the U.S. and improves American security and its economy to boot.
