Within 48 hours of starting war with Iran Israel said it had secured air superiority over the western part of the country, including Tehran. As it writes The Wall Street Journal, this is an achievement that the gigantic Russian air force has not been able to secure in Ukraine during the 3.5 years of war. And this failure is one of the reasons why Russian troops have become mired in a positional war, suffering enormous losses.
"In the case of the war between Russia and Ukraine, we see what happens when neither side can achieve air superiority: a stalemate and a transition to a war of attrition. In the case of the war between Israel and Iran, this gives them unlimited freedom to strike where they have air superiority over certain areas of Iran," said retired US Air Force Lieutenant General David Deptula.
The initial Israeli airstrikes were carried out using fifth-generation F-35 stealth aircraft. Now that most of Iran's air defenses have been suppressed, older fighter jets such as the F-15 and F-16 are entering the fray. Israel has also begun dropping short-range JDAM and Spice guided bombs, which are cheaper and more widely available than missiles.
As the WSJ notes, the Israelis have learned lessons from Russia's failures - and Ukraine's successes - when planning their own campaign against Iran.
"However, according to military officials and analysts, the most obvious lesson for now is that the Israeli air force is inherently more capable than the Russian one, while Ukraine is far better than Iran in terms of defense."
In particular, as retired British Air Marshal Edward Stringer notes, the sophisticated training and innovation of the Israeli Air Force, combined with its integration of intelligence and cyber capabilities, is a key reason why the Israelis have succeeded where the Russians have failed.
"All the Russians have are pilots. They train these pilots to fly flying artillery, that's all," he said.
In turn, Iran, like Ukraine, does not have combat aircraft capable of surviving an air battle with the enemy. However, unlike Ukraine, Tehran has not been able to organize ground-based air defenses that could significantly complicate the operation of enemy aircraft over its territory.
The element of surprise was equally important.
"Thanks to warnings from American intelligence about the preparation of a Russian invasion, the Ukrainian military command in February 2022 distributed and hid most of its mobile air defense assets. After several Russian planes were shot down over Ukrainian cities, manned Russian aircraft ceased operating behind the front line - a situation that persists to this day. To strike targets deep inside Ukraine, Russia must rely on a limited supply of cruise or ballistic missiles, or on drones, which are slow and have limited carrying capacity," the WSJ writes.
Unlike Ukraine in 2022, Iran was caught off guard. Israeli special forces secretly infiltrated Iran and destroyed key Iranian air defenses early in the campaign with close-range drones. At the same time, Israel was able to kill most of Iran's military leadership.
"Essentially, what Israel did to Iran is what Russia wanted to do to Ukraine: they thought they could conduct some covert operation, infiltrate the Ukrainian regime and decapitate it. But it turned out that Ukrainian society is resilient and not so easy to infiltrate, while in Iran the regime is so unpopular that it is easy to find people there who will agree to cooperate with Israel," said Israeli geopolitical analyst Michael Horowitz.
Israel and Ukraine - war news
As the NYT wrote, Ukraine and Israel showed that A new powerful weapon has appeared in modern warfare. - drone smuggling. As the publication notes, launching drones from enemy territory forces it to look for threats not only outside, but also inside.
Also earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Russians plan attacks on Ukrainian energy system , at the same time they may be"less visible to the world", as more attention is now paid to the situation in the Middle East.
