In my experience, the IDF hates throwing stuff away. If an old weapon, vehicle or piece of equipment still works, they’ll keep it around, because you never know. So yes, on average the IDF’s equipment will be older than other armies, not because they lack new stuff, but because there’s a log of old stuff still chugging along.
The reason for this, I think, is because western militaries, even the U.S., know that before things get really serious - and I mean risk-to-their-home-soil serious - they’ll still have time to ramp up: draft troops, build equipment, expand the military like they did between 1939 and 1945. Not Israel. With Israel, what you see is what you get. The home soil is always at risk, so it exists in a state of permanent 1945.
I imagine Israel must know more about refurbishing airframes for fatigue than any other air force in the world. That F-15A “Baz” type from the 1970s is still flying like a champ and must have been absolutely put through the metal-stress wringer over a half-century, given how often the IAF flies its jets.
Israel doesn’t have 3rd generation fighters. The F-15 and F-16 are 4th gen fighters, and the F-35 is 5th gen. Also the Israeli F-15s and F-16s are highly modified, so they are probably closer to 4.5 gen. Their F-35s are highly modified too.
45 F-35s with 30 more on order
66 F-15s with 35 more on order
174 F-16s
So the Israeli air force (at least their jet force) is likely all made of 4.5 and 5th gen fighters.
So yes, they have more jets and better jets than everyone in Europe.
It’s somewhat similar for the major NATO states, Gorsnak just inadvertently dropped a generation. Third generation would be something like an F-4. The great bulk of the Typhoons in service for example are now considered 4.5 (from the Tranche 1 - Block 5 build on, plus later retrofits of older aircraft). The Rafale is also 4.5. The Tornado and Mirage 2000 are considered 4th generation.
Yeah, sorry, just dropped a generation there somewhere. Add one to all the numbers in my previous post.
No disrespect to the fancy avionics packages in modern F-16s and F-15s, but they’re still 50 year old designs. They are not better than Typhoons or Rafales with fancy avionics packages. Israel doesn’t have a monopoly on that sort of thing.
Maybe, but you also have to take pilot quality into account. The Israeli Air Force is arguably the most extreme-selective air force in the world. Numerous young Israelis aspire to be IAF pilots, very few get to go into pilot-selection, and even after that, around 80-90% of those will wash out and not graduate. And given the long and unconventional history of Israeli warfare, you can bet their training is going to be more innovative than the average air force.
As the recent Pakistan vs. India border conflict showed, skilled pilots flying in less-advanced jets can beat less-skilled pilots flying in better jets. And Israel’s jets no doubt have great avionics.
Ok. Here are my thoughts on why Israel is able to punch so far above it’s weight, considering the resources it has.
They have a large conscription army with a smaller core of professional soldiers to form a core to build around. Obviously, you can have a much larger military when you pay your soldiers less than the minimum wage of your country. Normally, conscription armies are AWEFUL. However, I think Israel is an exception to this rule. The reason why is that the average Israeli citizen thinks that if they get overrun that every man, woman and child will be killed. There creates tremendous social pressure to not slack off. As Napoleon said '“The moral is to the physical as three to one." Soldiers fight much harder if they think they might not have a home to return to.
That same pressure also greatly disincentivizes corruption in the military.
Israel gets more foreign aid from the US than any other country in the world, and it isn’t even close. This isn’t just hardware. The US has funded lots of Israel’s military research. Things like the Arrow missile defense system. The US is also given access to this research and the raw data of the defenses when used in the real world to further improve both sides military.
Israel and the US both share and exchange large amounts of intelligence with each other.
Israel has a highly educated workforce and its defense industries are some of the best in the world. The F-15, F-16, and F-35’s are almost all custom-built to their specifications, with many of the subsystems integrated with Israel’s designed subsystems. Arguably, some of their fighters are more advanced than the US version of the fighter. (I would call out their F-16s in particular in this category.) It is much easier for them to update all of their fighters to the latest standard than it is the US because their air force is so much smaller and their industry only has to service their own fighters. If the US tried to do that it would mean producing less fighters for export, as we are already producing at capacity.
Alright. That all I got. You can now tear this down and tell me why I am stupid. Laugh.
Anyway, +1 to the sheer existential need for a competent military merely to guarantee survival. I’d add that another factor, at least compared to Israel’s immediate neighbors, is that Israel is sufficiently democratic that it can have a powerful, well-organized standing military that doesn’t present a threat of coup d’états (plus that huge reserve of militarily trained citizens who presumably wouldn’t stand for it).
To add to Calder’s great points, Israel is also one of the most frequently attacked nations in the world. Which is great for morale and helps dispel any sort of complacency or “imagine if we spent all this military money on schools and healthcare instead” nonsense.
Another reason why is that the IDF has made a science out of screening conscripts. Certainly, a large proportion of Israeli troops serve in positions they are unsuitable to or miserable in - however, I suspect that number is lower than in any other military. For example: the IDF does not grant exemptions for college students. Instead, it considers students with college potential “high-quality” and makes sure that they serve, and serve in places suitable to their talents. Kids who, in the U.S., would have received athletic scholarships are channeled to special forces, and kids who would have received academic scholarships are channeled to military intelligence, computers and other technical fields.
Since the 18th Century, most militaries around the world have believed that conscripts were virtually interchangeable, featureless lumps of clay that can be molded into whatever form they see fit. The IDF doesn’t.
And, as we have previously mentioned, the vast majority of their opponents, potential and actual, are just not very good. Highly centralised command structure, primarily configured to guard against internal threats, officers treat ORs like dirt, and are themselves not trusted.
Air power and special forces are about the only arms of Israel’s military that can be proactive. Everything else would usually only come into play to repel an invasion. The incursions into Gaza and formerly into Lebanon are the exceptions.
I’m blanking on the thread but we were discussing female soldiers and someone pointed out the following: that while women statistically can’t match men as soldiers, nonetheless the top 10% of women recruits would probably outperform the bottom 10% male recruits; so if it’s a question of maximizing the quality of the troops one can afford to keep under arms, it’s a better option.
What Israel is doing is good, as they need to defend themselves, but they also do know about that bit about the benefits of having a less ignorant population.
