Israeli Air Force Training Hints At Possible Strike On Iran

Israel Today ^ | February 28, 2010

[Strategy]

Israeli media reported on Sunday that the Israeli air force has started practicing rapid refueling, the type of which would only be used in a sustained aerial attack on a distant enemy.

The process involves Israeli warplanes sent on raids thousands of miles away returning to Israel, landing and refueling without shutting off their engines in order to get back in the air as fast as possible. Naturally, rapid refueling of this type is very risky, since the fuel is being pumped not far from the jet's engines.

Revelation that Israel is doing this kind of training came just a day after the New York times reported that Iran had moved nearly its entire uranium stockpile to a vulnerable above-ground facility.

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2460980/posts

[Rays_Dad]

I am a Fuels Flight Commander in the USAF and can happily tell you we do this type of refueling all the time - quantified 3 or 4 times a week. The AF calls this procedure hot refuels or hot pits or as my guys say pits. I would venture to say the Isreali AF doesthis just as much as we do and someone saw it for the first time and made it into a story about Iran. I will say though watching pits is pretty cool. It is like a well choreographed dance between the pilot, maintainers, munitions folks and most importantly the fuel dogs. Cheers Chip

[ought-six]

Psy-Ops. The NYT reporting that Iran has moved pretty much all of its stockpiled uranium to one, vulnerable and identified site is Bravo Sierra.

[Ciexyz]

Most interesting.

[PLD]

You have my blessing my friends..Take the demons out..Don't wait for Obama he is not going to do anything to harm his idiot friend in Iran..

[VRWCTexan]

FWIW the Jerusalem Post item on this says (correctly? or not?)

“In preparation for long-range missions and possible conflict with Iran, the Israel Air Force has expanded its training programs to include rapid refueling operations on runways.”

“We understand that many of our threats and challenges require us to develop a long-range capability,” one senior IAF officer explained. “Part of our preparation includes knowing how to fuel our aircraft so they can have as much fuel as possible.”

http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=169810

[Rays_Dad]

What they are saying is true, but they know how to get the most fuel onto their aircraft. They also know how to get the most fuel and munitions onto their aircraft. Due to the length of flight and the hostility they will face it is most likely they would load their aircraft with maximum amount of munitions each airframe can carry while loading the minimum amount of fuel needed. Immediately upon takeoff the aircraft would in-flight refuel. In-flight refueling is the premiere way of getting aircraft to a destination with the maximum damage assets. Cheers

[himno hero]

his brethren....

[BOBTHENAILER]

Good info-—thanks.

[Fennie]

Super Bunker-Buster Bombs Fast-Tracked for Possible Use Against Iran and North Korea Nuclear Programs

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=11609

[Yorlik803]

If/when this happens, gas prices hit 6.00 buc a gal. Obama’s inaction to drill here will cause millions more jobs lost, food prices to skyrocket and shortages of stuff.
Too bad we didnt start hitting ANWAR back in the 90s. Then we could all sit back and eat popcorn as Israel blasts Iran. Now it would cause havoc.
It needs to be done. Iran has been asking for it for a long time. Too bad we have been so short-sighted here on oil.

[TennTuxedo]

Israel is not going to hint one way or another on whether they will or will not strike. This is just speculation.

[cranked]

Umm, Israel has had several training exercises in the past couple years where they were allegedly prepping for an Iran strike.....none of which equated to an actual strike...this is any different, how?

[Mike Darancette]

the New York Times reported that Iran had moved nearly its entire uranium stockpile to a vulnerable above-ground facility.

Is Iran trolling for an attack?

I would think that quick ground refueling would be more useful in keeping defensive aircraft in the air for longer periods of time. Unless you have a place to refuel near your target.

[McGruff]

I'm just interested in which airfield they plan to use. Expect the unexpected.

[MplsSteve]

Interesting.

I believe that Israel is planning for any possibility and they have no problems with everyone knowing it.

Why else would the Jerusalem Post has printed the story about the long-range refueling?

I suspect that even Israel knows that they can’t knock out Iran’s nuclear capacity in a set of air strikes. I think they’re looking to set it back as far as possible.

I also believe that’s there’s gonna come a time when Israel will say “We have to do this now” and won’t wait for a green light from Washington DC.

[spetznaz]

Israel does a lot of training, and rapid refueling with engines hot is nothing special ...even the Kenyan airforce does it (with their Hawks and F-5s), thus Israel practicing it is not special ...just more training by the highly professional IAF. As for the attack on Iran ...one thing we can bet on is that when it happens it will not be preceeded by some newspaper article. Israel will need all the luck/blessings/surprise it can get, primarily due to the distance to Iran, the defences around the target sites, and the fact that they are dispersed. It will not be a repeat of Syria ...and even THAT, contrary to what many FReepers believe that it was defended by advanced SAMs, was not. The most recent advanced SAM they had was a short range system, with the rest being old systems ....I even have the GPD coordinates for their locations. Furthermore, the Israelis used an ingress route that was not defended when they attacked the Syrian site. Iran will be a much harder nut, and Israel will need every smidget of its excellent training and equipment to crack it. Hence, I doubt (highly doubt) that newspapers will be reporting it. It would be like reading a couple of weeks before the Raid on Entebbe (when the Israeli defence forces flew thousands of miles to rescue some Israeli hostages that were in Uganda) that the Israelis are preparing for a long-distance raid.

Also, I have been reading on FR for almost 2 years now about Israel's planned raids on Iran ...nothing yet.

When, and if, it happens we will know about it when the success/failure of the mission is reported on the news AFTER the fact. Probably even from the Iranians when they throw some bodies into the bombed out sites and claim that the Israelis bombed a bus terminal or something like that. However, the Iranians (even with Ahmadenijad and his crazy brain) are not a useless foe - they have some teeth, and while the Israelis would still be able to trample on them they would still need to be very very prudent in their planning and execution, otherwise it could be a very very bad day. I would not even be surprised if IRan has some agents positioned in some of the Israeli air bases to report any large activity (like F-15Is and Soufas taking off), thus Israel would need to keep practicing so that some day one of these 'practices' is the real thing.

Thus, this 'amazing' training exercise was simply something that many airforces do. Israel must be definitely planning for such a mission (whether or not it happens is a different story, but planning for it definitely must be happening), but refueling planes while their engines are hot is nto unique.