politics!”
ALTHOUGH HE HAD CONFUSED the concepts of strategy with politics, Ivry was certainly right. Had I not been in a state of euphoria, I would have recalled what I kept arguing years before when I was chief of ops, against conventional wisdom: that those were just SAM batteries, not strategic assets. The Syrian rulers probably just blinked in embarrassment when they heard of the destruction of their SAM-6 brigade and the hundred MiGs we shot down that day. It was far-fetched to believe that they would fall from power just because of the destruction of another twenty batteries around Damascus. The missiles and the MiGs were just pawns to them, not treasure. So much for strategy. But the missile elimination proved not to be a tactical achievement, either. The ground war against the Syrians in Lebanon in 1982, however successful it had been, was executed by our ground forces and not the air force. The air force fighters may have helped, but they definitely did not play a decisive part.
Thus, the marvelous elimination of SAMs in 1982, the product of years of investment and the resources of a whole country, was neither strategically nor militarily meaningful. Its meaning was mainly emotional, for us Israeli pilots. The destruction of that missile array was first and foremost an act of pride and revenge. The Israeli aircraft had paid back the Soviet missile for “bending” its wing. Only two good things can be said in favor of this vaunted elimination of the SAMs in 1982: the operation was well planned and well executed. Today we know that these, too, are not obvious.
But there was another reason why Ivry was right to stop my strategic proposals. He probably was already suspecting what we didn’t, that this war was a “war of deception,” a political game that had no long-range, government-approved national plan. None of the military men in that hall could imagine Prime Minister Begin and his government being led by the nose step after step to places they never imagined going. Perhaps Ivry already suspected that we were sinking into activities the government never intended and never approved—deeds that would bring us down in many ways. Perhaps he was thinking of his next moves to keep the air force sane. It made no sense to waste time on strategic proposals in a war that was mainly politics.
SO MUCH FOR 1982; NOW BACK to 1977, to those eighteen months in which I served as chief of operations, until I submitted my resignation and left the military. In that job I didn’t spend my time only on debates for and against missile attacks.
This was an interesting and exciting time, full of crazy fun. The department under me, which was responsible for the planning of all aspects of war, was involved in everything. We dealt with every operation, either day-to-day or long-range. All intelligence data and all the IDF’s programs and secret weapons were open to us. We entertained new ideas, issued new operational demands, developed new battle doctrines, and arranged exercises and war games to test them. Every six months we submitted a situation report that affected budgets, training, and new weapons. We did surprise readiness checks on all air force units. I enjoyed very much scrambling a squadron or a base for simulated battle, day or night, and watching them deal with it. It brought back mountains of lessons. And most interesting of all, we worked in close cooperation with the land and sea arms of the IDF.
I used to devote one day every week to flying. I visited all the fighter squadrons and flew Phantoms, Kfirs, Mirages, and Skyhawks. I got aboard flights in helicopters and transport aircraft, visited our control and radar units, and met with these branches of military aviation totally different from fighters. On such visits I met with officers and pilots and gave them ideas for the future, discussed operational plans and doctrine with them, listened to their reactions, and gathered impressions. I took part in many exercises and learned new ideas that welled from below. I discovered outstanding men and women. Sometimes I was amazed how the air force had come so far from those pioneer days of flight school sixteen years ago, and even since the establishment of the Orange Tails. Notwithstanding my criticism, this was a different air force, clever and purposeful. It was a dynamic world of sophistication, always interesting. I had to stay on my toes all the time.
For example, there were the long-range targets. During the late 1970s the Iraqis were building an atomic reactor, and this threat worried us a lot. We began testing our capability to operate a thousand kilometers from Israel. The independent range of our fighters was much shorter than that. The air force began to develop aerial refueling capability. I started using this new, still limited capability and mandated operational test flights to very distant points, day and night. On one of these tests, formations of Israeli Phantoms and Skyhawks got out to two thousand kilometers, the Italian coast, and returned. I used this opportunity to learn to refuel my Skyhawk in the air somewhere among the Greek Islands. One night we sent Kfir aircraft to the east, to circle targets at their maximum operating range. I spent other long nights flying odd missions to faraway, unnamed places.
And there were the day-to-day, ongoing operations. The air force didn’t rest for a minute. Preparation for those operations, and the meetings and presentations for their approval, always ended in the minister of defense’s office and sometimes in the prime minister’s. Those presentations were challenges in themselves, and one always heard interesting ideas and was exposed to perspectives from new, surprising angles. At times I had the opportunity to take part in such operations as a “front-line manager,” always in a forward command post, either in a jeep, a plane, or on the deck of a ship, following the process closely, ready to intervene and send in air support at any moment. This was a mighty great feeling.
One of those operations—the Litani operation in Lebanon—continued for several days and nights. The air force worked at high capacity, and in that instance I experienced the operation of the air force command post in wartime. Of course, this operation was nothing like the Yom Kippur War, but I was glad to see that this time the atmosphere was different from the stories of confusion that had reigned there during that war. I exploited that Lebanon miniwar to instill and examine correct working procedures—for instance, processing of feedback from the line squadrons and integration of our conclusions into the next orders being planned. The means we used for it were still primitive—paper maps and intelligent clerks with logbooks and colored pencils—but in essence we created “living maps.”
HELICOPTERS WERE ANOTHER distraction that the new head of operations wasted his precious time on instead of going over the minute details of fighter plans for war that were brought daily to his desk.
I discovered late in life this curious vehicle that could land and take off almost anywhere. But when I joined the operations department I noticed that it could fill some of the more problematic empty squares in my notebook charts. And in this I found a good base left by my predecessor, Avihu Ben Nun, and Benny Peled also had seen the revolutionary military possibilities hidden in helicopters long before I did. Still, the man who most influenced me was Maj. Ido Ambar, the officer who planned helicopters operations under me.
Ido believed that commando units could be flown to an enemy’s rear by helicopters, and attack his weak spots. Such an aggressive approach fit my own thinking. Conditions that disturbed activating fighter aircraft—for example, bad weather or missile batteries—didn’t affect helicopters in the same way. Helicoptered commandos could attack important targets at night and in adverse weather conditions, and enable us to continue the war even when our fighter force was grounded. And perhaps the most important: the helicoptered force would be able to continue the fight even if our airfields were paralyzed.
And there was another good thing: Unlike futuristic unmanned aircraft, helicopters were ripe and ready. Here there was no need for risky technological development. The helicopter squadrons were there to be used and were organized and ready for action. We had large American CH-53 Sea Stallions—we renamed them Petrels—that could transport commando forces with their weapons and gear and put them right on their objectives. Such possibilities were so dazzling that we began imagining a new type of battle unit, mobile, quick, and aggressive, that could be deployed alongside the cumbersome IDF and know how to use the various capabilities of the air force and direct them to a plethora of new targets. This theoretical unit fit into my first-strike concept. We called it in our discussions the Israeli Attack Force.
But the main component was missing: the air force didn’t have commando units. Indeed, the Israeli military had several elite infantry units—all of them full of top-quality soldiers, but they all belonged to other service branches. And whenever in the past the IDF had put infantry with helicopters for joint operations, it had been improvised, since there was no responsible body with unified doctrine and efficient management. During all our wars, commando operations in the enemy’s rear were extremely rare, and the little that was done was usually improvised and amateurish. Only in peacetime, and after long preparation, did such operations succeed. One such case was the hostage rescue at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. But in wartime you don’t have time for such delicate preparations.
The existing elite infantry units were the apple of the eye of the army, and there was no way to get a ready
