Military aid to Israel

This is a topic that can be peeled apart along several different dimensions.

I will restrict myself to a single dimension.

In the early-to-mid 1900s, advances in military technology proceeded mostly along the lines of technologies of more powerful explosives, stronger materials, faster vehicles.

By the mid-late 1900s, information and software became ascendant. 

The "edge" was not in faster air-frames or better rocket propellants. It was in sensing the enemy farther away or with greater precision or to be able to predict his actions soon enough to move assets into better positions.

Airplane life-cycles grew longer as electronics were updated and software that ran on those electronics became more sophisticated.

The US sold fighter planes, for instance, to a hundred different countries and every one of them had unique software packages. The least trusted allies had the least capable software and the most trusted allies had software almost as good as US.

When the U.K. and Argentina went to war over the Falklands, both countries flew the same airframe. In plane-to-plane combat the Argentinian pilots went swimming at a much higher rate because of the de-tuned software.

Software is sensitive to GIGO: Garbage in, Garbage out.

The only way to dial in the e-Warfare portion of the weapon system is to field it in a hot environment where it will "see" all of the potential targets, decoys and miscellaneous noise of the potential opponents.

Yom Kippur War

 

Egyptian troops used flamethrowers and rocket-propelled grenades to clear out several of the concrete Israeli outposts, and by 6 PM had secured a two-mile-deep bridgehead. Once the crossing was secured, engineers began erecting pontoon bridges to allow tanks and the first of over 200,000 Egyptian troops. Special pumps were rafted over and used to blast paths through huge obstructing sand embankments built by Israeli engineers.

IDF armored units deployed in reserve rolled forth to counterattack. IDF tanks expected the Arab infantry to be vulnerable, with their heavy weapons still on the western bank, and charged into the fray without artillery or infantry support.

However, Egyptian troops had crossed with an extra-large supply of portable Malyutka (AT-3 Sagger) wire-guided anti-tank missiles. While an RPG remains accurate only up to one to two hundred meters, the Soviet-supplied Malyutka were effective up to two miles away. The AT-3 teams planted their portable launch units on the ground, then took cover nearby and remotely fired the projectile towards the approaching tanks. The missiles remained connected by a huge spool of wire to the launcher, and their operators used a joystick interface to guide the weapons on target manually.

As the Israeli Patton tanks barreled onwards, Malyutkas began sailing towards them at a fast 380 feet per second, their shaped charge warheads easily blasting through armor despite their low velocity. Over 100 Israeli tanks were lost on the first day alone. Two days later, Egyptian signals intelligence intercepted plans for a counterattack by the 162nd Armored Divisions. General Hassan Abu Sa’ada orchestrated an ambush that knocked out 75 tanks in a matter of hours.

As Israeli F-4 Phantoms and A-4 Skyhawks winged towards the frontline, SA-6 missiles began plucking them from the sky—leading to the loss of 34 Skyhawks in the first four days of the war. Initial attempts to take the SAMs out backfired disastrously, with six Phantoms lost in one failed strike.

By Oct 14, Israeli General Ariel Sharon had revised tactics, making sure tanks were support by artillery and infantry to suppress anti-tank missiles. Israeli armor smashed the attack, knocking out 250 tanks for just six lost Israeli tanks and 34 damaged. Immediately, Sharon riposted with an assault that broke through the northern flank of the Suez bridgehead.  Source

Can you imagine the death-toll in terms of American lives if those lessons had been learned in eastern and central Europe?

The U.S. "Stand with Israel" policy is motivated by a sense of self-preservation. It is our best, most reliable window into what our enemies would do to us.

Today's battlefield isn't just tactics and battle doctrine. It is filled with WIFI enabled tools and toys. It is a safe bet that Raytheon and other weapon suppliers have accurate information about radar and IR signatures of everything that might come our way. They might even have a profile of the cross-talk that happens when three guys with smartphones launch one of the goblin weapons.

One of the "costs" of the tour-de-force of NATO weapons that have been given to Ukraine is that Com China has been able to scrape all of that info in reverse:signatures, tells, performance profiles. You don't hear much about that in the press.