Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

THE ISRAELI EXPERIENCE
and one Phantom was lost to one of those older missiles. A second aircraft
was lost to ground fire under unexplained circumstances. 154
By the end of the Lebanon campaign, the IAF claimed an air-to-air kill
ratio of 87:O in aerial combat,155 (a ratio which was astonishing, impossible
to verify, but very likely correct) and reigned supreme over Lebanese
skies. Good though Israeli airmen undoubtedly were, it was difficult to
believe that they achieved such a spectacular, one-sided result simply
through their exemplary flying skills allied with first-rate airframe, engine
technology, and clever tactics. Apparently all the electronic advantage lay
with them, too, weighing the air superiority equation more heavily in their
favor than ever before.
It seemed unlikely that in the future the technological ascendency
would always lie with the same protagonist to such a significant degree,
however. The electronic edge, in particular, would change with bewildering
rapidity, as it did briefly in 1973. In that campaign, while Egyptian missiles
inhibited the “correct and wise” use of Israeli air power, the fighting on the
ground dragged out over the first two weeks in exactly the fashion that
Israel could least afford; but once the missile screen was broken and air
superiority was achieved, air power could be employed freely, and the war
once again was quickly brought to a conclusion.
All the more reason, then, for the IAF to maintain its emphasis on the
human element, a field in which achieving excellence was, of necessity, a
slow, long, drawn-out process, occurring over decades rather than years,
but one which enabled the achiever to minimize the effects of any adverse
swings in the technological balance. Meanwhile, air superiority-which
was never as simple a matter as it might have appeared-became a vastly
more complex problem all the time, but remains, for Israel, “a necessary
evi1.”156
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