Israeli Attack on Iran? Dire Consequences for India

The Deep Com­mand was specif­i­cal­ly estab­lished with poten­tial con­flicts in dis­tant the­atres like Iran in mind. This pre­vi­ous­ly was sole­ly the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the IAF. The Raas and Lang Paper feels that Israeli Spe­cial Forces employ­ment will only be con­fined to vec­tor­ing in the air strikes with laser des­ig­na­tors and car­ry­ing out imme­di­ate bomb dam­age assess­ment. In fact, the paper has iden­ti­fied the Say­eret-Shaldag Unit 5101 of the IAF, which spe­cialis­es in laser des­ig­na­tion and Unit 5707, which spe­cialis­es in real time bomb dam­age assess­ment, for this task

 -

Natanz: The Natanz facil­i­ty is the next crit­i­cal link. This site is 200 miles south of Tehran and 40 miles from the near­est city. It com­pris­es a pilot fuel enrich­ment plant and, as the paper asserts, a much larg­er com­mer­cial plant under­ground which is await­ing arrival of thou­sands of cen­trifuges. As such the opti­mal time for the strike would be once the cen­trifuges are installed but before a large quan­ti­ty of UF6 has been intro­duced. Bomb­ing the emp­ty hall pri­or to cen­trifuge instal­la­tion would be futile in terms of an anti-pro­lif­er­a­tion strike. The instal­la­tion of cen­trifuges and their oper­a­tion has been delayed by sab­o­tage (Stut­next virus and faulty parts).

Arak: The HW plant and plu­to­ni­um pro­duc­tion reac­tor at Arak con­sti­tute a very large facil­i­ty, locat­ed some 150 miles south-west of Tehran. The site itself is some 20 miles from the near­est town. The paper claims that Iran has a small research reac­tor that uses HW as coolant, but the Arak HW facil­i­ty, will be able to pro­duce more than 16 tons of HW per year – a capa­bil­i­ty, that is far in excess of the civil­ian require­ments. The two Arak reac­tors are sched­uled for com­ple­tion by 2014 and they could pro­duce weapons grade Plutonium.

Israeli strike options

Hav­ing defined the Iran­ian tar­get sets, we need to exam­ine in com­pre­hen­sive detail, the Israeli strike options. The capa­bil­i­ties of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) are far more advanced today (in terms of enhanced accu­ra­cy and abil­i­ty to pen­e­trate hard­ened tar­gets such as reac­tor con­tain­ment) than they were in 1981 at the time of the Osir­ak raid. Acqui­si­tion of Pre­ci­sion Guid­ed Muni­tions (PGMs) in 1980s and 1990s, means that the dynam­ics of IAF bomb­ing have been trans­formed. The Lo-Lo-High mis­sion pro­file would now be redun­dant. Accu­rate deliv­ery would no longer require approach at low alti­tudes and then pop­ping up to dive direct­ly on target.

The Israeli strike pack­age would now come at mid or high alti­tude, nav­i­gate accu­rate­ly due to GPS and attack the tar­get with laser guid­ed bombs (LGBs) or GPS guid­ed muni­tions from stand­off ranges of at least 15 kms or more. CEP at the time of the Osir­ak raid was of the order of 8–12 metres (due to com­put­erised aim­ing sys­tem of the F‑16). GPS guid­ed muni­tions can achieve the same accu­ra­cy today from a 15 km stand­off range and high alti­tude deliv­ery. Laser guid­ed bombs could give a CEP of about 3 meters from the same stand off range.

Tar­get pen­e­tra­tion lev­els have also been great­ly enhanced with the use of “bunker busters” or pen­e­trat­ing war­heads with delayed action fuzes. These are deliv­ered from high alti­tudes at steep angles and can pen­e­trate tens of feet of earth and even sev­er­al feet of rein­forced concrete. 

Pos­si­ble options in the Israeli inven­to­ry are: 

  • PB 500 AI A 1,000 lb class pen­e­trat­ing bomb
  • BLU-109 A 2,000 lb class pen­e­trat­ing war head
  • BLU-113 A 5,000

Accu­ra­cy could be fur­ther enhanced by laser des­ig­na­tion of the tar­gets by Israeli Spe­cial Forces (SF). The arti­cle cites Maj Gen Etyan Ben Elyahu (for­mer Com­man­der of IAF who took part in Osir­ak raid) as say­ing that even if one BLU-113 did not pen­e­trate the earth and con­crete at Natanz, two suc­ces­sive strikes could do so. A com­bined blast of three BLU ‑113s he felt, could destroy the Natanz facil­i­ties. For com­plete assur­ance lev­els, a com­bi­na­tion of BLU-113s and BLU-109s may be required. The oth­er two tar­get sets at Isfa­han and Arak are not hard­ened as of now and would be rel­a­tive­ly eas­i­er to tack­le. These may well be tar­get­ed by the small­er BLU-109 warheads. 

It would be there­fore very much in India’s inter­ests, as also in the region­al and glob­al inter­ests to ensure a peace­ful, nego­ti­at­ed res­o­lu­tion to this cri­sis. It would be pru­dent how­ev­er, to make con­tin­gency plans for the worst case sce­nar­ios that may entail a diver­si­fi­ca­tion of our oil and gas import sources and pos­si­bly a large scale evac­u­a­tion of the Indi­an emi­grant pop­u­la­tion from the Gulf region. The base line assump­tion would pro­ceed from the like­ly dura­tion of the con­flict and dis­rup­tion of the oil sup­plies. The long-term spec­tre of a series of failed states in Asia is chilling

Strike modal­i­ties

The Israeli strike at PLO head­quar­ters at Tunis in 1985 amply demon­strat­ed Israeli deep strike capa­bil­i­ties upto a range of almost 4,000 kms. Today these capa­bil­i­ties remain cen­tered on the F‑15s and F‑16s. The IAF now has 25 x F‑15 I Raas and 25 or more F‑16 I Soufa air­craft which have been spe­cial­ly con­fig­ured for deep strike. Both these planes have an unre­fu­elled com­bat radius of 1,700 kms with exter­nal drop tanks. The F‑16 I could deliv­er 2 x 2,000 lb bombs while car­ry­ing exter­nal fuel tanks. Both types of air­craft have advanced ECM suites and remain capa­ble of air–to–air com­bat. Whit­ney Raas and Austin Lang have envi­sioned a 50 strong strike pack­age of 25 x F‑15 Is and 25 x F‑16 Is. 

This pack­age would be divid­ed into three small­er strike pack­ages (one for each facil­i­ty) Any larg­er strike pack­age than this would strain Israeli refu­elling capabilities.

The paper has con­sid­ered three rout­ing options as under: 

  • North­ern Route: Fly North to the Mediter­ranean sea, refu­el ex air­borne tankers, fly East over Turkey to strike Iran. Total route length 2,220 kms approx.
  • Osir­ak Route: Fly South-east, skirt Jor­dan and Sau­di Ara­bia, fly North-east over Iraq (with mid-air refu­elling) and into Iran. This would large­ly be the Osir­ak route. Total length 2,160 kms.
  • South­ern Route: Fly South-east, then East along Saudi–Iraqi bor­der to the Per­sian Gulf, refu­el either over Sau­di ter­ri­to­ry or the Gulf and on to Iran. At 2,410 kms, this is the longest rout­ing option and would entail refu­elling twice, both on the way out and in.

Refu­elling Capac­i­ty: Israel has a fleet of 4 to 5 KC-130s and 5 to 7 KC-707s. For a strike pack­age of 50 air­craft, the KC-707 fleet could deliv­er 12 to 16,000 lbs at a dis­tance of 1,000 NM. All the three rout­ing options would need refu­elling twice, espe­cial­ly, if air–to–air com­bat takes place short of or over the target.

Analy­sis

The paper is silent about the aspect of reduc­tion in range if the F‑16 Is car­ry the 5,000 lbs BLU-113 war­heads. Pre­sum­ably, air–to–air refu­elling on both the route in and route out of the flight path could over­come this con­straint. How­ev­er, the tran­sit of such a huge strike pack­age over the ter­ri­to­ries of Jor­dan, Sau­di Ara­bia or Turkey is a major grey area that almost rules out these rout­ing options. All that is left is the clas­si­cal Osir­ak route over Iraq. The paper has also not gone into details of the sup­pres­sion defences, the elec­tron­ic sup­pres­sion mea­sures and whether a Hawk­eye Air­borne Ear­ly Warn­ing and Con­trol (AEW or AWAC) would be need­ed to con­trol the air-to-air bat­tle that is bound to result as the strike pack­ages pen­e­trate Iran­ian air­space. Also these cal­cu­la­tions are silent about the For­do facil­i­ty near Qom.

Employ­ment of spe­cial forces

After the expe­ri­ence gained in try­ing to co-ordi­nate the three wings of the Israeli Spe­cial Forces (Say­eret Matkal of the Israeli Intel­li­gence, Shaldag of the IAF and Sahyetet 13 Com­man­does of the Israeli Navy) dur­ing the 2006 con­flict in Lebanon, the Israelis have now set up the Spe­cial Forces Com­mand or the “Deep Com­mand”. This is now respon­si­ble for com­mand­ing and co-ordi­nat­ing all oper­a­tions beyond Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Com­mand The­atres. It is head­ed by Brig Gen Tal Rus­so, a vet­er­an Spe­cial Forces offi­cer and is now the Israeli Defence Forces Eighth HQ autho­rised to oper­ate forces – the oth­er being Air HQ, Naval HQ, North­ern, Cen­tral, South­ern and Home Front Com­mands as also the AMAN or Israeli Intelligence.

The Deep Com­mand was specif­i­cal­ly estab­lished with poten­tial con­flicts in dis­tant the­atres like Iran in mind. This pre­vi­ous­ly was sole­ly the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the IAF. The Raas and Lang Paper feels that Israeli Spe­cial Forces employ­ment will only be con­fined to vec­tor­ing in the air strikes with laser des­ig­na­tors and car­ry­ing out imme­di­ate bomb dam­age assess­ment. In fact, the paper has iden­ti­fied the Say­eret-Shaldag Unit 5101 of the IAF, which spe­cialis­es in laser des­ig­na­tion and Unit 5707, which spe­cialis­es in real time bomb dam­age assess­ment, for this task. Post the war in Lebanon, the IAF pri­ma­cy in mat­ters mil­i­tary is being chal­lenged by a new gen­er­a­tion of Israeli Army Gen­er­als led by the new Chief of the Gen­er­al Staff Lt Gen Gabi Ashkenazi. 

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →