Israel's attack plan on Iran: US leak on 'covert' drone sparks debate on secret capabilities

Experts are wondering what kind of unmanned aircraft is referred to in leaked US intelligence documents

An Israeli soldier sits inside an F-35 fighter jet at Nevatim airbase in southern Israel. The aircraft could be used in a retaliatory attack against Iran. Reuters

Live updates: Follow the latest on Israel-Gaza

There was growing speculation this week that Israel may be operating a stealth drone in preparation for an attack on Iran, after analyses of leaked US intelligence documents assessing Israeli plans for a strike.

Almost nothing is revealed about the RA-01, described simply in the documents as a “UAV”, or unmanned aerial vehicle. The documents, which refer to the RA-01 as part of “covert UAV” activity, are believed to be genuine after an FBI investigation into the leak was announced.

Defence publication The War Zone believes the RA-01 is a US designation for a highly classified stealth drone. Their report deduces this due to the documents saying the aircraft might be used in an Iran operation and it would be “odd if they [Israel] never pursued such a capability”, based on Israel's relatively advanced known drone capabilities.

There are further reasons to suggest that a UAV capable of flying over Iran might have stealth features, including radar-absorbent material on the skin and a wing-shape design that reduces the radar cross-section of the aircraft. Drones are already a challenge to detect for many radar systems, meaning those with stealth features could appear on radar the size of insects.

The main reason is the low survivability of non-stealth drones over highly “contested” airspace. The US lost an RQ4A reconnaissance drone on the edge of Iran’s airspace in June 2019, a $180 million non-stealth aircraft that was shot down by an Iranian Sevom Khordad missile. Despite being capable of flying at up to 19,000 metres, the RQ4A would have been a large target for the Iranians.

An American Global Hawk drone at the naval air station on the Italian island of Sicily. Getty Images

Why stealth drones?

The US is said to operate a large stealth drone, the RQ-180, for reconnaissance, electronic warfare and potentially as a communications node at long ranges. Also known as the White Bat, it is one of the US military’s most closely guarded defence programmes, pointing to why Israel might shield such a capability from the public – or even US reconnaissance satellites. The leaked documents only refer to the drone’s hangar.

Stealth drones are also not a new capability – and the US lost one in Iran in 2011, an RQ-170, which went down in disputed circumstances. The Iranians claimed they hacked into the drone’s satellite data link and forced it to land. RQ-170s have been flying since 2007 and ongoing operations are shrouded in secrecy. The US has also operated the X-47B, an aircraft carrier-based drone that has stealth design features, used solely to explore future capability.

US sailors move an X-47B drone onto an aircraft elevator, on board the aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush. Photo: US Navy

There has been significant speculation as to the role of the RQ-170. Bill Sweetman, an aerospace expert with Valkyrie Strategic Solutions, wrote in 2012 that in addition to possessing advanced radar equipment, the RQ-170 might have also possessed powerful electronic warfare capabilities to jam enemy radar.

He says that today, Israel can deploy these electronic warfare capabilities on both stealth and non-stealth aircraft, and he would not be surprised if drones are used as advanced decoys to trick Iran’s air defences. Israel currently has “tactical air-launched decoys” that can be dropped from aircraft to mimic manned jets on radar.

Secret capabilities?

“I would not be at all surprised if Israel has developed a new generation of air-launched decoys with subsets of the IAI-Elta kit on the fighters – something that Sweden is doing, and makes sense with modern tech,” he says.

These decoys, he says, could be used in conjunction with air-launched ballistic missiles, also referred to in the document, which would enable Israeli jets to strike Iranian air defences at safe distance, as occurred in an April Israeli strike in Isfahan.

“Their AEW (airborne early-warning aircraft) assets should also be able to position themselves forward and see a long way into Iran. A multi-axis attack using precision stand-off weapons and advanced electronic warfare is not something we have seen before and would be very hard to defend against. There would be risk of losses, but probably not catastrophic,” he says.

Stealth drones, either for reconnaissance, jamming or both, would add further complications for Iranian defences.

Israel might supplement such an attack with submarine-launched cruise missiles but, unlike US nuclear attack submarines that can carry 154 cruise missiles, Israel’s Dolphin class submarines – of which it has five – probably carry a much smaller number.

That would limit the coming strike on heavily defended Iranian targets – although according to naval analyst H I Sutton, the new Dolphin submarine INS Drakon probably carries additional missile capacity.

This adds another layer of uncertainty for the Iranians, who face air-launched ballistic missiles coming from high altitude at high speed, along with slower, low-altitude and hard-to-detect cruise missiles, air-launched exploding drones and decoys, as well as anti-radiation missiles that home in on radar beams and destroy ground radar. In addition, they will have to contend with stealth F-35Is which experts say will prove almost impossible for Iranian weapons to “lock” on to.

“A submarine could give you unique capabilities which otherwise would not be available. And one of those capabilities could be underwater sabotage, another could be launching a cruise missile so close to the Iranian shore, so Iran’s air defences don't have time to react,” says Robert Dalsjo, senior analyst at Sweden’s Defence Research Agency, a government-linked institute.