US intelligence leak sheds light on Israel’s plans to strike Iran

Iran and Israel are widely expected to have another round of clashes this year

An Israeli F-16 fighter jet on the tarmac at an undisclosed location in Israel. AFP

More US intelligence leaks were revealed on Wednesday regarding Israel’s highly anticipated next military strike on Iran, which could involve a large-scale air attack on nuclear facilities.

It follows several leaks in recent months about such an attack, after Israel’s largest strike on Iran in October, itself a response to two huge missile and drone attacks on Israel.

The latest leaks, The Wall Street Journal reported, suggest Israel would like indirect US support for the strikes.

The intelligence directorate of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Defence Intelligence Agency told unnamed sources that Israel hopes President Donald Trump will be amenable to providing intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support for a major attack. Israel is said to also require the use of US aerial refuelling tankers.

Previous assessments have found Israel, while capable of launching limited strikes with large numbers of aircraft such as the strike in October involving up to 100 jets, needs more logistical support for sustained air raids.

A sustained attack, perhaps involving waves of jets, would be needed to seriously damage Iran’s vast nuclear programme and would benefit from the US’s formidable satellite reconnaissance capabilities.

Israel’s aerial refuelling capacity features decades-old Boeing 707s, heavily upgraded and modified civilian tankers essential for long-range refuelling and also used as airborne mission control centres, but they are becoming increasingly due for decommission because of their age. Israel is waiting on deliveries of new US KC-46 Pegasus aerial refuelling tankers, usually priority targets for long-range enemy missiles.

But the Pegasus is equipped with early-warning systems and a laser missile jamming device which, according to the US Air Force, should enable it to edge closer to enemy air space.

For years, analysts have speculated that a lack of enough modern tankers was a major limiting factor in Israel’s plans to attack Iran and most, if not all, missiles used in October may have been fired from outside Iran’s borders.

F-15I combat jets fly in formation for refuelling from a Boeing 707 tanker plane during an air show outside Beersheva, southern Israel. EPA

Iran has concealed much of its advanced nuclear programme deep underground in mountain complexes, spread out over a large area. Israel may have hit elements of such infrastructure in October, bombing missile fuel production at Parchin, which has previously been identified by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as housing testing equipment for detonating a nuclear bomb, devices called initiators.

But analysts say Iranian mountain complexes like Fordow are impervious to all but repeated strikes by the world’s biggest bombs, such as the 13,000kg GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator, which is carried only by US heavy bombers like the B-2 Spirit and is not in Israel’s possession.

This apparently has not stopped Israel’s war plans – including a demonstrated capability to “dig” into deep bunkers during September’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut.

Iran has also been taking steps to rebuild air defences, damaged in October’s strikes, including radar systems for the Russian-built S-300PMU2, incorporating some surviving radars into its domestically made systems.

Beefed-up air defences

While Iran acknowledged limited damage to its air defences in October, experts believe most of its S-300 systems, which can threaten non-stealthy Israeli jets such as the commonly used Israeli F-15I and F-16I, were wrecked. Also damaged or destroyed in unknown numbers were colossal long-range radars like the Ghadir, said to be able to detect stealthy jets such as Israel’s F-35I using powerful low-frequency transmissions.

Unlike the S-300s, which are mobile, these cannot be moved (then potentially hidden) and were probably easy targets for Israel’s aero-ballistic missiles, which travel at very high speed from high altitude and are advertised as having digital scene-matching guidance, meaning they do not rely on a communication link like satellite GPS, which can be jammed by a matching but more powerful signal.

Instead they use computer vision to find targets, flying at steep angles far outside Iran’s airspace and far from the potential “engagement range” of Iranian air defences.

In January, Iran announced it had set up Nazir radar, which broadcast at high frequency, bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere and have a claimed detection range of 800km, beyond the “radar horizon” limit of conventional radar.

Over-the-horizon radar often have claimed ranges in the thousands of kilometres, but are big, immobile targets designed to provide an early warning to other radar sites that can “track, identify and lock” on to Israeli jets to guide missiles against them.

This would be the work of air defence systems such as the Khordad 15, which according to a Russian media report in December has been deployed around Iran's Natanz nuclear complex. Iran’s Channel 2 also said in January that the system had been deployed at another major nuclear site, Fordow.

The Fordow uranium conversion plant in Qom, northern Iran. AFP

The Khordad 15, an indigenous system, has been compared to the US Patriot air defence system in terms of its range and intended targets. It has missiles for firing at fighter jets and a dedicated missile, the 9-Dey, for shooting at smaller, low-flying targets such as drones, cruise missiles and large, slow-flying bombs.

Alongside it, Iran has the Bavar 373, the centrepiece of the regime’s indigenous air defence production. Iran recently showcased an upgraded version of the system it says is comparable to Russia’s S-400, which can threaten non-stealth fighter jets out to several hundred kilometres.

Advanced radar?

Notably, Iran says the Bavar 373 comes with an AESA radar, now a standard capability for modern military equipment. Active Electronically Scanned Array radar uses cutting-edge microchips to rapidly “shape” and steer radar beams, making the beams narrower and mobile – moving electronically rather than mechanically. That makes them good at rapid detection of threats but simultaneously harder to detect due to the “beam agility” of the system, which can operate at different frequencies at the same time, complicating jamming efforts against a single frequency.

Simultaneously, their transmitters use Gallium Nitride, a material which can tolerate high voltages and heat to ensure stable, powerful radar transmission, which enables the radar to perform several simultaneous tasks such as scanning a wide area of sky, while focusing on a target.

Such radars could pose a serious threat to Israeli aircraft, a capability bolstered by the Alim passive radar. The Alim, according to Iran expert Farzin Nadhimi, can co-ordinate with the Bavar but instead of sending out radar waves, it "listens" passively for radar emissions of enemy jets.

This could provide a key capability because Israel has anti-radiation missiles, which seek out enemy radar emissions, meaning the act of switching on a radar could be deadly to air defenders.

It is not clear how Iran has developed this technology – and it is unlikely to prove as capable as AESA radars developed by the US and Israel after billions of dollars of investment – but the Bavar 373 has been compared to China’s KSA-1 system and Beijing has invested heavily in Gallium Nitride radar technology.

Iran would also have needed to invest in “fire control” and battle management computers that process the large amount of data that can be collected by AESA radars on friendly and hostile targets.

Whether or not the system is effective, Israel appears to be taking it seriously and has heavily invested in upgrading its F-16I fleet, which unlike the stealthy F-35I, is vulnerable at short range to air defences. Israel said last month that Elbit Systems had been awarded a contract to upgrade the jets with early warning systems, which alert the jets to incoming missiles, allowing the pilot to deploy suitable countermeasures.