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.