Is Israel Using It’s Special “Adir” F-35i Variant to Attack Hamas?

By Kris Osborn, President, Center for Military Modernization

The Israeli Defense Forces appear to be holding off a major ground invasion, at least in coming days, likely for intelligent reasons given the known amount of anti-armor weapons Hamas has.

Instead, they appear to be attempting to leverage air superiority, despite the known difficulties of targeting Hamas from the air, as they are known to hide among civilians, stay in underground bunkers and draw upon previous combat experience against the IDF to evade ISR and air-targeting. Also, years of public reports have indicated that indeed Iran has sent some of its Russian-built S-300s to Gaza, something which could complicate IDF efforts to attack from the air.

What about Israel’s special F-35i Adir variant? The are now reported to operate at least 35 of their specially engineered F-35i Adir variants of the F-35, a 5th-generation stealth plane engineered with a distinct, Israeli-engineered jamming pod, electronic warfare system, guided bombs and air-to-air missiles. An interesting essay from Aviation Week as far back as 2010 says Israel’s F-35i also operates with its own internal weapons bays as well.

The US-engineered F-35 is known to operate with extremely significant, advanced EW, yet perhaps Israel has developed its own system tailored to threats it may encounter in its region?

How might the IDF use its F-35i Adir against Hamas? Given that there does not appear to be a credible air-threat from Hamas, at least not at the moment, the IDF would most likely draw upon its F-35i’s advanced sensing technology, EW and precision weapons. Infrared and long-range, high-fidelity EO/IR, such as that known to exist in the F-35, might help bring a drone-like, yet piloted measure of ISR to IDF efforts to hunt and attack Hamas. Should a precise Hamas target be seen or pinpointed, and “targetable” in a way that minimizes or avoids civilian casualties, a manned F-35 might be able to attack with precision with little-to-no-latency. Also, a formation of F-35i Adir’s could also use the Joint Strike Fighter’s advanced Multi-function Advanced Datalink (MADL) to connect a broad formation of F-35s to one another and share targeting detail between manned and unmanned aircraft in real time. In this respect, the Israeli F-35s could perform collaborative ISR as well as precision targeting.

No real “air threat to Israel”

Many of Israel’s regional threats such as Iran or militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah would of course not present an air threat to Israel in terms of aircraft.