How good are the Israeli Airforce pilots?

[ebby]

When the IAF claims a 23:1 ratio, I don't really think they meant that all "23" kills were made in air to air combat. It may include kills made by anti-aircraft systems since they are under the command of the IAF as well IIRC.

Are their pilots the best in the world? Maybe... but pilots are just humans after all, and only 1 component of the IAF. It is the different components, put together that makes the IAF one of the most well-respected air force in the world. Aside from the US, their air force has probably seen the most action in the modern jet age. The experience gained from the pilots then, today's senior commanders would not be lost, but handed down to their rookie pilots as well.

Selection for pilots are stringent, and most students were watched and selected by the IAF based on their academic performances on relevant subjects such as physics and math. And not many make the cut to become fighter pilots in the IAF.

With such systems in place, there is a bound to be a minimal standard of quality that comes out from it.

Discussion is about Israeli pilots.

 

[Tzalaf]

Israeli Airforce Superiority

It is true that the Israeli pilots are the top or equal top in terms of skill.
Kill numbers and SAMs aside, it has been seen over the last 60 years that the pilots, many of the originals coming from the British and US flight schools in the early days, have consistently faced and thrashed any opponent, be it during the wars of 48, 56 67, 73 or 82.
It was an Israeli pilot who first discovered how to evade the Russian SAMs during the 60s. It is the Israeli's who have managed to push aircraft beyond designed parameters during training and combat, and it is the Israeli's who have perhaps the greatest numbers of persons attempting to gain acceptance to flight school. If my memory serves me correctly, the completion rate of pilots actually graduating was only around 1 percent of those who actually began the flight school. Remember that this 1 percent is of those who accually were accepted to flight school, and not the multitude of hopefuls who never made it that far.
During the wargames held between Israel and the US, the Israeli pilots have enjoyed a success against the US pilots. I won't quote figures as I don't remember how much exactly, but it was around 250 US pilots shot down for 23 Israeli pilots shot down IN DOGFIGHTS. This is a ratio of around 11:1. Still pretty good I believe, even if not the 23 or 30 % mentioned earlier.

 

[bellyholder]

bombers role

Now that a sort of cease-fire has interrupted the Israely operation in South Lebanon (I fear won't be the same on the other side), I think would be interesting to also discuss the Isr. pilots skill in the fighter-bomber role. Media reports, at least here in sunny Italy, have mainly focused (which is probably correct) on the civilian casualties caused by IAF incursions. There might probably be several reasons/explanations to this: from lack of intelligence to actual will of involving civilian (the ulikely latter is even diffcult to write, but remains a possible option), with all other variants in between. I don't honestly have enough information to make a valuable assessment, but I'm very interested on comments (of course only if this subject doesn't hurt anybody's sensitivity).

 

[swerve]

During the wargames held between Israel and the US, the Israeli pilots have enjoyed a success against the US pilots. I won't quote figures as I don't remember how much exactly, but it was around 250 US pilots shot down for 23 Israeli pilots shot down IN DOGFIGHTS. This is a ratio of around 11:1. Still pretty good I believe, even if not the 23 or 30 % mentioned earlier.

There's been a lot of talk about those numbers, which I believe derive from a couple of exercises in the late 1990s. Official figures were not released, of course (they rarely are), but unlike the Indian exercises, there have been a lot of complaints from the USA that the leaked numbers are false. USAF & USN pilots who participated have complained that they are unable to publicly state the true figures. They've also complained (though this may be sour grapes) that the rules of engagement were biased in favour of the Israelis. Accounts I have read suggest that the Israelis adapted their tactics to take advantage of the RoEs, & scored very well against the US initially, but that the US performance improved after analysis of Israeli tactics. If correct (I dunno -it's gossip), that sounds to me as if the Israelis are better than the Americans (the idea of adapting your tactics to the RoEs is rather obvious, for example - why didn't the Americans do it from the start?), but not as much as the (possibly exaggerated) reported loss ratios show. If the loss ratio really was in dogfights, as stated, then it would also be unrepresentative of real air to air warfare, where there hasn't been a dogfight, AFAIK, since the 1980s, except perhaps between Eritrea & Ethiopia.

 

[Gerasimos]

I believe that any pilot serving in an airforce,that is always in red alarm,always ready to take off,like the airforce of Israel can be considered as a veteran pilot.I don't think someone should count only numbers.I that the experience gained in real war is far more better than multiple exercises...

 

[ahussains]

Did any one have some facts book about the Abilty of Israiels Piolts or any authentic source which can rate which countrys piolts are the best

 

[ebby]

Never mind him.

 

[Waylander]

Do you really want to discuss like this?
It is so biased I don't know were to begin...

Ebby's been sorted and I'll keep an eye on the thread. I'll leave it open now as he's is the only one who hasn't been playing by the rules. If there's any other "infractions" it'll end up being closed.

Cheers

AD

 

[kams]

Do you really want to discuss like this?
It is so biased I don't know were to begin...

It will be better if you don't begin ..do you see any chance of a healthy unbiased debate ?

 

[Waylander]

No.
It is interesting to see that especially avionic topics seem to be more childish and biased topics than any other kind of topic.
Mabye because more people think that they are specs in this field than in others and because there are much more public articels about fighters.
For me I have defenitely not enough knowledge about fighters to discuss in most of the avionic topics so I am a quiet reader for most of the time.

 

[saberII]

no offence to anybody but i would like to use a qoute....

Airforces Monthly
Article in the May 1993 issue (pages 46-47 by Sergey Vekhov)
"As an air defence analyst, I am fully aware that the Pakistan Air Force ranks today as one of the best air forces in the world and that the PAF Combat Commanders' School (CCS) in Sargodha has been ranked as the best GCI/pilot and fighter tactics and weapons school in the world". As one senior US defence analyst commented to me in 1997, "it leaves Topgun (the US Naval Air Station in Miramar, California) far behind".

"PAF pilots managed to shoot down ten Israeli aircraft, including Mirages, Mystères and Vautours, without losses on their own side. The PAF pilots operated with Egyptian, Jordanese and Iraqi combat aircraft." scramble.nl
ratio 0-10???
my point is arab airforces suffered more casulties due to lack of poor traning, and no offence to any body, in battle field they were more like flying ducks..isreali pilots did have huge edge over these countrys but when it come to best pilot vs best pilot, pakistan has an edge...

 

[powerslavenegi]

Hmmmmm

no offence to anybody but i would like to use a qoute....

Airforces Monthly
Article in the May 1993 issue (pages 46-47 by Sergey Vekhov)
"As an air defence analyst, I am fully aware that the Pakistan Air Force ranks today as one of the best air forces in the world and that the PAF Combat Commanders' School (CCS) in Sargodha has been ranked as the best GCI/pilot and fighter tactics and weapons school in the world". As one senior US defence analyst commented to me in 1997, "it leaves Topgun (the US Naval Air Station in Miramar, California) far behind".

"PAF pilots managed to shoot down ten Israeli aircraft, including Mirages, Mystères and Vautours, without losses on their own side. The PAF pilots operated with Egyptian, Jordanese and Iraqi combat aircraft." scramble.nl
ratio 0-10???
my point is arab airforces suffered more casulties due to lack of poor traning, and no offence to any body, in battle field they were more like flying ducks..isreali pilots did have huge edge over these countrys but when it come to best pilot vs best pilot, pakistan has an edge...

How good are Israeli Pilots ? hmm such discussions most of the time end up in verbal spats as a result of nationalism shown by forum jockies (post above is such an example).Anyways I will too give it a try.IMO any AF that conducts frequent exercises with USAF and having a similar establishment in terms of grooming and training of pilots coupled with the state of the art A/C and AAM's surely will have a potent AF.And everyone knows Israeli AF is among the few who have seen action in 21st century.Israel's geographical position,size and neighbours make her extremely vulnerable to conflicts and hence their AF is battle ready 24*365 hours a year.I think they do have some top of the line pilots from the globe.:duel

 

[Big-E]

Mod edit: Off-topic B.S. This thread is about Israel. Not PAF v Indian AF. AD.

 

[saberII]

Mod edit: Off-topic B.S. This thread is about Israel. Not PAF v Indian AF. AD.

 

[LancerMc]

From what I have heard about the IAF's pilots, is that they are pretty damn good. Like previous statements, the IAF's has done extremely well in war games against the USAF and USN, I have heard kill ratios in the order of 1to10 or 1to20 during the games. While there was no air to air combat in the recent Lebanon conflict, more information about how successful their ground attacks missions will probably be coming out in the near future. I would think here in a couple of months will have better idea about their capabilities. Don't forget their vast access to combat veterans who can provide very important combat experience for their younger pilots.

 

[powerslavenegi]

Mod edit: Off-topic B.S. This thread is about Israel. Not PAF v Indian AF. AD.

 

[kams]

"TOPGUN was formerly known officially as the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School, and was established on March 3, 1969 at NAS Miramar, California after a United States Navy report recommended that a graduate-level school be established to train Fleet fighter pilots in air combat tactics to counter the relatively poor air combat performance being experienced by Navy aircrews over Vietnam."

Dude always double check, especially if you want to refer to wikipedia . TOPGUN was relocated to Fallon Naval Air Station, about 60 miles from Reno in 1996.

This thread is about Israeli Air force pilots. Just wondering how come PAF and IAF pilots got in to this

 

[swerve]

"They had about five hundred airplanes, more than half of them Sabres and 104 Starfighters, a few B-57 bombers, and about a hundred Chinese MiG-19s. They were really good, aggressive dogfighters and proficient in gunnery and air combat tactics. I was damned impressed. Those guys just lived and breathed flying.The Pakistanis whipped their [Indians'] asses in the sky, but it was the other way around in the ground war. The air war lasted two weeks and the Pakistanis scored a three-to-one kill ratio, knocking out 102 Russian-made Indian jets and losing thirty-four airplanes of their own."
(General (Retd.) Chuck Yeager (USAF) , Book: Yeager, the Autobiography).

Yeager obviously preferred remembered rumours to fact-checking. Those numbers!

 

[Big-E]

i dont want to Escalate this topic into some kind of flame, but a question.. r u american????
source wikipedia...
"TOPGUN was formerly known officially as the United States Navy Fighter Weapons School, and was established on March 3, 1969 at NAS Miramar, California after a United States Navy report recommended that a graduate-level school be established to train Fleet fighter pilots in air combat tactics to counter the relatively poor air combat performance being experienced by Navy aircrews over Vietnam."

Do you know how long ago that was? There used to be an Army Air Corp instead of the USAF but it doesn't mean it still exists. It hasn't been called Navy Fighter Weapons School in ages. It is the SFTI course (Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor). It moved from Marinmar to Fallon well over a decade ago. My problem isn't that your info is out of date, it's that you claim it to come from a prominent US defense analyist that you personally talked to. It means your blowing smoke up my ass b/c any professional defense analyist would know this little bit of info. I'm thinking everything you know about SFTI came from the movie TOPGUN. If you had read wikipedia you would know everything I just said!!! :tomato

Jane's International Defense (June 24, 1998)
The PAF, although outnumbered by IAF, has at least one qualitative edge over its rival: Pilot Training. The caliber of Pakistani instructors is acknowledged by numerous air forces, and US Navy pilots considered them to be highly 'professionals' during exercises flying off the USS Constellation (as co-pilots).

Yeah, I remember Inspired Alert... you know when USN pilots call someone "highly professional" all that means is their flying... period. It doesn't mean ANYTHING special. I doubt Jane published an article declaring PAF superior to the IAF. Why would they even bother to compare them?

 

[swerve]

Mod edit: Off-topic B.S. This thread is about Israel. Not PAF v Indian AF. Or the present location of Top Gun. AD.