As the diplomacy front continues, so do Israel's aerial strikes on Iran. And the steady bombardment is challenging a decades-old military maxim that air power alone is not enough to win a military conflict, writes Marcus Walker in a Wall Street Journal analysis. Israel seemingly has no plans to send ground troops into Iran as part of its goal to wipe out Tehran's nuclear program, and thus:
- "If Israel succeeds, with or without U.S. help, it could prompt a serious reassessment of the capabilities of modern air power, its effectiveness augmented by unmanned aircraft and more sophisticated surveillance and intelligence-gathering technologies," writes Walker.
- Of course, with an air-only attack, "you cannot physically seize things, you can only physically destroy," military historian Phillips O'Brien tells the outlet. But in this case, that might suffice.
A looming question is whether Israel's bombers can do meaningful damage to Iran's large underground nuclear facility called Fordow. The consensus is that they can't, notes Foreign Policy, and that only American B-52 bombers dropping "bunker busters" can do the trick. A story at Bloomberg, however, challenges the premise that Israel can't effectively destroy Fordow without US help. For example, Israeli bombers could damage the outer structure of it and make it all but impossible to enter. Another option, one that deviates from the air-only warfare, is to send in a commando unit to blow it up with mines. (More Israel stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
