EckerNet.Com

For the past several days I had been working on a post regarding Israel’s ability to strike Iran’s nuclear program. Basically the summary being that it wouldn’t be possible since Israel doesn’t have a sufficient aircraft available with the ability to conduct such a strike on the scale necessary to get the job done.

Here I had put in hours of research, and was in the process of writing the post. It was actually coming out pretty good, when I did one more google search on what I thought to be a trivial detail. Crap. Turns out Israel’s version of the F-16D is the Block 52 variety, which introduced the Conformal Fuel Tank (CFT), greatly increasing their range. I had thought Israel’s use of the CFT was limited to their F-16I aircraft (of which they have maybe 50 total).

Crap…that pretty much ruined my argument. Suddenly their inventory went from a series of quality aircraft with limited range, to quality aircraft with the ability to become long range with minimal effort and almost zero warning to the outside world.

As a result their ability to be able to strike Iran’s nuclear program in one single strike, while still unlikely, is at least possible. Especially if they’ve been aware of Iran’s nuclear program for a long time….which would have given them the time to retrofit older F-16s with the CFTs.

Summary of the situation, the real estate forecast of Iran is looking rather dismal.