>>The issue of a college degree is really irrelevant. While perhaps a university education adds depth to field and general grade officers, it has nothing whatsoever to do with a company grade officer's ability to fly jets or command infantry companies. This is a whole different subject, but I would argue that the Israeli method of selecting officers from the ranks is a better system than the US/UK model of separate training for officers only << Not all American officers, in any branch of service, are the products of service academies and university ROTC programs. A percentage are pulled from the enlisted ranks and sent to OCS (or, on occasion these days, directly commissioned) and then on to Officer Basic Course or their respective service's equivalents. These guys consistently, in my experience and opinion, make the best junior officers, based on their prior experience as enlisted soldiers and, sometimes, NCOs.

1). The USAF and USN concentrate on long range interceptions that emphasize AWACS and AMRAAM. They consider that close-in dogfights (are they still called "furballs"?) are losing propositions where a MiG-17 has a good opportunity to down a F-15. This is not only dcurrent doctrine, but it goes back to Claire Chennault and his "Flying Tigers." For that matter, to von Richthofen and the "Flying Circus." This is just managing to take advantage of the percentages in a war of attrition. Does the IAF emphasize close-in dogfighting because it is considered a likely scenario in a defense of Israel? And because defeat is catastrophic? 2) US Naval aviators are generally considered better than their Air Force conterparts. Part of this is psychological, because the results of failure are so much higher in the navy. It is, after all, a lot easier to sink an aircraft carrier than an air force base. Perhaps the IAF has some of this same psychology working for them. 3) One thing that has not been mentioned is the aircraft sortie rate. This is a function of both the number of aircraft and turn-around time between missions. The IAF is better at generating sorties than the US. In fact, they claim to be able to generate more missions from their smaller inventory of aircraft than the US Air Force can with its larger inventory of aircraft.

Sam is a funny boy. The incident in which the USMC captain "halted" an IDF tank column outside Beirut had everything to do with international relations and nothing to do with military affairs. The Marine officer was overzealous, and the Israelis certainly weren't going to run over an ally, even if in this case he was acting like an irresponsible fool. So, I fail to see how this proves anything at all. As for your citation from the story, once again Sam misinterprets. Scroll back and read my posting, and you'll find that everything you highlight in Sam's latest post is entirely consistent with mine. Yes, the force on force manoeouvers in which the IAF whipped the US Navy were the first instance such training had occured. And, as a result of the embarassingly lopsided results, all subsequent training exercises were conducted with joint US/Israeli teams taking on each other. Thanks, once again, for proving my point, Sam.

So how about providing a link or at least a date of that Air Force mag article. I tried their 1999 annual and couldn't find anything. HBO If I go to the Navys site and hit the carrier links, I see that in 1999 the Enterprise was in the Adriatic Sea until March when she went to the Persian gulf and was replaced in the Adriatic by the Roosevelt. TR finished the Kosovo op then trans to the Persian gulf in june went home in sept. JFK was suppose to go to the Med but was diverted to the Arabian/Persian Gulf in sept. So what carrier in the med did these planes come from? Hard for me to imagine that the US Navy would divert planes from strikes in Kosovo to do a little Force on Force with the IDF. The two MEUs in 1999, were busy with Kosovo and the earthquake assistance in Turkey. I believe Noble Shirley was either canked or scaled back that year. Yea I can see how: "For the IDF it was a first time event... (Joint training with a foreign military) proves your point. Not Yes the Marine capt refused to allow the tanks to go someplace that they were not allowed to go under the agreement that brought the MPF to Beruit.

1)American aid to Israel? How does the sum compare to American aide to Europe, through NATO, for fifty years? Chicken feed. 2)"Israel has always received aid unconditionally and 2 years before it's creation it had Britann, U.s and France gurantee it's survival. And that's just to begin with." Bzzz! Wrong. Thank you for playing. First, there was never, ever any such "guarentee" to Israel, before 1948. There was no such "guarantee" by France and/or the UK, at all. There was no American guarentee, at all, till, at the very earliest, 1973, under Nixon. Exactly WHAT exists, since then, is open to question. Several Presidents have spoken, in various ways, about "America's committment to the survival of the State of Israel". None have ever put anything in writing; at least not in the public record. None has ever made a formal committment in any form recognized in the world, diplomatically. There is no treaty. There has never been a submission of anything like a "guarantee" to Congress, for ratification. This is not a terribly difficult subject. There are forms to convey "guarantees". We have one such with NATO. It's called the "North Atlantic Treaty". What we have, with respect to Israel, is a history of about thirty years of general statements which are never made specific or put into writing. To the contrary, each Administration has very carefully AVOIDED any formal, binding committment which is in the public record. 3)"The soviet backing to Arab countries escpecially egypt compares very little to western backing for israel. The soviet Union itself made alot of effort to back arab regimes to spread communism but at the same time avoid ANY confrontation with the U.S.....so really...nothing at all..." What an exceptionally ignorant recitation of "history". And, backwards. In fact, the level at which the USSR armed Egypt, Syria, Iraq, especially, shocked most of the West. They supplied entire military establishments, on repeated occasions, army, navy, and air forces. At one point, during the 1970 War of Attrition, over the Suez Canal, they even supplied pilots to fly combat missions against the Israelis. (NATO was not at all happy at this development, initially, but were delighted, later, to receive detailed information about Soviet air combat tactics, as well as samples of hardware, which, to be strictly accurate, tended to be delivered in damaged form. Soviet military aid to the Arabs stretched all the way back to the 1950s. America supplied NOTHING to Israel before JFK, and only became a major military supplier - donation OR sale - during the Nixon years. 4)"THe brits helped zionist terrorist groups with technical assistance and arms in the 1940's " LOL. Bugs bunny had a favorite way of describing people who made comments this absurd. I'll content myself with pointing out that the UK FOUGHT all the groups which began organizing to fight for independence, rather than helping them. Indeed, consistent British policy from the 1930s through 1948 was to declare ANY Israelis who attempted to organize for self defense outlaws, EVEN DURING WW2, when the Nazi forces were only a few hundred miles to the west. Britain tried very hard to prevent Jews from obtaining weapons, organizing in any way, training, or doing anything, at all, to form military forces at any time. They were fully ready, as a matter of policy, to allow the Germans to take every last Jew in the Middle East to concentration forces rather than allow them any chance, at all, to fight them. OTOH, the British actively supported Arab militaries in several countries, including Egypt, Transjordan, and Iraq, begining before WW2, through WW2, and in the immediate postwar years. Indeed, the British built the Transjordanian Arab Legion virtually from scratch, for a long time provided it's officers, and until almost the outset of the Arab attacks of 1948, provided it's commanding officer, Sir John Glubb (Glubb Pasha).

...Israel has rceived an excess of 90 billion dollars since its creation from western countries till 1997..and receives loans and grants beyond any other country's dreams.... And your point? Oh, that’s right. The point is to show just how much the relationship between the United States and Israel is costing our 6 trillion economy. What was that about 87 BILLION dollars to Iraq over the next several years? Or the $100 billion in todays’ dollars that the Marshall Plan cost to ensure a free and economically vital Europe- just like a free and economically vital democratic country in the Middle East called Israel. On to the next cogently put point: ..THe brits helped zionist terrorist groups with technical assistance and arms in the 1940's... While those same zionist terrorist groups were waging a guerilla war against the Brits from 1946-1948? Boy, I would sure love that arrangement! Yep, and both the US and the Brits and the French refused to sell arms to Israel upon its creation – Israel had to get them from Czechoslovakia to ensure its existence. But let’s not a few errors in our history get in the way of a good rant, shall we? .. 2 years before it's creation it had Britann, U.s and France gurantee it's survival... More interesting history, since 1) how can you guarantee a country's survival before it is even created? and 2) The creation of the State of Israel was uncertain up to and during the UN vote in 1947 for partition. You can't promise survival to an entity whose even existence is questionable. More unsubstantiated BS from a rattlesnake- very apropos name, I might add. And it doesn’t look like the United States, Great Britain, nor France lifted a finger to help Israel during its war of Independence from 1947-1949. Some guarantee!! ..And as for Daemona...France oversaw the construction and TRAINING of techincal staff to operate and maintain it. .. Again, your point? - other than to bash one country over others that have had similar reactors built for them? As you say in your intro. History of Dimona; The Israeli nuclear weapons program grew out of the conviction that the Holocaust justified any measures Israel took to ensure its survival. Consequently, Israel has been actively investigating the nuclear option from its earliest days. In 1949, HEMED GIMMEL a special unit of the IDF's Science Corps, began a two-year geological survey of the Negev desert with an eye toward the discovery of uranium reserves. Although no significant sources of uranium were found, recoverable amounts were located in phosphate deposits. The program took another step forward with the creation of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) in 1952. Its chairman, Ernst David Bergmann, had long advocated an Israeli bomb as the best way to ensure "that we shall never again be led as lambs to the slaughter." Bergmann was also head of the Ministry of Defense's Research and Infrastructure Division (known by its Hebrew acronym, EMET), which had taken over the HEMED research centers (HEMED GIMMEL among them, now renamed Machon 4) as part of a reorganization. Under Bergmann, the line between the IAEC and EMET blurred to the point that Machon 4 functioned essentially as the chief laboratory for the IAEC. By 1953, Machon 4 had not only perfected a process for extracting the uranium found in the Negev, but had also developed a new method of producing heavy water, providing Israel with an indigenous capability to produce some of the most important nuclear materials. For reactor design and construction, Israel sought the assistance of France. Nuclear cooperation between the two nations dates back as far as early 1950's, when construction began on France's 40MWt heavy water reactor and a chemical reprocessing plant at Marcoule. France was a natural partner for Israel and both governments saw an independent nuclear option as a means by which they could maintain a degree of autonomy in the bipolar environment of the cold war. In the fall of 1956, France agreed to provide Israel with an 18 MWt research reactor. However, the onset of the Suez Crisis a few weeks later changed the situation dramatically. Following Egypt's closure of the Suez Canal in July, France and Britain had agreed with Israel that the latter should provoke a war with Egypt to provide the European nations with the pretext to send in their troops as peacekeepers to occupy and reopen the canal zone. In the wake of the Suez Crisis, the Soviet Union made a thinly veiled threat against the three nations. This episode not only enhanced the Israeli view that an independent nuclear capability was needed to prevent reliance on potentially unreliable allies, but also led to a sense of debt among French leaders that they had failed to fulfill commitments made to a partner. French premier Guy Mollet is even quoted as saying privately that France "owed" the bomb to Israel. On 3 October 1957, France and Israel signed a revised agreement callin

Worcester, "BUT: Israeli jet pilots have been shot down by Arab pilots; US pilots have NOT (I'm including Libyan as well as Iraqi kills)." Oh, c'mon. Don't let legitimate criticism get carried away. How many times have American pilots engaged Arab pilots? How many times have Israeli pilots engaged Arab pilots? For all the thousands of sorties flown against Iraq over the years beginning with the first Gulf War, I doubt there have been as many as fifty air to air engagements between Iraqi and American pilots. I don't recall any other instances when America fought an Arab air force, ever. Save, arguably, Libya. Once or twice at sea, in two plane elements, IIRC, plus the bombing raid, which didn't have any air to air engagments that I recall. Libya? Be serious. This is the country which couldn't defeat CHAD, for crying out loud. Might as well brag about the British advantage over Luxembourg....

"Mig 29's from old East Germany circa 1990." That would make them more modern than the British fighter force, wouldn't it?

"Only those that exhibit the potential are accepted to begin with." While the IDF, apparently, is filled with incompetents. Back in the early days of American military aviation, it was virtually impossible for an American Jew to get fighter training. This continued to be true into WW2, and, even then, it was rare. Then, lo and behold, the IDF was formed, and it turned out that Jews could fly planes and even use them to shoot down other planes. Sometime between 1948 and 1970 (the point at which the Israelis demonstrated they could not only wax Arabs, but knock Soviet pilots flying Soviet planes out of the sky just as readily), Israel seemed to figure out the trick in this whole "air force" thingie. Now, some of the claims made for the Israeli air force, just as some of the claims for the IDF, generally, are overblown. Nevertheless, they all have a solid basis of fact. The Israeli military is highly regarded by all the major Western militaries; professionals evaluating real world conditions. The Israeli air force is generally the highest rated part of the IDF. Claiming that Israel is the best military in the world is, at best, a bit overenthusiastic. Claiming it's less than very good is wrong.

"And would the IAF ever say they didn't score against Germans?" You want to chalk this all up to a bad week and start, again, from the beginning? Are you suggesting that a western military would make a claim like this, in a public forum, where the rest of the world could see if it was invented?