Israel's capacity to present American war planners with a ready-made database of thousands of Iranian targets - complete with matched munitions for each - did not emerge overnight. It is the product of a decades-long evolution that began with a near-disaster in 1973 and accelerated after an embarrassing shortfall in 2006.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing The Economist, the chain of events started in the Yom Kippur War, when Israeli planes were devastated by Soviet-made air defenses. That prompted the Israeli Air Force to begin systematically collecting and fusing data on enemy surface-to-air missiles, a capability that contributed to a decisive victory against Syria in 1982.
The next turning point came during the 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon. As fighting dragged on for 34 days, Israeli generals grew desperate. "The bank has run out of targets," they complained - a moment that exposed a critical gap in the country's intelligence infrastructure.
Amos Yadlin, then commander of military intelligence, responded by adapting the data-fusion methods originally developed for tracking SAM sites and expanding them to cover all potential targets. The system grew steadily more sophisticated. Eventually, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces kept a bound copy of Hamas targets at the ready, allowing him to select a retaliatory strike within minutes of a rocket launch from Gaza.
By the time preparations for the Iran campaign began, the system had matured into a full-scale industrial operation. American planners were taken aback when their Israeli counterparts arrived with a target bank containing thousands of Iranian targets: headquarters and homes of Iranian leaders, military and militia bases, missile launchers, factories and civilian infrastructure. One Israeli officer described the process simply as having been "industrialized." The question of Iranian leadership hiding in tunnels suggests the targeting challenge has only grown more complex.
Previously: From Serbia to Iran: History Shows the Real Odds of Air Campaigns Forcing Regime Change.