For educational purposes
In the 1982 Lebanon War, Israeli F-15s were credited with 41 Syrian aircraft destroyed (23 MiG-21s and 17 MiG-23s, and one Aérospatiale SA.342L Gazelle helicopter).
In the 1982 Lebanon War, Israeli F-15s were credited with 41 Syrian aircraft destroyed (23 MiG-21s and 17 MiG-23s, and one Aérospatiale SA.342L Gazelle helicopter).
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00:30You
01:00The F-15 Eagle is the tip of the spear that defends the tiny nation of Israel.
01:12Eighty Eagles serve in the Israeli Air Force, and the pilots who fly them average more sorties
01:17than any other combat aviators in the world.
01:22They are renowned for being brazen and callous.
01:26It is for good reason.
01:27Upon the wings of these aircraft and the shoulders of these men lies the fate of the nation.
01:36They are the vanguard of a country that is smaller than 46 of the 50 states,
01:43a country that has fought six wars of survival over the past 40 years.
01:51Every Israeli citizen must serve in the military.
01:56All are aware of being surrounded by nations that in times past
02:00have vowed to wipe their homeland off the face of the earth.
02:06There is no depth and distance from airbases in Israel,
02:12and any target to the border is a question of minutes when considering flying a fighter aircraft.
02:21We have to bear in mind that it's also the other way around.
02:26A hostile enemy aircraft, which will take off from Damascus, from Amman, even from H-3.
02:33Once it reaches close to our borders and penetrates,
02:36it's a question of minutes, sometimes seconds even.
02:43Enemy jets can depart airbases in Cairo and in less than three minutes cross the Israeli border.
02:50From Damascus, they can do so in two minutes, and from Amman, Jordan, just 45 seconds.
03:02Every inch of land here has a settlement, a village, a town, and we have to defend the population.
03:09Therefore, we prefer, if it's possible, to fight all the wars outside the Israeli borders.
03:15That's the philosophy, and until today, we kept to that.
03:26This strategy means that Israeli airbases are considered the front line of the nation's defense.
03:33Their most potent weapon of survival is the American-made F-15.
03:38This $60 million air superiority fighter is the best the world has ever seen.
03:45In the past 20 years, Israeli pilots flying F-15 Eagles have racked up over 50 enemy kills to zero losses of their own.
03:57No other pilot-aircraft coupling in modern history can even approach this.
04:03Financial constraints and the confines of Middle East airspace create a unique set of parameters for IAF warplanes.
04:11Israeli F-15 pilots do not rely on BVR, or Beyond Visual Range technology.
04:18Unlike American pilots, who are taught to destroy the enemy at the greatest range possible,
04:24Israeli pilots do not have the luxury of distance.
04:27Instead, they are taught they must obtain visual contact before engaging.
04:35Normally, if you don't build an aircraft in your own country according with your specific needs,
04:42then you get something that you pay for, and it really was designed for somebody else's need.
04:49Even if it's a very advanced aircraft for a very advanced country,
04:53there are specific problems that you have to solve by yourself.
05:00Less sophistication means greater reliability,
05:03something prized by the budget-strapped Israelis.
05:06Because of this, the IAF jet is really just a stripped-down version of the American F-15.
05:15The size of a World War II bomber, it is nearly a third titanium.
05:20Despite its bulk, the F-15 is one of the fastest combat aircraft ever built.
05:26With two Pratt & Whitney F-100 engines, the jet boasts a combined thrust of nearly 60,000 pounds
05:34and a top speed of 1,700 miles an hour.
05:41When on full afterburner, the Eagle consumes nearly 900 pounds of fuel a minute.
05:51F-15s first came to Israel in 1976,
05:54and because they arrived on the Sabbath, the government that bought them actually fell.
06:00When the first pilots were finally assigned to fly them, the weight of their obligation was clear.
06:07I remember when the first team came back from the United States.
06:11There was a new hospital building at that time in Haifa,
06:17and the cost of this building was $25 million, the same price of an F-15 aircraft at that time.
06:25I remember that this point really was in my mind during the first year as an F-15 pilot,
06:33knowing that I'm driving in hospital.
06:38Israeli fighter pilots are arguably the best in the world.
06:42They are, without question, the most battle-hardened.
06:46Between 1966 and 1991, they suffered less than 25 losses to 631 air combat victories,
06:56victories over pilots from nearly every Arab nation, from the Soviet Union and even Korea.
07:05In Israeli culture, they are revered as the guardians of the realm,
07:09and from an early age, most young men dream of joining their ranks.
07:15People are the most valuable asset of any organization.
07:21It has been said that human beings are the most sophisticated piece of machinery ever produced
07:30by an unskilled, by very willing labor force,
07:34but still, it takes 18 years to bring one up to scratch,
07:39and it takes another five years to make him a good fighter pilot.
07:43And that's your most valued asset.
07:46Although it's not very expensive to make, but it's very expensive to keep.
07:57By American standards, they are extremely young.
08:02They go into the academy at the tender age of 18,
08:05and by their early 20s, they will be flying a $60 million warplane.
08:10Of the hundreds who begin air cadet training, only a dozen will ever graduate.
08:18We used to educate our pilot that anytime you meet with an enemy pilot,
08:27you should consider him as the best pilot in the world.
08:31No matter who he is, where he comes from, what is his capability,
08:35you should consider him as the best in the world.
08:38That's one thing.
08:39And the other thing is, look around.
08:42The one whom you don't see is the one who might kill you.
08:49You have to have some level of fear.
08:52I don't know if the word fear is the right definition, but you have to worry a little bit.
08:58When I trained young pilots, I used to tell them,
09:01listen, if you want to survive as a fighter pilot,
09:05it's always good to be a little bit paranoid.
09:08A little bit, not too much.
09:10Because otherwise, if you have no fear at all,
09:12you might, during training time, take a higher risk.
09:21Paranoia in the state of Israel runs deep.
09:24Security concerns are far greater,
09:26and precautions much more extreme than in the United States Air Force.
09:31Because of this, it is forbidden to show the face of an active Israeli Air Force pilot on camera.
09:38They are trained in Western tactics, flying Western planes.
09:42Perhaps even more than American pilots,
09:45they are taught the value of rugged discipline
09:47in tandem with the merits of innovation and initiative.
09:53We never give our pilots precise instructions
10:01how to act in battle.
10:03We give the general idea.
10:05We direct them to the combat zone.
10:07And once they acquire the target with their radars,
10:10they are free to decide how to attack the target.
10:13Freedom of choice and freedom of decision,
10:15that's the name of the game.
10:17And so we train our pilots.
10:20After three years of intense training,
10:23after seeing nine out of ten of their classmates wash out,
10:27they finally graduate.
10:29From this select group of young men
10:31will arise future generals of the Air Force and leaders of the state.
10:36But only a few will enter the elite ranks of the most privileged class in Israel,
10:41the F-15 fighter squadrons of the IAF.
10:50The McDonnell Douglas aircraft they hope to fly is state of the art.
10:54With a combat range of 1,200 miles and a ceiling of 65,000 feet,
11:00the Eagle can travel at two and a half times the speed of sound.
11:05When it comes to the F-15, I would say, I have like,
11:13if with the F-4, I have more like memories,
11:15some friends who never got back from the battlefield and things like that.
11:20It comes to the F-15 and everything is glory and success and victory without any failures.
11:28And, you know, like you jump into an airplane,
11:31by the time you're in the airplane, you take off,
11:34you know that at the area where you are, you have superiority.
11:39And again, it's a connection between you and the airplane.
11:42You come from a group of fighters which considered as the best,
11:46and I think that they are good.
11:48And you fly the airplane, which is the best in the world.
11:50And it's a good teaming all together.
11:53So if I go by an F-15, I smile and I think, wow, this was a good teaming.
11:59And if I go by an F-4, I think, wow, this was a tough mission.
12:07The F-15 is Israel's premier aerial platform.
12:11But its workhorse is the F-4 Phantom.
12:15Phantoms arrived in the Middle East in 1969
12:18and first saw combat fighting Egyptian MiGs over the Sinai
12:22in the war of attrition that lasted from 1969 to 1970.
12:29In July of 1970, Phantoms took part in one of the most renowned engagements of that war.
12:38Ten years later, during peace talks in Washington, D.C.,
12:42the Israelis listened as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak,
12:46himself a former MiG pilot,
12:48reminisced about the air battle in which Soviet MiG-21 advisors,
12:53who had criticized their Egyptian students,
12:56were finally allowed to fly against the Israelis.
13:02Mr. Mubarak is telling us, look, we let them fly,
13:07and one day you shot down five Russians over southern Egypt,
13:13which is true.
13:14This is what we did.
13:18The same evening,
13:20all the bases of the Egyptian Air Force in the barracks,
13:25the pilots were celebrating the victory of the Israelis over the Egyptians.
13:28And I'm talking about the war of attrition.
13:34Egyptian benevolence and Israeli air superiority would not last long.
13:39By 1973, leaders in Cairo were preparing new plans
13:43and new weapons for the final battle.
13:45One that would wipe out a third of the Israeli Air Force
13:48and nearly crush the life out of the Jewish state.
13:56By the spring of 1980, it is a daily event.
14:00F-15 Eagles patrol the nation's northern border
14:03to stand vigil against marauding Syrian warplanes.
14:15But the frontier stretches for miles,
14:17and the settlements along it are never totally immune to attack.
14:23Soon, war calls once again on the nation of Israel.
14:29This time, the focus is on the northern border with Lebanon.
14:36Here, Palestinian guerrillas, intent on regaining their homeland,
14:40have attacked several kibbutzim on the frontier.
14:45In April of 1980, PLO terror squads make their way onto the Mizgav armed kibbutz.
15:15Here, several children are held hostage and one is subsequently killed.
15:24This is followed by months of rocket attacks that by June of 1982
15:30finally pushed the Israeli government to launch an invasion
15:34some had seen coming for over a year.
15:37In 1981, there was a spate of attacks by the PLO from southern Lebanon on northern Israel.
15:48One element or one result of those attacks was something that the Israeli military censor
15:53would not allow to be published and would not allow foreign correspondents to report.
15:59And that was that Israelis were fleeing from the northern town of Metula
16:05because it was too dangerous to live there.
16:07In the Israeli ideology, which existed since the building of the state,
16:14the notion that Jews would retreat from territory they had settled
16:19was simply anathema and unacceptable.
16:23Initially, the war in Lebanon is fought almost entirely
16:26between Israeli ground troops and PLO militia.
16:35The Israeli warplanes are limited to air-to-ground assaults
16:41which they engage in with ferocious determination.
16:49F-4s, Skyhawks, and F-16s take on the bulk of the work
16:53as F-15s fly MiG cap missions overhead.
16:56Syria occupies nearly half of Lebanon.
17:04At first, they warily accept Israel's claim that the invasion is meant to carve out
17:09a 40-mile buffer zone in southern Lebanon and nothing more.
17:19PLO defenses are spirited but hopelessly outgunned and soon swept away.
17:25As Israeli columns close in on the Beirut-Damascus highway,
17:28the true objectives of the invasion are revealed.
17:32Not only to destroy the PLO, but also establish a Christian puppet state in Lebanon,
17:38eliminating Syria as a power broker in the region.
17:42Leaders in Damascus find it an intolerable proposition.
17:49Once Israeli forces pass beyond the 40-mile security zone,
17:54F-15 pilots prepare themselves for the coming conflict with Syria
17:58that many now see as inevitable.
18:06Both sides prepare for an aerial showdown.
18:10The world tenses in the face of a volatile Middle East brushfire.
18:17The full-scale war between a Soviet client state and an American ally
18:21in such a critical region could easily spread.
18:28For young Israeli pilots, there is no such apprehension.
18:32It is a moment they've waited for all of their lives.
18:39You're making so much training and you invest so much money and so much effort
18:46and I don't know if it's right to make the comparison,
18:48but in some sense it's like Olympics.
18:51You want to gain the medal, the gold medal, not the silver medal and not the bronze medal.
18:57And that's the way we trained our pilot and that's the way that they behave.
19:04When Syrian armor crashes into lead Israeli forces in the Beqaa Valley,
19:08the need for IAF air-to-ground support becomes acute.
19:11Two columns of Israeli troops find themselves on the verge of being wiped out.
19:22Suddenly, Air Force commanders face a repeat of the Sinai in 1973.
19:29Throughout the Beqaa Valley, the Syrians have placed advanced surface-to-air missile batteries
19:34similar to those that decimated the IAF nearly 10 years ago.
19:40We couldn't have done this under the umbrella of the SAM batteries because,
19:44again, we would have lost many aircraft.
19:47So there was no choice but to put a preemptive attack against those SAM batteries,
19:52which was launched on Wednesday afternoon after a morning of collecting intelligence data
20:00and updating the exact location of those SAM batteries, which were in the Beqaa Valley.
20:06But the past decade has provided the Israelis with many answers to the missile dilemma.
20:11Technologies and tactics have been devised that will hopefully counter the SAM threat.
20:17A ground-to-air missile is a very soft target.
20:20Once you know where it is, you track it in real time and you approach it and you kill it like a snake.
20:28Now, for that, you need that type of intelligence.
20:30You need real-time intelligence.
20:32I would say the array of weaponry that was developed between 1973 and 1982
20:39has brought into play so many anti-missile weapons that if you ask anybody if he wants to be a missile
20:48battery commander, when all is portrayed to him, what is waiting for him,
20:53nobody would want to be a missile battery commander.
20:56Ourselves, this triggered from the aircraft side, are formidable.
21:02But to say that the missile has bent the wing of an attack aircraft, far from it, not in my book.
21:13The Israelis have engineered an ingenious but simple tactical solution.
21:20Dozens of drones will proceed to the target.
21:23Dozens of drones will precede IF Phantoms over the valley, decoys for the hunters that will follow.
21:33As enemy SAM sites light up to track what they think are Israeli warplanes,
21:37Phantoms will pop up over the mountains to fire anti-radiation missiles.
21:42These will then home in on the illuminated SAM radar sites.
21:53E2C Hawkeyes provide Air Force commanders with a detailed real-time radar view of the region.
22:00Every move the Syrians make will be monitored as it happens.
22:05Hawkeyes enable Israeli intelligence to reach well into Syria.
22:10In Air Force, it's very easy. Whenever you are starting your engines in any airfield in Syria
22:16and you start to communicate with the tower, we can tell in Israel who is speaking to whom
22:22and when he's going to take off.
22:37With Eagles controlling the sky and Phantoms the ground,
22:41IAF commanders orchestrate an integrated air battle that leaves the enemy bewildered.
22:47It is the antithesis of 1973.
22:50In less than an hour, the Syrian air defense umbrella is virtually annihilated.
22:56We attacked the SAM batteries themselves. They were found exactly where we thought they would be
23:02and they didn't move because they were very confused.
23:04I think it was a great surprise for them.
23:08Before an hour has passed, they were destroyed.
23:12We destroyed about 13 batteries and we didn't lose one aircraft in that attack.
23:21The Syrians were launching interceptors to try and avoid the attacks which we had,
23:30not only on the SAM batteries, but on the close air support for the ground forces.
23:36And they did it in a panic in some way because they feel that they lost
23:41the defense of SAM batteries and now they have to launch the interceptors.
23:45For the Israelis, it is a classic engagement.
23:48Here, the F-15 Eagle comes into its own.
23:52Here, aerial combat demands near-surgical precision.
23:56Pilots dare not venture into Syrian or Jordanian airspace for fear of widening the war.
24:03And in a fighter jet twisting and turning at Mach 2,
24:07this means that time and space are compressed to nearly impossible dimensions.
24:12If you measure the time and distances, meaning that sometimes you get an order
24:18to engage, to shut down airplanes, and to get back,
24:23and all together I would say it's no more than 90 seconds or two minutes.
24:29And one should try to imagine what does it mean.
24:33You have to get your formation organized.
24:36You have to collect all the information that you have.
24:40You have to have in mind the aerial picture before you get in.
24:48You have to make sure that you look around to the ground and you're not being shot by enemies.
24:53And then you're all in.
24:54And then you have to intercept the airplanes.
24:56And then you have to see them visually.
24:59And then you have to make some setup for the engagement.
25:03Do your job within a couple of seconds and press back home.
25:07As the Syrians launch more and more planes,
25:10it becomes clear that this will be an aerial engagement of great proportion.
25:22Soon, over 150 aircraft are turning in the skies over Lebanon.
25:27One third of these are F-15 Eagles.
25:31It is the largest air battle ever witnessed in the Middle East.
25:36Sending young pilots to air combat activities is one of the duties of a commander.
25:44And you have to have some inner strength to do it.
25:48And you have to have knowledge of them because as a commander you fly with them.
25:54I knew them better than his mother from some point of view.
25:58So it's much easier to send them to combat activities because you have combat experience.
26:04Like the RAF pilots in the Battle of Britain,
26:08they fight with the tenacity of those who know that if they fail,
26:12their homes and families could well pay the price.
26:15For many, memories of the 73 SAM massacre still linger.
26:23Every human being is afraid.
26:25If anyone tells you that he is not afraid, ever, don't believe him.
26:30Not always I was afraid. Always.
26:33But the difference between one man to another is your ability to overcome your fear.
26:43What you have to do, slow down, reconsider yourself in this battlefield.
26:50Regain your power, your energy, your spirit and you can overcome.
26:54If you can't, you shouldn't be a pilot.
26:56The dogfights continue for two days.
26:59The frantic pace of combat eases only at night.
27:02As the first 48 hours draw to a close,
27:05it becomes apparent that the Eagle has engineered a route of historic significance.
27:10The Israelis show no mercy to their Syrian adversaries.
27:14In the Middle East, chivalry is a rare commodity that most simply cannot afford.
27:21In just two days, over 40 Syrian aircraft fall to Israeli F-15s.
27:26Many of these kills are MiG-23 Flaggers,
27:29some of the fastest Soviet fighters ever built.
27:40The next day, the Israeli F-15s enter the battlefield.
27:45It is the most one-sided aerial victory in history.
27:49In less than a week, the Syrian Air Force is demolished.
27:52The wreckage of nearly 100 Arab jets lies strewn across the Bekaa Valley.
27:58The missile has not bent the wing of the fighter
28:01and never again would the IAF's ability to survive the Arab missile umbrella come into question.
28:08Did you see the plane crash?
28:09Of course. Two planes are shot here.
28:12And some soldiers told me that's a Syrian one.
28:15Syrian plane was shot down?
28:16Yeah.
28:19But the euphoria is short-lived.
28:22Forty miles to the west, Israeli forces press home their assault on Beirut.
28:31The Israeli air force is forced to retreat.
28:35What they do, the public begins to question a war
28:39that many see as not one of survival but one of choice.
28:44The difficulties came a little later in refugee camps
28:48where there were Palestinian guerrillas
28:51and the Israelis had to go in and do close-in combat at times
28:56with children all over the place.
28:58And it was a very difficult, painful process.
29:04They'd come home and they would talk about what they had gone through
29:08and how they had taken their APCs or their tanks into refugee camps
29:13and there were these children and soldiers started talking about
29:16seeing this kid who looked like his own son
29:20and this kind of war that involves civilians and civilian casualties
29:25was not what he had signed up for.
29:29Soon, discontent spreads to the most elite of the Israeli military,
29:34the pilots of the IAF.
29:37They were fighting in situations where civilians were all around.
29:41There was nothing antiseptic about this.
29:43Sometimes a war can be very mechanical these days with modern weapons.
29:48Even pilots who run the most sophisticated machines
29:54would sometimes drop their bombs in the sea instead of on their targets
30:00because they didn't believe either they couldn't find their targets
30:04or they questioned whether their targets really had military value.
30:09It had, in effect, civil disobedience in the military.
30:13That's quite something.
30:19Never before had pilots questioned the morality of their cause.
30:23In the Air Force, strict discipline and rigid professionalism are a way of life.
30:28But outside of Beirut, events unfold that give the men of the IAF
30:33and the entire nation of Israel reason for doubt.
30:39In two refugee camps near Beirut, called Sabra and Shatila,
30:45over 2,500 Palestinians, mostly old men, women and children,
30:50are massacred by Christian Falangist militia.
30:54They are let in by the Israeli soldiers serving in the camp.
30:59They are not allowed to leave.
31:03How did you let these people come in here?
31:06If you are traveling here in Beirut,
31:10you know that it is a very complicated task
31:16and there is no way that you can block all the roads and all the narrow streets.
31:22You have to be very careful.
31:26Despite early protests of ignorance,
31:29it soon becomes clear that the Israelis stood by for hours
31:33and turned deaf ears to the shooting and cries of the victims.
31:37In the Knesset, the seams of Israeli society begin to burst.
31:42As word of the massacre spreads,
31:44joy inspired by the Air Force victory over the Syrians gives way to outrage.
31:52Two months after the invasion, the PLO evacuates Beirut.
31:56World opinion is that the PLO is a terrorist organization.
32:00The PLO is a terrorist organization.
32:03The PLO is a terrorist organization.
32:06The PLO is a terrorist organization.
32:09The PLO evacuates Beirut.
32:12World opinion never again looks at Israel in the same light.
32:16Even to their allies, the Israelis have gone from oppressed to oppressor.
32:22Despite having destroyed an enemy Air Force in just days,
32:26many view the debacle in Lebanon as anything but victory.
32:31The question, who won the war in Lebanon,
32:35it's really a difficult question because sometimes the winners lost as well.
32:42We won only on the tactical operational level, not strategically.
32:56The pain and introspection brought about by the events of 1982 linger.
33:02Here, outside of Jerusalem, lie the remains of over 1,100 airmen lost in battle since 1948.
33:11It is often said that the defeat of the Israeli Air Force would bring the death of the nation.
33:17If so, the deaths of these men have brought the nation life.
33:24But the challenges they faced and solutions they found between 1973 and 1982
33:31would have repercussions far beyond the state of Israel.
33:3515,000 Soviet built SAM missiles.
33:39The tactics they devised stem primarily from the Israeli experiences of 1973 and 1982.
33:48After 1982, we were asked by the American military forces and mainly the American Air Force
33:56to come and brief the officers of the U.S. Air Force about the way the war in the Bekaa Valley went,
34:06what worked and what didn't work, what are the lessons that we learned from that war.
34:12The Bekaa Valley campaign was something that a lot of us had studied pretty carefully
34:17and in fact that we were able to draw some lessons and some ideas directly out of the Bekaa operations
34:23and apply them to the Gulf War situation.
34:25It became quite clear that one of the major reasons for the very significant Israeli successes
34:31was that the Israelis had managed to destroy the ability of the Syrians to command their forces and to control them.
34:40Technological advances in the F-15 and other aircraft
34:44enabled the Americans to not only borrow from the Israeli experience, but to expand on it.
34:50145 Eagles will see action in the Gulf.
34:58They will take into battle the same countermeasures used by the Israelis against the Syrian missiles.
35:04They will take into battle the same countermeasures used by the Israelis against the Syrian missile threat,
35:10chaff and flares, and as the Israelis had over the Bekaa Valley,
35:15the Americans will employ a fleet of drones in attacking Iraqi defenses around Baghdad.
35:21This time, however, the drones will follow an initial wave of stealth aircraft
35:26meant to destroy key Iraqi air defense nodes without being detected.
35:32After the initial F-117 strikes went through, of course, all the Iraqi gunners reported for work
35:39because the bombs were going off.
35:41And so now they got on their radars and turned on their SAM radars and their gun radars and they were all searching.
35:46The next thing that came through was Puba's party.
35:50It was a bunch of targets, not aircraft, that looked like, targets that looked like aircraft.
35:56They immediately shot everyone up and down and dutifully reported so.
36:00But in the process, they absorbed almost 100 anti-radiation missiles going into their radars.
36:06We put fear into the heart of the Iraqi air defenders at that moment,
36:11and it never left them for the rest of the war.
36:23Just as important as stealth and drones,
36:26the decade following the Bakar engagement saw terrific advances made in PGMs, or Precision Guided Munitions.
36:37By 1991, PGMs reached a level of sophistication that enables them to paralyze Saddam Hussein's air defenses
36:45on the very first night of war.
36:49In World War II, had we wanted to have a 90% probability of putting a single bomb in, say, in this room,
36:55which is, let's say it's about a 60 by 100 foot room,
36:58and had we been using B-17s with the same accuracy that they had in the campaign against Germany,
37:03we would have had to have dropped 9,000 bombs, which would have meant putting 10,000 men at risk.
37:10So, what that meant in World War II, if we were using that kind of technology,
37:15is that we do not try to put a bomb in this room.
37:19Conversely, in the Gulf War, I can send one B-17 that will drop one of its two bombs with one man at risk,
37:26and have a 90% probability that the bomb will not only fall in this room,
37:29but probably will fall between the two of us, if, in fact, that's what we want to do.
37:36Delivering PGMs is a task not limited to the stealth fighter.
37:43Just one week into the war, another F-15 arrives on the scene.
37:47It is the F-15E Strike Eagle.
37:50Unlike the dogfighting C model, this two-seater specializes in air-to-ground attack.
37:57By January 22nd, lantern targeting pods arrive in the Gulf that enable the 48E models in Desert Storm
38:04to deliver laser-guided munitions.
38:10The weapons information officer pinpoints the target with a laser beam.
38:14Once the 2,000-pound PGM is released, it rides the beam onto target,
38:20even after the pilot has turned to leave the area.
38:25With their missile umbrella destroyed, the Iraqis react just as their Syrian and Egyptian counterparts had.
38:32Rather than grant coalition forces control of the air, they send interceptors out to do battle.
38:38These fare no better than their predecessors over the Sinai and the Mekah Valley.
38:44When Iraqi pilots attempt to oppose American F-15s, they die with alarming regularity.
38:53The Eagle's APG-63 radar enables pilots to tell whether incoming MiGs carry drop tanks or weapons from nearly 30 miles away.
39:03In just days, dogfighting specialist F-15Cs sweep the skies of all Iraqi fighters in the region.
39:13I think that right, as of right now, that the F-15 record from Bakaa through the Gulf War
39:19and wherever else that it may have been used is something like 100, 120 enemy airplanes shot down with zero losses.
39:27There's nothing comparable in aviation history on the air-to-air side to the F-15.
39:32It simply is superior to anything else that's out there.
39:41By war's end, American F-15Cs tally 34 MiG kills to no losses of their own.
39:49When enemy aircraft seek haven in hardened shelters below, F-15Es shatter them with laser-guided bombs.
40:04Iraq, the fourth largest military in the world, collapses beneath the massive weight of American air power.
40:13It is one of the most stunning combat aviation victories of all time.
40:21A victory that owes homage to the air force of a tiny nation that because of war machines like the F-15
40:29may soon find security for the first time in its brief and violent history.
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