Israeli F-35s give China something to think about

Noted analyst, Rebecca Grant, says an Israeli F-35I which shot down what’s believed to be a Houthi cruise missile has set a precedent which is “bad news” for China.

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) released a video of the shoot down (which apparently took place in late October) in an early November post on X (formerly Twitter). While the IAF did not provide details about location of the intercept and the number of F-35I “Adirs” (Israel’s name for the F-35) involved, it did indicate that “jets from the Adir formation” had intercepted a cruise missile in the time period wherein the shoot down reportedly occurred.

There was no detail on the type of cruise missile the F-35s intercepted but it was likely a variant of the family of Quds cruise missiles supplied to the Houthis by Iran. I wrote about the variety of missiles in the Houthi arsenal in a previous piece which noted the possibility that a Quds 4 guided cruise missile or a recently revealed Iranian-sourced Paveh guided cruise missile could have been the target.

Speculation based on the video above has pegged the interceptor missile as an infrared-guided Raytheon AIM-9X Sidewinder. Both the AIM-9X and the radar-guided AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile (AMRAAM) could have done the job and they are carried by IAF F-15Is and F-16Is as well as F-35Is.

Regardless of the particulars, the IAF’s success in downing a cruise missile with its Adirs may have Chinese military analysts and planners scratching their heads. Grant noted that China closely watches U.S. military operations and technology as well as the performance of U.S. supplied systems in use by American allies and arms customers.

When they succeed, particularly in blunting a cruise missile not unlike the many cruise missiles in the inventory of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), they complicate China’s carefully crafted A2AD strategy.

“That’s the game,” Grant affirms, “to make sure that Xi Jinping, his friends and advisors don’t think anything in the Pacific is a pushover. To me, this [shootdown] says, hey, if China is thinking about doing area air defense over the Pacific, this is a skill set of the F-35 that should make them pay attention. It means they have some missiles and some [missile] profiles that could be particularly vulnerable to interception.”

Grant adds that the Israeli action underscores some of the claims made for the F-35’s capabilities - the tracking power of its electro-optical and infrared systems and the capacity of the jet’s sensors to potentially pass linked targeting data to other shooter platforms like ship-based RIM-161 Standard-Missile (SM-3) interceptors, ship or land-based AEGIS-guided SM-6 interceptors, air to air missile carrying F-15s, F-16s, F/A-18E/Fs, F-22s, and Patriot or Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries.

However, a counter argument may be made that China’s volume of available cruise missiles, if fired in large, successive salvos could simply overwhelm U.S. military air defenses, F-35s notwithstanding. They could also exhaust American forces’ counterbattery (i.e. interceptor munitions). With such a strategy in mind, Chinese tacticians may see the F-35 as less of an obstacle.

“I suspect [China] thinks through a number of scenarios,” Grant opines. “One may be employing [a barrage] of missile salvos but others as well. I go back to the idea of an integrated air defense. The Israeli F-35s that made the shoot down were part of a larger integrated network. You’ll see something similar in the Pacific if there is a valuable area, Taiwan, Guam, a carrier strike group, to defend.”

Indeed, Israel emphasized an air defense network that took down other cruise missiles during the same period with its Arrow-3 and other interceptor systems. F-35s could not only leverage the developing cooperative engagement capability referred to above but the sales success of the aircraft and the numbers of Lightning IIs acquired by regional U.S. allies like Japan, Australia, South Korea and Singapore.

“When you put something like the F-35 into the mix I think it does alter the tactical problem for China. Every little bit that we can do to alter it is good. That, to me, is the significance of the [Israeli shoot down],” Grant says.

The complication that cruise missile-shooting F-35s bring to the tactical table also has a strategic dimension. Their presence and capabilities may force China to develop countermeasures. China’s research into and claimed fielding of hypersonic missiles (its DF-ZF hypersonic anti-ship missile) arguably is an early response. But it is a very costly one.

Those who remember the Reagan-era defense build-up of the 1980s and the pressure it placed on Soviet resources to respond can see the potential strain that effective F-35 missile interceptors could place on China’s resource allocation and economy.

“That’s exactly it,” Grant agrees. “You have to take a lot of steps from the F-35 versus the Houthi missile to get to the implications for China but complicating its [tactical and strategic] problems is the kind of thing that makes it more difficult.”

The “bad news” for China may simply be that the Israeli shoot down worked. The Adirs were likely cued to the missile by Israeli integrated defenses, saw the missile, tracked it and took it out. As straightforward as the proposition sounds, it is very difficult to do. China, on the other hand, has not proven that its stuff works in combat.

“The Israeli F-35s could have missed,” Grant observes, “but [the IAF] did a super job in this engagement... That is a confidence-builder and for anyone operating the F-35 against modern threats, it’s really good news.”