2 jets, few plans and no clue: Probe finds air force unready and in the dark on Oct. 7
Partly based on official findings, TV report shows IAF struggled to mount effective response in first hours of Hamas attack; commanders less informed than TV viewers; ‘chaos’ in war room
Hamas’s October 7 assault caught the Israeli Air Force woefully unprepared, with few aircraft at the ready and a paucity of training for a scenario of mass infiltration from Gaza, according to an investigative report Wednesday.
The examination, which the Kan public broadcaster said was partially based on the IAF’s own unpublished findings, is the latest to paint a damning picture of the military’s lack of readiness for a large coordinated attack from Gaza and its various failings as it struggled to mount a response.
The inquiry revealed flaws with the air force’s ability to collect effective real-time intelligence from the sky, problems with keeping sensitive material out of Hamas’s hands, and commanders operating with less information than Israeli news consumers, with Air Force Chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar reportedly only learning of the massacre of partygoers at the Supernova rave near Kibbutz Re’im some 10 hours after the attack began.
Questions over the seeming absence of significant Israeli aerial activity on the morning of October 7 emerged almost immediately, with many seeking to know why Israel’s vaunted air corps, equipped with some of the world’s most advanced weaponry and possessing total air superiority, were unable to slow or even stymie the low-tech Hamas attack.
A number of inquiries have been launched to examine the army’s readiness, response and decision-making, though conclusions have been released only piecemeal thus far. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has so far rejected the launch of an independent probe or state inquiry into the political leadership until after the war, now in its 12th month.
According to the Kan report, the air force was at its lowest level of readiness when Hamas terrorists started firing massive volleys of rockets into Israel at 6:30 a.m. on October 7, kicking off an unprecedented invasion that would leave some 1,200 people dead, hundreds more abducted into Gaza and the country shaken to its core.
That meant that the air force had only two fighter jets and two other planes at the ready that Saturday, which coincided with the Jewish religious holiday of Simhat Torah.
Keeping an eye on the Strip was a single surveillance drone, though nobody was at the helm to monitor its feed in real-time as thousands of Hamas-led terrorists streamed toward the suddenly porous Gaza border fence, according to the report.
Even had the air force had aircraft and pilots at the ready, the report indicated that there had been little planning for what to do in such a scenario. Once the air force did mount a response, it scrambled its planes to protect strategic sites such as offshore gas rigs, rather than send them on offensive missions near Gaza.
A senior air force officer described the scene at the branch’s underground war room while the attack unfolded as “chaos,” the disarray compounded by the fact that those in the bunker were siloed off from phones or television and reliant on information from the Israel Defense Forces’ Gaza Division, which had essentially been overrun and was barely functioning.
“What you saw on TV, we didn’t know. It’s unbelievable. Only in the afternoon, when I went up for the first time for a smoke, I opened Ynet and saw the Toyota with terrorists in Sderot,” the officer was quoted saying, referring to a widely circulated video that was one of the first to emerge from the invasion.
According to the report, Bar, the head of the air force, only learned that there was an outdoor rave under attack at 4:20 p.m., several hours after terrorists began their deadly rampage at the now infamous festival, where over 350 people were slaughtered.
A helicopter pilot who was the first to deploy to southern Israel said he was on his third sortie at around 2:30 p.m. when he was asked to provide cover to an infantry force sent to the scene of “a nature party,” marking the first time he’d heard about it.
He said he told the officer that he did not know what “nature party” was supposed to mean. “I thought he was speaking to me in code.”
Another officer quoted by Kan, in the air force’s UAV unit, said he had pushed for years for the military to plan for and conduct drills to prepare for the possible mass infiltration of Gazans into Israel, spurred by repeated demonstrations that saw thousands of Gazans mass on the border and occasionally make limited incursions into Israel.
The unnamed officer said only a single drill to prepare for the possibility was ever conducted, saying he believed commanders had only sought to “tick a checkbox” with the exercise.
“The thought that thousands of Gazan protesters on the fence would break into Israel and we would not know what to do became a nightmare that could happen at any moment for me, but the air force commanders didn’t think about it,” the officer was quoted saying.
According to Kan, the IDF only happened to lay out directives for the air force in case of a ground invasion of the country not long before the attack, and the plan was only partially implemented on October 7.
Israel’s first attempt to respond from the air came some 45 minutes after the attack began, but consisted of only a single drone which was ineffective in holding off terrorists attacking Kibbutz Netiv Ha’asara, Kan reported.
Only at 10 a.m. was a comprehensive air attack ordered to strike terrorists along the border, and it was only deployed an hour after that, according to the report. The inquiry described Hamas aiming rockets at fighter jet takeoff paths, complicating matters for aircraft attempting to take to the air. The report noted that the terror group had managed to gather sensitive intel on the air force and even drew up plans to attack an air base.
In response to the report, the IDF said it and the air force had “failed in its mission” but also said it had been able to deploy a response within hours, attacking hundreds of targets and helping evacuate many of the wounded.
It also denied that it had failed to drill for an infiltration scenario or that it had been unprepared on the morning of October 7, and said the findings of its investigation would be released to the public when finished.
The report is the latest to point to questionable decision-making and bedlam within the military that left thousands of people in southern Israel exposed in the face of brutal massacres and other atrocities that left whole communities destroyed.
An IDF internal probe into its response in Kibbutz Be’eri in July accused the air force’s elite Shaldag commando unit of poor decision-making for withdrawing from the kibbutz in the heat of battle in order to evacuate two soldiers.
Bar said in July that the air force had been at full “operational competency” ahead of the October 7 onslaught, pushing back against concerns that its readiness had been degraded by reservist pilots refusing to train in protest over the government’s planned judicial overhaul.
