Maj. Kobi (a pseudonym) is one of the Israeli Air Force’s most skilled F-15 technicians. Despite his relatively young age, he has amassed years of experience performing complex overhauls on these aging fighter jets—aircraft that have evolved into the IAF’s strategic bombers. Recently, the Air Force’s Equipment Directorate reassigned him from routine maintenance to a series of long-term upgrade projects. What they didn’t tell him: the jets he was working on were being prepared for potential strikes against the country where he was born.
“When we told him—after the jets had already struck nuclear and ballistic missile sites in Iran—his eyes welled up,” a senior Israeli Air Force officer recalled. “Two days later, he opened up and told us about his childhood in Iran—the antisemitism, the beatings he endured for being Jewish.”
Later, the unit discovered a female technician with a similar background. Like many in the technical corps, both walked the base with quiet pride. They had done the impossible: preparing decades-old jets and helicopters—some 40 to 60 years old—for what would become the most distant, complex, and dangerous operation the Israeli Air Force has ever carried out.