There were a lot of firsts in the Royal Air Force’s Exercise Cobra Warrior 2019.
The first time Israeli fighter-jets deployed for an exercise to the United Kingdom. First joint exercise of British, Israeli and German aircraft. And also the first time the IDF brought one of its mobile polling-stations to Britain, flown from Israel in a Boeing 707 “Re’em” airborne tanker, so the pilots and ground-crew on the exercise could vote in this week’s Israeli election.
The planned Israeli deployment to Britain was first reported in January in the JC.
Other than these “firsts,” the Israeli participation in Cobra Warrior, one of the RAF’s most complex annual exercises, which routinely involves aircraft crews from friendly nations, was just the natural culmination of a much closer and more open level of cooperation between the British and Israeli militaries in recent years.
Cobra Warrior is the last stage of the eight month-long RAF’s Qualified Weapons Instructor course which takes place at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. The exercise which takes place over three weeks involves pilots, drone-operators and “non-kinetic” aircrew who operate intelligence-gathering and air-control platforms and includes detailed mission-planning phases as well as multiple airborne missions.
The “guests” of the exercise were Eurofighter aircraft from Italy and Germany, and seven Israeli F-15 “Baz” air-superiority fighters from Squadron 106, based at Tel Nof airbase.
They flew in simulated air-to-air missions against the other aircraft and carried out mock ground attacks.
“We flew with the allied air-forces and lead some of the exercises ourselves,” said Brigadier-General Amnon Ein-Dar, head of the IAF’s Air Command.
“It was one of our longer and largest deployments, and a great opportunity for us to work with doctrines we are less acquainted with.”
In recent months, there have been two other instances of close-cooperation between the RAF and IAF — in June, the two air-forces carried out a joint exercise with the US Air-Force over the eastern Mediterranean.
What was unique about that exercise was it involved new F-35 “stealth” fighters from all three air-forces, Britain’s F-35B Lightnings, flying from RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus.
This summer, an RAF Typhoon fighter also landed at Ramat David airbase in northern Israel, on a simulated emergency landing, as part of RAF operations in the region.
“There was also a symbolic aspect to our participation in Cobra Warrior, and the first IAF joint exercise with the RAF on British soil,” said Brig-Gen Ein-Dar.
“Historically, the IAF was almost born from the RAF, as many of our first pilots had earlier flown with the RAF in the Second World War, our first airbases were originally RAF stations and our first aircraft were Spitfires and Mosquitoes purchased from Britain.”
