News of Washington’s approval of a future sale of F-35 stealth fighter jets to Saudi Arabia last month has reignited long-standing fears within Israel’s defense establishment over the fragility of its US-guaranteed qualitative military edge.

The concerns surfaced as the Israeli Air Force submitted a formal position paper to political leaders, warning that Israel’s air superiority could be eroded if neighboring states acquire the jet, considered the world’s most advanced fighter aircraft.

US President Donald Trump confirmed ahead of a visit by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that the US would move ahead with the sale of up to 48 of the fighter jets, worth billions of dollars, as part of a broader package that also saw Riyadh designated a major non-NATO ally and sign a separate civil nuclear agreement with Washington.

The sale still requires congressional approval, and delivery of the planes is not expected for several years — assuming it moves forward at all. But the announcement was enough to jolt Jerusalem. On its face, the sale would seem to be a blow to the US commitment to Israel’s qualitative military edge, or QME, meant to keep the Israel Defense Forces a step ahead of other Middle Eastern militaries that could threaten it.

Israeli officials have nonetheless attempted to project calm.

“The United States and Israel have a long-standing understanding that Israel maintains the qualitative edge when it comes to its defense,” government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian told reporters after the sale announcement. “That has been true yesterday, that has been true today, and the prime minister believes that will be true tomorrow.”

Indeed, there are reasons to believe that the sale might not be the death knell to the QME that it seems. But experts warn that that there are other reasons for Israel to be concerned over the deal, including the fact that the planes will be going to a country that has not established ties with Israel, rather than being used, as was previously expected, to leverage normalization.

Part of the anxiety stems from the groundbreaking nature of the aircraft itself.

“The F-35 is the best fighter aircraft in the world,” US Air Force Gen. (ret.) Charles Wald, former commander of US Central Command Air Forces, told The Times of Israel. “Mainly because of the avionics and computing power it has.”

The jet’s avionics run on more than 25 million lines of computer code — far beyond the 1-2 million typical of Israel’s other fighter platforms — enabling targets to be detected and tracked via the advanced AN/APG-81 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar.

The system outperforms earlier radars by combining long-range detection, high-resolution mapping, and electronic warfare tools into a single sensor, allowing the jet to spot hidden or fast-moving threats and instantly share that data with other aircraft.

Wald compared the plane to a compact version of an AWACS, the lumbering command-and-control aircraft that scan for threats and direct missions.

While the........

© The Times of Israel