Samenvatting

The author compiled what became public of Israels air force activities, raising the question of its effectiveness. Of course, Hezbollah was no match for air superiority, but fired rockets at Israel from an extensive network of tunnels and subterranean bunkers and shelters. In this conflict the added value of the air force was to support ground forces and being able to eliminate the missile threat as much a possible by precision bombings of launching installations within an extremely short period of time after launch. The critical question in this asymmetric duel is how many other western air forces would be able to do that. It also prompts the feeling that for this kind of conflicts western public opinion and politics could expect too much from its high-tech air forces, so much advertised in popular literature and documentaries still depicting the Cold War and 1991 Gulf War .