Israeli Air Force

Celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2023, the Israeli Air Force has become a sophisticated and formidable power supported by highly trained personnel and a vast array of contemporary weaponry. Continually on alert in a regional hotspot, the Israeli Air Force has evolved to become the main pillar of defence for the nation.

The force currently has 402 aircraft at its disposal, including 290 fighter-bombers, 136 helicopters and 80 unmanned aerial vehicles for reconnaissance, surveillance and attack. Each year, the Air Force carries out hundreds of combat sorties and training missions to keep its personnel trained to a state of readiness and to protect its borders. The history of the force and its aircraft are detailed alongside the significant wars that have shaped the current Air Force.

Starting his career in 2005 by the means of anonymously writing articles about the history of the Iranian Air Force for Iranian websites, Babak Taghvaee soon became an aviation journalist, book author, historian and photojournalist by publishing his articles in English and German aviation magazines such as AirForces Monthly and Combat Aircraft in 2008 and 2009 respectively. He then co-authored his first book about the Iranian Air Force in 2010. In 2011, he became one of two supervisors of the Iranian Air Force’s historical research project 'Historical Identity of IRIAF' to document the history of the force and to write books about the subject. In the same year, he was invited by one of the Iranian defence companies to work as civilian innovator and advisor of the Iranian Air Force’s aircraft upgrade projects while he was a student in two Iranian universities (as well as a journalist for several Iranian aviation magazines). Since 2013, he has written almost 100 articles, news reports and three books about the Iranian civil and military aviation industries and the Russian and Ukrainian Air Forces, as well as the air war against the ISIL in the British, French, Greek and Russian world’s leading military aviation magazines while he was living in exile.