Israeli Air Force F-15 Eagle fighter jets flyover a beach during an airshow in Tel Aviv on April 26, 2023, to mark the 75th anniversary of the State of Israel’s creation. (Photo by Jack GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)
AFP via Getty Images
Israel’s ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, launched after the deadly Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel, has not remained confined to the coastal Palestinian enclave. In the two years since this war began, the Israeli Air Force has carried out airstrikes that have exceeded hitherto record-breaking historical precedents in both distance and lethality.
Of course, Gaza itself remains the closest—approximately a mere 25 miles “as the crow or F-16 flies,” as Israeli historian Benny Morris recently put it—and the most heavily and widely bombed territory by the IAF by far. Israeli jets don’t need any aerial refueling to reach any corner of that narrow strip and don’t face any significant enemy air defenses there.
To Israel’s near north, the IAF conducted the most extensive bombardment of its history, which saw 250 fighter jets releasing 2,000 munitions in its opening salvo, against Hezbollah in Lebanon in late September 2024. The bombardment came shortly after the covert pager operation against Hezbollah operatives. It swiftly led to the assassination of the group’s veteran leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in an enormous airstrike on his bunker in Beirut by the month’s end. Over a year later, the Iran-backed group, hitherto long considered Israel’s most powerful adversary, is still reeling from those back-to-back blows.
But Israeli jets have flown much farther than over the country’s northern and southern borders to target its adversaries. Its air force has also taken advantage of unique standoff munitions Israel developed to extend its reach.
The IAF most recently demonstrated these capabilities on September 9. On that day, Israeli F-15 and F-35 jets flying over the Red Sea launched their Israeli-made air-launched ballistic missiles at a distant target to their east. Those ALBMs across the upper atmosphere over Saudi Arabia before descending at high speed toward their target, a building in Doha, Qatar, where Hamas’ political leadership was meeting. The unprecedented strike failed to assassinate these leadership targets. But it did leave nine people, including Hamas members, dead, enraging the Qataris and other Arab Gulf states.
It’s possible that the fighters that launched that strike did not require significant support from aerial tankers, given their usage of these ALBMs. Furthermore, Israel said it chose those weapons and the launch point to avoid violating the airspaces of any other Arab Gulf state. As with ground-launched ballistic missiles, ALBMs cross through the upper atmosphere or even outer space during their flight. Consequently, those Israeli ALBMs technically went over rather than through Saudi airspace en route to their target in Doha. Had Israel chosen air-breathing cruise missiles for that strike, its fighters would’ve had to fly significantly further, possibly through Syrian and Iraqi airspace, to hit that particular target.
Interestingly, the Doha strike transpired just under 40 years after the IAF’s Operation Wooden Leg on October 1, 1985. At that time, Israeli F-15s flew the air force’s longest-ever strike at the time, approximately 1,280 miles, against the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the North African country of Tunisia. The jets refueled from aerial tankers en route to their target, which they spent six minutes bombing using GBU-15 precision-guided munitions. That strike failed to kill PLO leader Yasser Arafat. It did, however, kill approximately 50 people, including PLO members and civilian bystanders.
Tunisia was the first country the IAF targeted outside of Lebanon at the time since the June 1981 raid against Iraq’s Osirak reactor in Baghdad, codenamed Operation Opera and executed by IAF F-15s and F-16s. At six hours, the flight time for the Tunisia strike was twice as long as that of the Opera strike, although IAF fighters conducting the Iraq attack had to cross through the airspace of other countries en route to their target.
These two long-range, one-off strikes held IAF records for long-distance strikes for decades. Other notable Israeli strikes in the interim included the September 2007 strike against a clandestine nuclear reactor in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province; two unclaimed strikes in Sudan in early 2009, which coincided with the December 2008-January 2009 Cast Lead operation in Gaza; and a series of shadowy strikes against Iran-backed militia targets in Iraq in mid-2019. Of course, the IAF also routinely hit Iran-linked targets in Syria throughout the Syrian civil war, culminating in an enormous bombardment destroying what was left of Syria’s strategic arsenal after the Assad regime finally collapsed in December 2024.
Israel’s first known long-range airstrike of the post-October 7th war took place in Yemen in July 2024, after the Houthis successfully hit Tel Aviv with an explosive drone. The retaliating IAF jets flew similar distances to Wooden Leg with tanker support. Unlike Wooden Leg or, presumably, the recent Doha strike, that Yemen bombing would not prove a one-off event. Israel would repeatedly retaliate against Houthi missile and drone attacks that caused casualties or damage inside Israel. In its earlier strikes, it focused on hitting economic targets, mainly the Houthi-controlled Hodeidah port and the airport in the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital Sanaa.
Israel’s strikes against the group intensified in August and September 2025. On August 28, Israeli airstrikes on Sanaa killed several Houthi ministers, including the prime minister. On September 10, a series of Israeli strikes on Sanaa and al-Jawf province killed an estimated 35, 31 of them Houthi-affiliated journalists and media workers.
The Israeli military said the September 10 strike marked the war’s longest flight at 1,480 miles and saw the 10 attacking jets dropping 30 bombs on 15 targets. Just over two weeks later, on September 25, the IAF launched its largest Yemen strike yet, with 20 fighters dropping 65 munitions in its 19th strike on that distant country in southern Arabia.
And then there was Israel’s large-scale 12-day air campaign against Iran in June.
Operation Rising Lion saw over 200 IAF jets participating in its opening June 13 salvo, which swiftly assassinated several senior Iranian military officials in the capital, Tehran, and hit over 100 targets across the country in five waves.
Israeli jets repeatedly flew at least 930 miles each way to Iran throughout Syrian and Iraqi airspace over the war’s duration. The U.S. Air Force officially denies that it provided any in-flight refueling for Israeli jets during that enormous air campaign, meaning the IAF managed all this with its fleet of aged Boeing 707 tankers.
While the IAF used ALBMs in the operation’s initial phases, IAF jets, including non-stealthy fourth-generation F-15s and F-16s, later dropped bombs directly over their targets. Despite flying long distances and deep inside Iranian airspace, not a single crewed Israeli aircraft was lost to either enemy fire or crashes resulting from logisticla or technical issues during the course of that war.
All of these strikes and campaigns will likely have far-reaching ramifications for the region and possibly beyond for years to come. And the outcome of this ongoing post-October 7th multi-front war remains unclear.
For now, what is clear is that the IAF has exceeded its already highly considerable record-breaking airstrikes and will likely continue to do so if this war drags on.