https://twitter.com/shanaka86/status/2027414983580234156
Until this week.
Eleven F-22s are now sitting at Ovda Air Base in the Negev. Confirmed by satellite imagery. The first deployment of America’s premier air superiority fighter to Israeli soil in the history of both nations.
You need to understand what the F-22 does that no other aircraft can do. It does not bomb targets. It kills the things that protect targets. Its radar cross section is smaller than a marble. It enters defended airspace invisible, maps every radar emission, and either destroys the air defense network or feeds its coordinates to the strike package following behind. In Venezuela, F-22s suppressed Russia’s S-300VM batteries so completely that not a single interceptor missile was launched. The entire Russian-built air defense network went dark without firing a shot.
Iran rebuilt portions of its air defense with Russian assistance after the October 2024 strikes. The F-22 deployment to Israel is the answer to whatever Iran rebuilt.
Now layer the logistics. 270 plus C-17 and C-5 transport flights to the Middle East since January. Four C-17 Globemasters landed at Nevatim Air Base on Thursday alone. Nevatim is where Israel’s F-35I Adir stealth fleet operates. Fourteen refueling tankers at Ben Gurion. 300 plus US military aircraft now in the CENTCOM theater. This is not a deterrence posture. Deterrence is a carrier offshore and a press statement. 270 transport flights is the logistics tail for sustained high-intensity operations. You build that supply chain when you expect to use it.
The pattern is identical to June 2025 but at triple the scale. Then: B-2s from Diego Garcia, B-52s as cruise missile trucks, F-15Es for escort. Now: all of that plus F-22s in Israel for the first time, plus a second carrier, plus forward-deployed F-35s in Jordan, plus tanker fleets staged across three countries.
Whatever is being planned is larger than what happened in June.
Geneva collapsed Thursday. Iran rejected every demand. Rubio flies to Jerusalem Monday. Ambassador Huckabee told staff to leave today. Beijing told its citizens to evacuate Iran today.
And eleven aircraft that exist solely to make air defenses disappear are parked in the desert 200 kilometers from the Iranian border, doing something they have never done in the 21-year operational history of the platform.
You do not stage the first-ever F-22 deployment to Israel for deterrence. You stage it for what deterrence failed to prevent.
