THE SOVIET–ISRAELI WAR, 1967–1973As war fever relaxed, bombing options were set aside—to be revived in 1973. But
reconnaissance sorties, both for monitoring immediate Israeli intentions and for
preparation of a future offensive, settled into a routine. They were made every other
week with two Foxbats flying each time, in case of an equipment failure in one. Each
pilot made at least two such flights before the group’s deployment ended a year later.
First Sinai and then Israel itself were covered in a tight grid, with high-resolution
cameras that even at 20,000 meters showed the Israeli defense lineup such as radar
installations, anti-aircraft sites and airfields in great detail. The planes were also
equipped with state-of-the-art computerized mapping systems that could beam
observations to the ground control center while the sortie was still in progress.^29
Despite the Soviets’ suspicion that the Israelis were getting early warning, all inter-
cept attempts by Phantoms and Mirages failed; the 63rd’s radar operators watched how
the Foxbats shook them off. There was even an intelligence bonus for the Soviets when
after one RB flight, the Eg yptians near the canal found an unexploded US-made air-to-
air missile and brought it to Cairo, where “our experts studied it meticulously.” Israel’s
Hawk missiles were likewise ineffectual at the MiG-25’s altitude. Soviet expectations
that Israel would receive the US high-altitude Nike-Hercules missiles never material-
ized, and tactics developed against them proved unnecessary.
As it had with the initial Soviet intervention, Israel vacillated about making any
disclosure that would confront the US administration publicly with a major Soviet
advance. Tension with Rogers was bad enough already. The closest Israel came to an
official comment was when Dayan called the Foxbats’ presence in Eg ypt “burdensome.”
That, commented a US columnist, “sets a new ... record for one-word understatement
in Tel Aviv by a man with an eye patch. ‘Burdensome’ is as inadequate as calling Hitler
a ‘spoilsport.’”^30 Okunev was but slightly exaggerating the Israelis’ concern when he told
Bezhevets that they had assembled three battalions of Arabic- and Russian-speaking
commandos, and promised them a million-dollar bounty for every MiG-25 they
destroyed on the ground. “But thank God, they never showed up.”