Israeli Air Force to Lockheed: Hurry it up:

Israel plans to keep its aerial domination of the Middle East intact, and that includes buying Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, accelerating its first deliveries, and deciding whose advanced equipment will be packed into the stealthy strike aircraft.

A senior Israeli air force (IAF) official says those major areas of concern appear to be on the right track because of an "understanding" with the U.S. officials. Washington's representatives are more ambiguous, saying that there has been no official change to Israel's F-35 program.

"The plan is that we will get the F-35 as soon as it's possible," the senior IAF official says. He says the service will end up with more than 100 F-35s, but he would not confirm the size of the purchase or that Israel is asking that the initial delivery date be accelerated by two years to 2012. The IAF wants the JSF "the minute it is available."

"Israel has a unique requirement, it doesn't operate in a coalition, [and it has a] different kind of strategic relationship" with the U.S. than the other F-35 partners," says Tom Burbage, Lockheed Martin's vice president and general manager for the F-35. However, he says the overseas release of the first export aircraft will be no sooner than 2014.

Another "unique requirement" is that Israel has to penetrate integrated air defenses without the advantage of stealth technology. Stealth is the primary reason that the USAF has made Russian-built IADs their bit&* these past two decades. The air defenses that the United States overcame in Serbia and Iraq are similar to the ones fielded by Israel's enemies. While the IAF is skilled enough to pull off gee-whiz raids like Operation Orchard with bulky Strike Eagles, they have to beat radar coverage with sophisticated hacks or Wild Weasel missions. The JSF, with its shortcomings noted, fits the IAF's profile perfectly: slip in, break stuff, slip out.

Somewhat surprising though, is how hot the IAF is for these news birds. Israel has always been first in line for the latest American jets, but this time around their rhetoric sounds awfully urgent. The easy answer is that they want a stealth asset capable of sneaking into the hell that is the airspace surrounding Iran's nuclear facilities. But their requested timeline of 2012 for the first deliveries doesn't sync up with Mossad warnings that Iran could have the bomb by 2010. They might be giving Iran some wiggle room on the estimate, they might be worried that Russia closed the radar loophole that they exploited during Orchard, or they may just be sick of their F-15s and F-16s.

Motives aside, it will be most interesting to see what new tricks the always innovative IAF will pull off with the stealth advantage.