By Jim Michaels

USA Today

Feb. 13, 2012

If Israel attacked Iran's nuclear facilities, the strike would probably take the form of a complex air assault involving scores of planes that would have to penetrate Iranian air defenses and attack up to a couple of dozen targets simultaneously, analysts say.

"This would be way more sophisticated than anything that's ever been done before," said Charles Wald, a retired Air Force general who led the coalition air campaign in Afghanistan that helped topple the Taliban...

There would be nothing "surgical" in a strike on Iranian facilities, Wald said. Iranians have learned from Israeli attacks in Syria and Iraq, Wald said...

Israeli aircraft could probably penetrate Iranian air defenses, but Israel would need to commit additional aircraft to jam radars and in other ways neutralize Iran's radar and missile systems, analysts say.

"They're not using wax pencils on glass," Johnson said of Iranian air defenses. "They have updated computerized modern air defenses."

Iran doesn't have the latest systems, said Wald, a military analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank. In 2010, Russia canceled a planned sale to Iran of sophisticated S-300 surface-to-air missiles that would have significantly upgraded Iran's anti-aircraft defenses.

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Foreign Policy Project, Iran Initiative