Eitan Ben Eliyahu

Eitan Ben Eliyahu was born in Jerusalem on September 10, 1944.[1] His mother died of cancer when he was ten; he later recalled her presence vividly and noted that relatives did not take him to her funeral, a decision he said he accepted without grievance but that stayed with him throughout his life.[7]

Ben Eliyahu studied economics and business administration at Bar-Ilan University and earned a master's degree in strategy and international relations at Tel Aviv University. He later completed Harvard University's Advanced Management Program.[1]

Ben Eliyahu enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces in October 1962 and volunteered for flight training, completing the course in the fighter track in November 1964.[3] After operational training in the Tzra'ah squadron, he served there as an Ouragan pilot until August 1965, then trained as a flight instructor and taught at the Air Force flight school until April 1967.[3] During this period he also took part in establishing the IAF's aerobatic team.[3]

During the War of Attrition, Ben Eliyahu flew missions over the Suez Canal. In one incident, his aircraft was hit on the Egyptian side after a mission near Kantara, forcing him to eject. He recalled that westerly winds carried him back toward Israeli-held territory, where he landed roughly 50 meters across the line; he was flying over the canal again by 7 a.m. the following morning.[7] He described that period as "the height of the heights" and said he had shot down four aircraft.[7]

By the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Ben Eliyahu — then 29 years old — commanded Phantom Squadron 201, known as "The One."[4][8] The squadron flew 758 sorties during the war and recorded 35 enemy aircraft kills, more than any other squadron, while suffering seven pilots and navigators killed, 14 taken captive, and 15 aircraft hit.[8] Air-victory records also attribute to Ben Eliyahu kills against Egyptian MiG-17 and MiG-21 aircraft in October 1973.[9]

Following the Yom Kippur War, Air Force commander Benny Peled selected Ben Eliyahu to lead Israel's reception of the F-15.[4] He was among five pilots who led that process and helped establish Squadron 133, the IAF's first F-15 unit, known as the "Knights of the Double Tail."[4][10] The first four F-15s arrived in Israel on December 10, 1976, ahead of the originally expected delivery window of late 1977 or early 1978.[4] On June 27, 1979, Ben Eliyahu scored a kill against a Syrian MiG-21 while flying an F-15.[9] A separate account describes him and fellow pilot Yoel Feldschuh accounting for two of four Syrian aircraft downed in the engagement.[10]

In 1981, Ben Eliyahu served as an escort pilot during the operation to destroy Iraq's nuclear reactor at Osirak.[5] He had been in another post at the time but requested inclusion from the IAF commander on the grounds that he had helped establish the F-15 squadron; he was added to the mission, in which F-15s provided cover for the F-16s that carried out the bombing.[4]

Ben Eliyahu was appointed commander of the Israeli Air Force in July 1996, succeeding Herzl Bodinger, and served until April 2000, when he was succeeded by Dan Halutz.[2] He was the IAF's 13th commander.[11]

Early in his command, on February 4, 1997, a midair collision between two IAF helicopters killed 73 soldiers in one of the gravest disasters in the Air Force's history.[7] Ben Eliyahu later reflected that during the aftermath he had been too focused on restoring order and had taken the side of the Air Force and the squadron rather than listening sufficiently to the bereaved families.[7]

Also during his command, in 1997, Ben Eliyahu had the honor of awarding wings to the first female fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force.[3]

In a 1998 address at a memorial gathering for Col. Simon Syrkin, Ben Eliyahu spoke on the role of air power on the eve of the 21st century.[12] He discussed changes in U.S. security doctrine following the Soviet Union's collapse and assessed that real-time target intelligence had been crucial in the Gulf War.[12] He also argued that growing ballistic-missile threats required Israel to prepare its home front and acquire active and passive defenses, including the Arrow system, and called for the Air Force to adapt its structure toward technological flexibility, immediate-response capacity, advanced space technologies, and real-time intelligence.[12]

On the strategic competition between offense and defense, Ben Eliyahu drew heavily on lessons from the 1973 war, in which the Air Force had faced serious difficulties against Egyptian surface-to-air missile batteries along the Suez Canal.[13] He linked the debate over how to respond to those batteries — whether to attack the network or bypass it — to the long-term technological investments that paid off in the 1982 Lebanon War, during which he said Israel destroyed Syrian surface-to-air defenses and shot down 100 Syrian aircraft.[13]

After retiring from the military, Ben Eliyahu co-founded Sentry Technology Group, a security company based in the United States and Israel, selling his shares in 2006.[14]

In early 2012, he became chairman of Aeronautics Ltd., an Israeli unmanned-aircraft company that was at the time in deep financial difficulty.[6] The company credited him with leading a complex recovery that brought it to record revenue and profits.[6] Under his chairmanship, Aeronautics went public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in 2017 at a valuation of one billion NIS.[14] He resigned from the role in April 2018 after six and a half years.[6]

In 2015, he was appointed chairman of the Israeli cybersecurity startup Cronus, representing its European private investors.[15] The company's CyBot product was described as a virtual hacker designed to simulate attacks and help organizations identify and address security vulnerabilities.[15]

Ben Eliyahu also served as chair of Cannbit Pharmaceutical Ltd. and RoutePerfect Ltd., as president of the International Flight Academy, and as host of an educational program on policy and national defense.[14] He helped establish the flight academy with the aspiration of training professional pilots rather than merely licensing holders.[3] In July 2024, he chaired and helped initiate the World's Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Conference in Jerusalem.[16]

Ben Eliyahu's public legacy extends beyond his operational career to debates over air power, missile defense, fleet modernization, and regional security. His views, expressed across decades of interviews and published assessments, reflect both his operational experience and his convictions about the trajectory of modern warfare.

On missile threats, he argued as early as the late 1990s that growing ballistic-missile capabilities required Israel to combine offensive action with active defense, and he continued to press that argument after his retirement.[12][17] In a 2019 interview, he said future local or regional conflicts would involve widespread enemy use of rockets and missiles and that offense alone would not adequately protect forces or civilians — the two had to be combined.[17] He also argued that future significant wars would involve military coalitions and that integrated air defense required close coordination between systems and joint exercises that went beyond cooperation among aircraft alone.[17]

On the F-35 and IAF modernization, Ben Eliyahu described the aircraft as part of a gradual renewal of Israel's aging fleet and a new element of Israeli deterrence, while cautioning that older aircraft continued to play important roles and that the IAF needed a suitable mix and sufficient number of aircraft for combat missions.[18] In a 2023 interview, he elaborated that the F-35's avionics could gather information across an entire theater and help pilots act from a broader operational picture, coordinated with naval, ground, and other air forces.[19] He also said the IAF had developed a doctrine for operating without air superiority and that its defensive technologies had improved substantially.[19]

Following the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Ben Eliyahu argued that IAF technology had enabled Israel to destroy nearly all of Hezbollah's long-range surface-to-surface missiles and most of its medium-range ones in the war's first two days, and that this prevented heavy missile strikes on Tel Aviv and Ashdod.[13] He described the effort — which he called "the hunt" — as requiring a combination of technology, doctrine, sensors, communications systems, and unmanned aircraft, and said it had involved investment of roughly NIS 10 billion over 10 to 15 years by Israel Aerospace Industries, Elbit Systems, and Rafael.[13]

On Iran's nuclear program, Ben Eliyahu argued in a 2012 opinion article that diplomatic pressure, sanctions, and military action should be pursued simultaneously rather than as sequential stages, and that the goal should be termination of Iran's nuclear program rather than merely delaying it.[20] He stated that because the challenge was far from Israel's borders, cooperation with allies — especially the United States — was essential.[20] He was also quoted in a Congressional Research Service report as observing that the ultimate success of any military operation against Iran would depend substantially on follow-up diplomatic activity.[5]

Following Israel's June 2025 Operation Rising Lion, Ben Eliyahu assessed in a December 2025 interview that the strikes had delayed Iran's nuclear program for years but had not eliminated it.[21] He described two possible paths for Israel: a total war that could include a ground invasion and prolonged strain on the home front, or economic pressure alongside renewed attempts at negotiations.[21] He also noted that Iran was adapting to the strikes — seeking more accurate missiles, dispersing launch arrays more widely, and moving them farther east and south.[21]

On the broader subject of UAVs, Ben Eliyahu argued that in 1970 Israel was the only military force developing and using unmanned aerial vehicles and that the United States later learned from Israel's experience.[16]

Several of Ben Eliyahu's public positions have drawn scrutiny or criticism. A 2006 article in INSS's Strategic Assessment described his advocacy for systematic long-range precision standoff airstrikes as a means of weakening terrorist organizations' will to fight, but criticized the proposal for not adequately addressing the depth of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the adversary's capability and will to harm Israel, or the resources a large-scale targeted-killing campaign would require.[22]

His retrospective claims about the results of the 2006 Lebanon War — particularly regarding the scale of Hezbollah missile destruction — are his own assessments and are not independently verified in the sources cited here.[13] Similarly, his statements about Operation Rising Lion's effects on Iran's nuclear program, and his prescribed policy options, are attributed strategic assessments rather than established facts.[21]

The air-victory records that list kills attributed to Ben Eliyahu in 1973 and 1979 are drawn from a compiled table whose publisher notes that details may be missing or sketchy and that completeness cannot be guaranteed.[9]