Three months after Israeli fighter jets struck targets deep inside Iran, Jerusalem is doubling down on airpower. On May 3, Israel’s Ministerial Committee on Procurement approved the purchase of two full squadrons — 25 F-35I Adir stealth fighters and 25 F-15IA strike aircraft — in a deal worth tens of billions of shekels.

The move will push Israel’s F-35 fleet to 100 airframes, placing it among the top five operators of the fifth-generation jet worldwide. Combined with a second squadron of the heavy-hitting F-15IA, the Israeli Air Force is preparing for what Defence Minister Israel Katz calls “a demanding decade.”

The announcement is the first concrete step in a 350-billion-shekel ($119 billion) military modernisation plan — a figure that reveals how fundamentally the Iran campaign has reshaped Israeli defence planning.

Lessons Written in Jet Fuel

The February 2026 air campaign against Iran was, by all accounts, a decisive demonstration of Israeli airpower. Long-range strikes deep into Iranian territory required every asset the IAF could muster — and exposed the limits of a fleet stretched thin by years of sustained operations in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.

Defence Minister Israel Katz made the connection explicit. The war, he said, “once again demonstrated the Israeli Air Force’s power and its decisive role in protecting Israel.” But power and sufficiency are different things, and the procurement push suggests Jerusalem concluded it needs substantially more of both.

The F-35I Adir — Israel’s customised variant of the Lightning II, equipped with indigenous electronic warfare systems and weapons integration — proved its worth over Iran. A fourth squadron will give the IAF the depth to sustain high-tempo stealth operations without burning through airframe hours at an unsustainable rate.

The F-15IA — Israel’s designation for the Boeing F-15EX Eagle II — fills a different role. Where the F-35I is the scalpel, the F-15IA is the sledgehammer: a twin-engine, long-range platform capable of carrying an enormous weapons payload. For deep-strike missions into Iran or beyond, the F-15IA’s range and loadout are irreplaceable.

A second F-15IA squadron means Israel can rotate aircraft through maintenance cycles without losing strike capacity — a lesson learned the hard way during the sustained tempo of the Iran campaign.

The $119 Billion Question

The fighter purchase is just the tip of a vast spending plan. The full 350-billion-shekel programme includes Apache attack helicopters, Boeing KC-46A Pegasus aerial refuelling tankers, and a major expansion of domestic munitions production capacity.

The KC-46A order is particularly significant. Aerial refuelling was the single most critical enabler of the Iran strikes, and Israel’s existing tanker fleet is aging. New Pegasus aircraft will extend the IAF’s operational reach and reduce dependence on allied basing arrangements.

Domestic munitions production, meanwhile, addresses the most painful lesson of the past two years: Israel burned through precision-guided munitions at a rate that outstripped resupply from the United States. Building sovereign production capacity is an insurance policy against future supply chain disruptions.

Joining the Hundred-Club

With 100 F-35s on order, Israel will join an exclusive club. Only the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan have committed to larger fleets of the fifth-generation stealth fighter. For a country of nine million people, that is a remarkable concentration of airpower.

The first F-35I arrived in Israel in December 2016. A decade later, the fleet has grown from a cautious experiment into the backbone of Israeli air superiority. The Adir has been used in combat over Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and Iran — a combat record no other F-35 operator can match.

Israeli officials in Washington are already working to finalise the agreements. The deals will include full fleet integration, sustainment packages, spare parts pipelines, and logistics support infrastructure — the invisible machinery that keeps a modern air force flying.

For Lockheed Martin and Boeing, the contracts are a vote of confidence at a time when both companies face scrutiny over cost overruns and production delays. For Israel, they represent something simpler: the conviction that in the next war, more jets will mean fewer casualties.

Sources: Breaking Defense, The Times of Israel, Army Recognition, CNBC