The reporting name Baz (“Falcon”) was assigned to all F-15 A/B/C/Ds purchased by Israel from 1976 all the way through to the 1990s, regardless of their specific models or configuration.They very quickly became a key component in Israel’s regional superiority — providing an umbrella that could not be challenged by any of Israel’s belligerent neighbors. Nevertheless, by the 1990s, the aircraft was being threatened by the capabilities of newer Soviet/Russian models of the Su-27 and MiG-29. An upgrade program resulted in the F-15 Baz Meshupar (lit. “Improved Baz”), more commonly known by the acronym BazMash. The first such aircraft was rolled out in late 1998, the same year that the first F-15I (Israeli-modified F-15E) entered service.
Baz
One of the contributing factors to Israel’s swift and overwhelming victory in the Six-Day War of 1967 was its ability to achieve total air superiority at the very outset, partly due to its pre-emptive strike on its neighbours' air bases, but also thanks to the intensive training of its pilots and the superiority of French and American jet fighter technology at the time. However, the subsequent War of Attrition demonstrated that Israel’s enemies — and the Soviet Union which supplied them — were determined to counter those advantages by any means necessary.
During the War of Attrition, Egyptian and Syrian SAM capabilities became a serious headache for the Israeli Air Force (IAF), and the overwhelming mass of MiG and Sukhoi aircraft deployed by Egypt, Syria, and the Soviet Union further countered Israel’s advantages. To make matters worse, the new MiG-25 high-altitude, high-speed jet was now being used by Israel’s enemies to perform recon missions over its territory, which the IAF repeatedly failed to intercept. These problems came to a head during the Yom Kippur War of 1973, when the IAF lost over a dozen aircraft to SAM interceptions alone, and failed repeatedly to secure air superiority over either of its belligerent neighbours.
Despite having only recently purchased a whole slew of F-4 Phantom IIs in the late 60s, and having recently begun producing its own Mirage variants (in the form of the Nesher), Israel was now forced to modernize its air force yet again to meet these new challenges. The obvious candidates for this modernization effort were the Grumman F-14 and McDonnell Douglas F-15, two of America’s newest high-speed, twin-engine air superiority fighters. A committee established to review the two aircraft quickly determined that the F-15 would be the most suitable for Israel’s particular needs. Israel was eager to receive the planes as soon as possible, but by 1976 they had barely just entered production to supply the U.S. Airforce. As a result, the Israelis agreed to take four of the existing pre-production planes as part of the first arms deal.
Thus, in late 1976, Israel became the first country outside the United States to acquire the F-15. Notably, a delay in the arrival of these planes in Israel on a Friday, December 10, 1976 forced several of the Israeli ministers who had attended the ceremony to break the Sabbath (a mandatory religious day of rest). This resulted in outrage followed by the collapse of the Israeli government, causing a shift of power that has changed Israeli politics ever since.
The reporting name Baz (“Falcon”) was assigned to all F-15 A/B/C/Ds purchased by Israel from 1976 all the way through to the 1990s, regardless of their specific models or configurations, making it more difficult to distinguish between various models. Nevertheless, the IAF has periodically modified older Baz F-15s to match the specifications of newer ones, making the distinction less relevant. The exact number of F-15s purchased from each model are also unclear. What is known is that Israel has purchased almost as many two-seater models (B and D) as single-seaters (A and C), with the two-seaters being used mostly for training purposes and recon missions.
Aside from the pre-production planes described earlier, most of the initial F-15As and Bs purchased by Israel were from Production Blocks 5 and 6. As with all fighters purchased by Israel since the 1960s, the Baz was outfitted with several Israeli-made electronic systems, and modified to accept Israeli-made aerial munitions such as the Python and Popeye. Overall, out of all modified Israeli aircraft, the Baz appears to be closest to the original American model. This changed in the late 1990s, when all Baz F-15s in the IAF were upgraded further to the BazMash standard (short for Baz Meshupar, lit. “improved Baz”), and became undeniably different from their American counterparts.
The F-15A was adopted very enthusiastically by Israeli pilots, and quickly became the dominant fighter in the IAF, providing an aerial umbrella that could not be matched by any of its neighbors. This coincided with the peace process between Israel and Egypt, which led to a 1979 treaty between the two countries that radically altered the balance of power in the Middle East. Nevertheless, the Syrian Air Force was not fully deterred, and continued engaging Israel in sporadic battles throughout the end of the 1970s and early 1980s, as the two nations struggled over Syria’s increased control of Lebanon. As part of these skirmishes, in 1978 the F-15 scored its world-premier air kill when Israeli pilot Moshe Melnik downed a Syrian MiG-21. Another first for the F-15 and the military aviation world was also scored by a Baz, when one shot down a Syrian MiG-25 for the first time in history.
Baz F-15s continued seeing intense action in Israeli service over the next several years. With the introduction of the F-16 Netz as Israel’s new fighter-bomber in 1980, these two American fighters allowed Israel to perform 'Operation Opera' in 1981: an attack on the Osiraq nuclear reactor near Baghdad, Iraq. Ten Baz F-15s provided cover for the operation, though no Iraqi aircraft were ultimately scrambled against them. The Baz F-15's most intense aerial engagement came one year afterwards, when Baz fighters served as the high-altitude interceptors in Operation Mole Cricket 19, a massive SEAD operation designed to destroy the entire Syrian air defense network along its border with Lebanon. With F-16s and F-4s provoking Syrian aircraft to scramble and engage, the F-15s would swoop down and eliminate them en-masse. During the battle, Israeli F-15s shot down a total of 38 enemy MiG-21s, MiG-23s, and MiG-23Ms — nearly half the aircraft shot down during the three-day battle — while taking no losses of their own. Throughout the course of the First Lebanon War, Baz F-15s shot down a total of around 80 Syrian aircraft.
From 1976 onward, Israel continued purchasing F-15s of various models for almost twenty years. The last shipment (consisting of older F-15As) was greenlit by Washington thanks to Israel’s begrudging agreement not to relatiate against Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. These F-15As came from U.S. Airforce reserve stocks, and were used by the IAF mostly as spare parts for other planes. In 1995, Israel began upgrading its Baz F-15s to new specifications, with particular attention to all-weather capabilities, improved radar systems, GPS, and network connectivity. At the same time, Israel stopped purchasing any additional Baz F-15s, and switched entirely to the purchase of new F-15E Strike Eagles from a variant made specifically for their purposes: the F-15I Ra’am. Nevertheless, due to the prohibitive costs of F-15 purchases, and the central role this plane fills in Israel’s aerial supremacy, the Baz continues to serve in the IAF to this day. It is unknown exactly how old the oldest Baz in service is currently, but it would have to be around 35-40 years old as of 2023, with significant improvements added over the years.
Baz Meshupar
By the 1990s, the Baz was being threatened by the capabilities of newer Soviet/Russian models of the Su-27 and MiG-29. Though the Soviet Union was no longer around to supply such aircraft en-masse to Israel’s remaining enemies (as it had done in previous decades), Israel’s bitter lessons of technological parity during the 1973 Yom Kippur War led to the conclusion that the entire Baz fleet would have to be replaced in order to maintain a decisive technological edge. With close to a hundred Baz F-15s already in IAF service, this would be a complicated undertaking.
To make matters even more complicated, the 1990s were also a time of conflict between two separate issues in the air superiority fighter market. On the one hand, while the Americans had already begun funding Israel’s defense to the tune of billions of dollars, this came with an exclusivity clause that would force Israel to purchase all of its fighters from the United States. Simultaneously, the United States was at this time heavily invested in development of the F-22 Raptor — which it intended to keep for itself in order to maintain its own technological edge. This left only one air superiority model on the table for Israel to buy: the F-15E Strike Eagle, a highly improved version of the F-15 that could double as a long-range precision bomber.
Fortunately for the IAF, the F-15E was perfectly suited for its purposes. Besides having had plenty of experience with previous F-15 models, the IAF also happened to be in need of a long-range precision bomber to contend with the emerging threat of ballistic missiles from Iraq and Iran. The only problem with the F-15E was that it was still in the process of being introduced into the US Air Force, and was even more expensive than previous F-15 models. This meant that the IAF would not be able to replace its entire existing F-15 Baz fleet within any reasonable timeframe. Relying solely on gradual F-15E purchases would leave Israel vulnerable for over a decade — a risk that it could not afford.
The decision was finally made to begin the purchase of F-15Es (which, after intense modification, would become the F-15I Ra’am) while continuing to wait for some newer, cheaper aircraft to be developed by the Americans. However, that alternative never materialized, and by 1995 the IAF had no choice but to create its own alternative: the Baz 2000 program. Building upon two decades of active combat experience with the F-15, and the emergence of a cutting-edge Israeli high-tech industrial sector, the Baz 2000 program would essentially upgrade existing F-15C/Ds into something closer to an F-15E. Additionally, equipment previously featured only on the F-16 Barak would be “married” into this new plane to give it capabilities not yet seen outside the F-16 platform.
This upgrade program resulted in the F-15 Baz Meshupar (lit. “Improved Baz”), more commonly known by the acronym BazMash. The first such aircraft was rolled out in late 1998, the same year that the first F-15I entered service.
The exact changes made to the BazMash are still classified, though several are plainly clear from photographs of the aircraft: it has larger conformal fuel tanks allowing for greater range than the original F-15C/D, and its avionics and cockpit have been completely redone. The BazMash features all-new Multi-Function Displays, contains avionics borrowed from the F-16 Barak (including DASH helmet integration), and is now capable of using JDAM GPS-guided bombs. It is also capable of carrying Israel’s own beyond-visual-range interceptor missiles, the Python 5 and Derby. A radar upgrade has also been mentioned by unofficial sources, but has never been confirmed. It is unclear whether McDonnell Douglas (later Boeing St. Louis) had a hand in making such an upgrade possible, but it seems that every single Israeli military electronics company contributed at least one component to the new plane. Given the number of BazMash planes that were in service when the Baz 2000 program concluded, some sources have speculated that at least one of these aircraft is in fact an F-15A/B — first upgraded to the F-15C/D standard in the 1980s, and then to the new BazMash standard.
Despite all of these upgrades, the IAF stated in 2004 that it would still prefer replacing the BazMash with F-15Is — but additional F-15I purchases ceased around that same time, leaving the IAF with more BazMash planes than F-15Is to this day. In the mid-2010s, the IAF announced plans to upgrade the BazMash yet again, with the hope of keeping it in service until the year 2040 — for a total service period of 64 years. Even with the introduction of the F-35I Adir into IAF service in 2017, the BazMash in its current form remains Israel’s primary air superiority fighter.
