[Jonah Johansen]

For the last 40+ years it has been an open secret that(in a crisis) the Israeli Air Force is for all practical purposes an extension of the US Air Force.
The understanding is roughly this. Rather than build and maintain another 10 Nimitz class carrier battle groups at an enormous expense, we give billions of dollars a year to Israel. They buy modern aircraft from us, they fly them maintain them and base them in Israel. We sell them AWACS and other modern systems which are fully compatible with our air defense systems. Israel gets to use these systems to defend itself. In return if push comes to shove those airplanes will fly missions in support of US forces.
I guarantee you that US AWACS planes already have all the Israeli frequencies preprogrammed and could just as easily vector an Israeli plane to its target as an American plane.
For all the talk, everyone in the region well understands that it is immaterial if the WMD attack is on Tel Aviv or Tallahassee the response will be precisely the same.

[JewishRighter]

I smell what your cookin' JJ. I'd add that USAF/IAF cooperation in military aviation, weapons systems, anti-missile technology and UAV's is another enourmous benefit of the relationship. I've read some authoritative stuff that puts the Arrow anti-missle system way out in front of this field, for eg.