Can Israel defend itself without US help? Here's the answer amid JD Vance's warning
American Vice-President JD Vance issued a warning to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's Cabinet after some of his ministers said they weren't bound by the US-Iran agreement. Can Israel fight a long conventional war without support from the US? Here's the entire picture and the answer in a clear yes or no.
It was an unusually blunt attack on the Israeli Cabinet by JD Vance, the American Vice-President. "Do not attack your only ally," he said, noting that nearly two-thirds of the defensive weapons protecting Israel had been "built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars". That came after Israeli leaders asserted the right to act on their own following the US deal with Iran. As Israel's action in Lebanon puts the fragile peace at risk, the big question is — can the Jewish nation defend itself without American support? We will give you a yes-or-no answer by the end of the analysis after sifting through what experts have to say.
The ties between Israel and the US are so strong that satirist and our in-house columnist Kamlesh Singh said, "Israel is the first of the US's 51 states." Those ties look strained right now, but are unlikely to snap. Both find themselves in a Catch 22 situation. While the US wants to wriggle out of the Iran war, Israel wants to tame Iran's proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The trouble between the two allies began with the US signing a 14-point interim peace deal with Iran on Thursday. The so-called memorandum of understanding triggered a deep unease in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the deal didn't bind Israel, while Defence Minister Israel Katz has instructed the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to prepare unilateral contingency plans to strike Iran's nuclear infrastructure if necessary.
Even as Jerusalem signals that it is willing to act independently to safeguard its interests, at the cost of antagonising the US, a key question remains: can it realistically do so? How dependent are Israel's armed forces on American military aid and weapons? And if a situation ever arose in which the US began scaling back its support, how long could Israel sustain its military capabilities on its own?
"The US-Israel defence relationship is the closest defence partnership between the US and any major non-NATO country. Israel is critically dependent on the United States for most of its defence needs," defence expert Sandeep Unnithan tells India Today Digital. He explains why Israel, despite having a thriving military industrial base and being a leading weapons exporter, remains dependent on the US. Such critical is the dependency, that even Israeli arms importers, like India, might get impacted if the US intends to punish its ally.
We will get more into that in a bit. Before that, let us understand how the US funds Israeli defences.
HOW US MILITARY FUNDING BANKROLLS ISRAEL'S MILITARY
According to a report by Time Magazine, Israel has received more than $130 billion in US military assistance since its founding in 1948. Since 2019, Washington has provided Jerusalem with $3.8 billion annually, most of it to finance Israel’s military expenditure.
This funding is provided via a programme called Foreign Military Financing (FMF), which allows partner nations to purchase American-made military equipment. Israel is by far the largest beneficiary of this programme, with Egypt, which receives $1.3 billion at a distant second.
This is, however, by no means a one-way street. In a Substack article, former US Army officer and defence analyst John Spencer pointed out that Israel is required to spend up to 74% of the funding it receives through the FMF on US-made equipment.
As Spencer explains, the money provided to Israel "does not leave the American economy. It circulates through American factories, American supply chains, and American workers." He adds that, in practice, "much of what critics describe as foreign aid flows directly to American defence companies, American workers, and the industrial base that also equips the US military," since Israel is ultimately purchasing American weapons.
Besides aid provided under the FMF, between October 2023 and September 2025, a study by Brown University’s Costs of War project found that the US had provided additional military aid worth $21.7 billion. This does not take into account the further expenditure incurred as part of the war with Iran and Israel’s incursion into Lebanon, which will easily run into billions more.
US aid reportedly accounted for around 20% of Israel’s defence budget in 2020, according to a report by the US Congressional Research Service in 2023. Since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, American aid to the Jewish nation has only increased.
ISRAELI RELIANCE ON AMERICAN DEFENCE EQUIPMENT: FROM JETS TO MUNITIONS
To see how extensive Jerusalem's dependence is on military assistance furnished by American taxpayers, one only needs to look at Israel's military arsenal.
Take, for instance, the Israeli Air Force. According to Sandeep Unnithan, the Israeli Air Force is "one of the world's best air forces— despite flying thousands of sorties during the war with Iran, it did not lose a single fighter jet." Yet, this formidable force is for all intents and purposes, a product of the US aerospace industry, which according to Unnithan, is its biggest "Achilles heel".
The IAF's entire inventory of combat capable aircraft comes from the US, including 75 F-15s, 196 F-16s, and 39 F-35s. Its attack and transport helicopters are also all of US origin, including 46 Apache attack helicopters, and 25 Sea Stallion and 49 Black Hawk transport helicopters. Finally, its aerial refuelling fleet, critical for long-range operations such as strikes deep into Iran, consists of entirely US-made aircraft, including converted Boeing 707s and new KC-46 Pegasus tankers.
Israel is also heavily dependent on the United States for maintaining and arming these aircraft. Spare parts such as engines and radar systems must be purchased from American manufacturers, including General Electric.
Many of its munitions are likewise of US origin. These include Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits, which convert unguided "dumb" bombs into precision-guided weapons, as well as Small Diameter Bombs (GBU-39/B). To be sure, Israel's defence industry can and has made capable munitions, such as the SPICE guided bomb and the Rampage Air-to-Surface Missile, both which are also used by the Indian Air Force.
"Israel also depends on the US for munitions like the BLU-109 'bunker-busters', which it used to assassinate Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah," says Unnithan.
In 2025, Israel was unable to strike Iran's most deeply buried nuclear facilities because it lacked the necessary heavy penetrating bombs, most notably the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), and had to rely on American support.
ISRAEL'S IRON DOME RELIES HEAVILY ON AMERICAN SUPPORT
Similarly, the Iron Dome air defence system, which has shielded Israel from the drone and missile strikes, is deeply tethered to US assistance.
While designed by Israel, the system is co-produced through a joint venture with American defence giant RTX (Raytheon). US lawmakers have injected over $3 billion into the Iron Dome outside of baseline military aid, including a $1 billion emergency surge in 2022 and billions more in wartime supplementals, through 2026.
Israel's interceptor inventory is heavily Americanised. Both the Iron Dome's Tamir missiles and David's Sling's Stunner missiles either utilise critical US components or are manufactured directly on American soil. Furthermore, when localised systems faced saturation during peak escalations, the US military directly intervened by redeploying its own Patriot and THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence) batteries from other global theatres to reinforce Israel's air defence envelope.
According to Unnithan, the only domain in which Israel is "completely independent of the US" is its strategic weapons programme.
"Its nuclear-capable Jericho-III intermediate-range ballistic missiles are entirely indigenous, while its fleet of Dolphin-class submarines, which provide a sea-based nuclear deterrent through cruise missiles, is built in Germany," says Unnithan.
While Israel also designs its own heavy ground equipment, like the Merkava tank and advanced artillery systems, even these domestic platforms rely on global supply chains, utilising American-assembled engines and transmissions funded via US aid.
CAN ISRAEL SURVIVE WITHOUT US ASSISTANCE?
While it remains highly unlikely that the US will abandon its aid commitments to Israel, the question still stands. If the US were to abruptly halt its financial and material support, would Israel be able to weather the resulting deficit? The answer is a straightforward "no".
As Unnithan notes, Israel is fundamentally ill-equipped to wage a protracted conflict in isolation.
"If the US turns off the tap of spare parts and equipment, it would seriously affect the combat worthiness of Israel’s fighter fleet; the Israeli Air Force would not be able to fly all its fighters. Israel would run out of bombs and missiles in a long conflict because it doesn’t have the 'magazine depth' to fight sustained wars," he says.
And that vulnerability is not just confined to the air force; Israeli reliance stretches across every branch of its national security architecture. Even Israeli officials openly acknowledge this systemic dependency. Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, former National Security Council deputy chief Chuck Freilich emphasised that merely ramping up domestic manufacturing cannot sever the cord of US reliance.
"We have dependence in all areas. It's not just about ammunition and munitions: There are all kinds of platforms we need. Even if we produce more of our own bombs, we still need to get the planes from the US in order to fly, so we haven’t really reduced our dependence on the US just by producing more bombs," Freilich warned.
There is also the fact that Israel lacks the economic heft to independently develop the high-tier hardware it has acquired from Washington. Attempting to replace major US platforms is a financial impossibility. "We talked about building our own planes once and it absolutely ruined us," Freilich noted, referring to the cancelled 1980s Lavi fighter jet programme that unsustainably swallowed nearly 18% of Israel's GDP.
He added that "the prices for production are only becoming more and more exorbitant... We certainly cannot" build such advanced aircraft on our own, concluding that "there’s a price to be paid for being a small, embattled country with limited resources."
This sentiment is echoed by other top defence figures who point out that Israel simply lacks the domestic market size to justify the astronomical costs of major weapons development. Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, former IDF deputy chief Major General (res) Uzi Dayan cautioned that "it will be hard to manufacture expensive items that are one of a kind", stating flatly, "We need to understand our economies of scale limit". Ultimately, as Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) observed, sweeping calls for total military self-reliance remain little more than a "‘wish list that does not necessarily align with economic realities."
CAN ISRAEL FIGHT LONG CONVENTIONAL WARS WITHOUT US HELP?
Unnithan reinforces this point, stating flatly that "Israel cannot fight long conventional wars without US support." Yet, he does not foresee a total rupture. "Despite the asymmetry in size, population, economic and military heft, both Israel and the US are wedded to each other as long-term strategic partners," he notes.
The US, after all, also benefits from Israel's reliance. As defence analyst John Spencer noted, money sent to Israel is ultimately invested back into the US.
Spencer also noted in a post on X that by funding an ally that tests cutting-edge tech under real-world conditions, the US gains invaluable "battlefield lessons" in urban and drone warfare, effectively allowing the Pentagon to adapt its own military doctrine "without having to learn them first through American casualties, American mistakes, or American wars".
Furthermore, Spencer attested that the US gains a "massive strategic advantage" from its close intelligence partnership with Israel. Israeli agencies like Mossad, Spencer states, provide high-value intelligence on adversaries, proxy groups, and terrorist networks, helping thwart threats to Americans, protect US forces, and enhance Washington's understanding of regional security risks.
ISRAEL'S RELIANCE ON US IMPACTS ARMS IMPORTERS LIKE INDIA
Crucially, this deep-seated dependency has significant geopolitical implications for third-party buyers such as India. Unnithan says while "Israel emerged as a halfway point between Russia and the US for India's defence needs", its defence exports were still shaped by Washington's influence.
"Israel’s cutting-edge military hardware might have appeared to have no strings attached, but India experienced the closeness of the US-Israel relationship nearly two decades ago when it wanted to purchase two sophisticated systems, the Elta EL/M-2080 'Green Pine' radar and the 'Phalcon' AEW&C aircraft," explains Unnithan.
Although both systems were marketed as Israeli products, they had been jointly developed with the US, giving Washington a decisive say over their export. As a result, their sale to India could proceed only after American approval.
"The Green Pine had been jointly produced with the US for Israel’s Arrow theatre missile system. The sale could go ahead only after the US green-lit it. India bought a version of it called the 'Swordfish' long-range tracking AESA radar from Israel for the indigenous Ballistic Missile Defence programme. Israel’s 'Phalcon' AEW&C radar was sold to India around that time only after the US cleared the sale—again, it had US R&D and components," says Unnithan.
So, it's not just for Israel's needs, even its defence exports rely heavily on the US.
In any case, one thing is crystal clear. For all of Jerusalem's declarations that it will act independently to secure its interests, whether it's against Iran, or the numerous proxy groups propped up by Tehran, it can ill-afford to sever the lifeline of American military assistance. Without Washington's support, Jerusalem might find defending its interests very difficult.
It was an unusually blunt attack on the Israeli Cabinet by JD Vance, the American Vice-President. "Do not attack your only ally," he said, noting that nearly two-thirds of the defensive weapons protecting Israel had been "built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars". That came after Israeli leaders asserted the right to act on their own following the US deal with Iran. As Israel's action in Lebanon puts the fragile peace at risk, the big question is — can the Jewish nation defend itself without American support? We will give you a yes-or-no answer by the end of the analysis after sifting through what experts have to say.
The ties between Israel and the US are so strong that satirist and our in-house columnist Kamlesh Singh said, "Israel is the first of the US's 51 states." Those ties look strained right now, but are unlikely to snap. Both find themselves in a Catch 22 situation. While the US wants to wriggle out of the Iran war, Israel wants to tame Iran's proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The trouble between the two allies began with the US signing a 14-point interim peace deal with Iran on Thursday. The so-called memorandum of understanding triggered a deep unease in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that the deal didn't bind Israel, while Defence Minister Israel Katz has instructed the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to prepare unilateral contingency plans to strike Iran's nuclear infrastructure if necessary.
Even as Jerusalem signals that it is willing to act independently to safeguard its interests, at the cost of antagonising the US, a key question remains: can it realistically do so? How dependent are Israel's armed forces on American military aid and weapons? And if a situation ever arose in which the US began scaling back its support, how long could Israel sustain its military capabilities on its own?
"The US-Israel defence relationship is the closest defence partnership between the US and any major non-NATO country. Israel is critically dependent on the United States for most of its defence needs," defence expert Sandeep Unnithan tells India Today Digital. He explains why Israel, despite having a thriving military industrial base and being a leading weapons exporter, remains dependent on the US. Such critical is the dependency, that even Israeli arms importers, like India, might get impacted if the US intends to punish its ally.
We will get more into that in a bit. Before that, let us understand how the US funds Israeli defences.
HOW US MILITARY FUNDING BANKROLLS ISRAEL'S MILITARY
According to a report by Time Magazine, Israel has received more than $130 billion in US military assistance since its founding in 1948. Since 2019, Washington has provided Jerusalem with $3.8 billion annually, most of it to finance Israel’s military expenditure.
This funding is provided via a programme called Foreign Military Financing (FMF), which allows partner nations to purchase American-made military equipment. Israel is by far the largest beneficiary of this programme, with Egypt, which receives $1.3 billion at a distant second.
This is, however, by no means a one-way street. In a Substack article, former US Army officer and defence analyst John Spencer pointed out that Israel is required to spend up to 74% of the funding it receives through the FMF on US-made equipment.
As Spencer explains, the money provided to Israel "does not leave the American economy. It circulates through American factories, American supply chains, and American workers." He adds that, in practice, "much of what critics describe as foreign aid flows directly to American defence companies, American workers, and the industrial base that also equips the US military," since Israel is ultimately purchasing American weapons.
Besides aid provided under the FMF, between October 2023 and September 2025, a study by Brown University’s Costs of War project found that the US had provided additional military aid worth $21.7 billion. This does not take into account the further expenditure incurred as part of the war with Iran and Israel’s incursion into Lebanon, which will easily run into billions more.
US aid reportedly accounted for around 20% of Israel’s defence budget in 2020, according to a report by the US Congressional Research Service in 2023. Since the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, American aid to the Jewish nation has only increased.
ISRAELI RELIANCE ON AMERICAN DEFENCE EQUIPMENT: FROM JETS TO MUNITIONS
To see how extensive Jerusalem's dependence is on military assistance furnished by American taxpayers, one only needs to look at Israel's military arsenal.
Take, for instance, the Israeli Air Force. According to Sandeep Unnithan, the Israeli Air Force is "one of the world's best air forces— despite flying thousands of sorties during the war with Iran, it did not lose a single fighter jet." Yet, this formidable force is for all intents and purposes, a product of the US aerospace industry, which according to Unnithan, is its biggest "Achilles heel".
The IAF's entire inventory of combat capable aircraft comes from the US, including 75 F-15s, 196 F-16s, and 39 F-35s. Its attack and transport helicopters are also all of US origin, including 46 Apache attack helicopters, and 25 Sea Stallion and 49 Black Hawk transport helicopters. Finally, its aerial refuelling fleet, critical for long-range operations such as strikes deep into Iran, consists of entirely US-made aircraft, including converted Boeing 707s and new KC-46 Pegasus tankers.
Israel is also heavily dependent on the United States for maintaining and arming these aircraft. Spare parts such as engines and radar systems must be purchased from American manufacturers, including General Electric.
Many of its munitions are likewise of US origin. These include Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits, which convert unguided "dumb" bombs into precision-guided weapons, as well as Small Diameter Bombs (GBU-39/B). To be sure, Israel's defence industry can and has made capable munitions, such as the SPICE guided bomb and the Rampage Air-to-Surface Missile, both which are also used by the Indian Air Force.
"Israel also depends on the US for munitions like the BLU-109 'bunker-busters', which it used to assassinate Hezbollah chief Hasan Nasrallah," says Unnithan.
In 2025, Israel was unable to strike Iran's most deeply buried nuclear facilities because it lacked the necessary heavy penetrating bombs, most notably the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), and had to rely on American support.
ISRAEL'S IRON DOME RELIES HEAVILY ON AMERICAN SUPPORT
Similarly, the Iron Dome air defence system, which has shielded Israel from the drone and missile strikes, is deeply tethered to US assistance.
While designed by Israel, the system is co-produced through a joint venture with American defence giant RTX (Raytheon). US lawmakers have injected over $3 billion into the Iron Dome outside of baseline military aid, including a $1 billion emergency surge in 2022 and billions more in wartime supplementals, through 2026.
Israel's interceptor inventory is heavily Americanised. Both the Iron Dome's Tamir missiles and David's Sling's Stunner missiles either utilise critical US components or are manufactured directly on American soil. Furthermore, when localised systems faced saturation during peak escalations, the US military directly intervened by redeploying its own Patriot and THAAD (Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence) batteries from other global theatres to reinforce Israel's air defence envelope.
According to Unnithan, the only domain in which Israel is "completely independent of the US" is its strategic weapons programme.
"Its nuclear-capable Jericho-III intermediate-range ballistic missiles are entirely indigenous, while its fleet of Dolphin-class submarines, which provide a sea-based nuclear deterrent through cruise missiles, is built in Germany," says Unnithan.
While Israel also designs its own heavy ground equipment, like the Merkava tank and advanced artillery systems, even these domestic platforms rely on global supply chains, utilising American-assembled engines and transmissions funded via US aid.
CAN ISRAEL SURVIVE WITHOUT US ASSISTANCE?
While it remains highly unlikely that the US will abandon its aid commitments to Israel, the question still stands. If the US were to abruptly halt its financial and material support, would Israel be able to weather the resulting deficit? The answer is a straightforward "no".
As Unnithan notes, Israel is fundamentally ill-equipped to wage a protracted conflict in isolation.
"If the US turns off the tap of spare parts and equipment, it would seriously affect the combat worthiness of Israel’s fighter fleet; the Israeli Air Force would not be able to fly all its fighters. Israel would run out of bombs and missiles in a long conflict because it doesn’t have the 'magazine depth' to fight sustained wars," he says.
And that vulnerability is not just confined to the air force; Israeli reliance stretches across every branch of its national security architecture. Even Israeli officials openly acknowledge this systemic dependency. Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, former National Security Council deputy chief Chuck Freilich emphasised that merely ramping up domestic manufacturing cannot sever the cord of US reliance.
"We have dependence in all areas. It's not just about ammunition and munitions: There are all kinds of platforms we need. Even if we produce more of our own bombs, we still need to get the planes from the US in order to fly, so we haven’t really reduced our dependence on the US just by producing more bombs," Freilich warned.
There is also the fact that Israel lacks the economic heft to independently develop the high-tier hardware it has acquired from Washington. Attempting to replace major US platforms is a financial impossibility. "We talked about building our own planes once and it absolutely ruined us," Freilich noted, referring to the cancelled 1980s Lavi fighter jet programme that unsustainably swallowed nearly 18% of Israel's GDP.
He added that "the prices for production are only becoming more and more exorbitant... We certainly cannot" build such advanced aircraft on our own, concluding that "there’s a price to be paid for being a small, embattled country with limited resources."
This sentiment is echoed by other top defence figures who point out that Israel simply lacks the domestic market size to justify the astronomical costs of major weapons development. Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, former IDF deputy chief Major General (res) Uzi Dayan cautioned that "it will be hard to manufacture expensive items that are one of a kind", stating flatly, "We need to understand our economies of scale limit". Ultimately, as Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) observed, sweeping calls for total military self-reliance remain little more than a "‘wish list that does not necessarily align with economic realities."
CAN ISRAEL FIGHT LONG CONVENTIONAL WARS WITHOUT US HELP?
Unnithan reinforces this point, stating flatly that "Israel cannot fight long conventional wars without US support." Yet, he does not foresee a total rupture. "Despite the asymmetry in size, population, economic and military heft, both Israel and the US are wedded to each other as long-term strategic partners," he notes.
The US, after all, also benefits from Israel's reliance. As defence analyst John Spencer noted, money sent to Israel is ultimately invested back into the US.
Spencer also noted in a post on X that by funding an ally that tests cutting-edge tech under real-world conditions, the US gains invaluable "battlefield lessons" in urban and drone warfare, effectively allowing the Pentagon to adapt its own military doctrine "without having to learn them first through American casualties, American mistakes, or American wars".
Furthermore, Spencer attested that the US gains a "massive strategic advantage" from its close intelligence partnership with Israel. Israeli agencies like Mossad, Spencer states, provide high-value intelligence on adversaries, proxy groups, and terrorist networks, helping thwart threats to Americans, protect US forces, and enhance Washington's understanding of regional security risks.
ISRAEL'S RELIANCE ON US IMPACTS ARMS IMPORTERS LIKE INDIA
Crucially, this deep-seated dependency has significant geopolitical implications for third-party buyers such as India. Unnithan says while "Israel emerged as a halfway point between Russia and the US for India's defence needs", its defence exports were still shaped by Washington's influence.
"Israel’s cutting-edge military hardware might have appeared to have no strings attached, but India experienced the closeness of the US-Israel relationship nearly two decades ago when it wanted to purchase two sophisticated systems, the Elta EL/M-2080 'Green Pine' radar and the 'Phalcon' AEW&C aircraft," explains Unnithan.
Although both systems were marketed as Israeli products, they had been jointly developed with the US, giving Washington a decisive say over their export. As a result, their sale to India could proceed only after American approval.
"The Green Pine had been jointly produced with the US for Israel’s Arrow theatre missile system. The sale could go ahead only after the US green-lit it. India bought a version of it called the 'Swordfish' long-range tracking AESA radar from Israel for the indigenous Ballistic Missile Defence programme. Israel’s 'Phalcon' AEW&C radar was sold to India around that time only after the US cleared the sale—again, it had US R&D and components," says Unnithan.
So, it's not just for Israel's needs, even its defence exports rely heavily on the US.
In any case, one thing is crystal clear. For all of Jerusalem's declarations that it will act independently to secure its interests, whether it's against Iran, or the numerous proxy groups propped up by Tehran, it can ill-afford to sever the lifeline of American military assistance. Without Washington's support, Jerusalem might find defending its interests very difficult.
