A Dutch soldier stands guard near a Royal Netherlands Air Force F-35 at Graf Ignatievo airbase, Bulgaria, April 14, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov

In the arena of US alliances, no relationship delivers the outsized return for the American taxpayer as does the US-Israel partnership.

Conventional wisdom often frames the annual $3.8 billion US credit to Israel (spent on the acquisition of military systems only in the US) as “foreign aid” — a one-way handout, supposedly at the expense of American taxpayers. Formally, it is “foreign aid.”

However, due-diligence reveals that this is not aid, but a low/no-risk, high-return investment for the US.

Since 1967, Israel has functioned as Washington’s premier dollar and defense multiplier, the most effective battle-tested laboratory, the most sophisticated commercial and defense research and development center (for over 250 US high tech giants, in addition to the US defense and aerospace industries), a unique source of intelligence for the US, and a geopolitical force-amplifier with no American military bases on its soil.

In fact, US-Israel cooperation has been mutually beneficial, generating an annual Return-on-Investment (ROI) of well over 1,000% on Washington’s “foreign aid” to Israel.

This has yielded the US billions of dollars in research and development savings, bolstered economic output and export, expanded employment, increased tax revenues, boosted technological edge, and enhanced US national and homeland security.   No other ally can deliver such benefits.

At the heart of this multiplier effect lies Israel’s role as a real-time, combat-proven showroom and innovation hub for the US defense and aerospace industries. For example, in 2018, Israel was the first country to receive the F-35 combat aircraft for operational use. At that time, leading US experts considered it a failed program.

However, by 2019, the combat-experienced Israeli Air Force, together with Lockheed-Martin, had solved most/all of the software/technical and hardware/mechanical glitches.

This transformed the F-35 into the flagship of the US Air Force’s future fighter fleet and the premier program of the US aerospace industry. The Israeli experience and resulting upgrades have been shared on a daily basis with the US manufacturer, saving 10-20 years of research and development, which amounts to tens of billions of dollars (the F-35’s total development cost amounts to $55BN).

These battle-tested refinements have dramatically enhanced the aircraft’s reliability, maintainability, electronic warfare capabilities, weapons integration, and survivability.  As a result, since 2019, the uniquely intense use of the F-35 by the Israeli “showroom” has yielded a surge in global demand. Since 2019, more than 1,200 F-35s have been exported to US allies, including Britain, Canada, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, and others.

Currently, the F-35 project supports 290,000 jobs (a 35% expansion since 2019). It contributes about $3 billion in annual corporate and personal income tax revenues to the US Treasury. This almost completely offsets the $3.8 billion annual investment in Israel from this single platform alone.

This role of Israel as a unique dollar and defense multiplier for the US applies to dozens of advanced US military systems, enhancing the fortunes of US defense and aerospace industries, which employ 2.5 million people.

Moreover, Israel’s track record has propelled American exports, such as recent Apache deals with Poland, South Korea, Britain, and others, in excess of $20 billion.

Intelligence Cooperation

Intelligence cooperation delivers a most staggering ROI due to Israel’s demography, which includes many people, who could easily blend into every Muslim country, as well as Israel’s daring, innovative, can-do, defiance of odds and out-of-the-box state-of-mind.

For example, in 2017, Israeli human and signal intelligence exposed a Syrian ISIS unit, which developed the means to insert explosives into laptops, bypassing US civic airport security.

Upon receiving the information from Israel, the US upgraded its airport security systems, which spared the US a catastrophic loss of human lives, severe cost to US airliners, and a grave blow to public morale and the US’ global posture of deterrence.

Strategically, Israel functions as the largest US military beachhead with no US boots on the ground.  This is equivalent to a fleet of unsinkable aircraft carriers and multiple ground divisions in the Mediterranean-Red Sea-Indian Ocean-Persian Gulf theater.

During the 1970s and the 1980s, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, who served as Chief of Naval Operations and General Alexander Haig, who served as NATO Supreme Commander and US Secretary of State, contended that the Israeli track record and potential replaces the need to manufacture and deploy to the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean a few more aircraft carriers and deploy additional ground divisions to the Middle East.

The manufacturing cost of one advanced aircraft carrier is $10-$13 billion (more than 300 percent ROI), and the cost of deploying one ground division to the Middle East is $1 billion.

Since 1967, Israel has been a leading national security-multiplier for the US.

Israel presents zero “zig-zag” risk unlike other allies of the US, like regimes in Iran, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, and Yemen, which have flipped from pro-US to anti-US overnight due to coups, revolutions, or ideological shifts.

And even when allies don’t shift, they are not always dependable. Qatar hosts the massive Al Udeid US military base, but it bankrolls Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood anti-US Sunni terrorists, while on-again off-again cozying up to the anti-US Ayatollah regime in Iran.

Israel’s multiplier-effect extends beyond defense into commercial high-tech. More than 250 US giants, such as Google, Intel, Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, John Deere, Johnson & Johnson, General Electric maintain R&D centers in Israel, leveraging its brainpower, defiance-of-odds culture, and frontier mentality to pioneer dual-use breakthroughs in AI, cyber, communications, medicine, agriculture, irrigation and financial technology. These innovations sustain US global technological supremacy, boost US exports, and create high-value jobs in the US.

The US’ $3.8 billion investment is erroneously defined as foreign aid. In fact, the US supplies Israel with US-made advanced military systems, which are stress-tested, upgraded, and perfected, and produce strategic and military benefits, as well as domestic financial benefits to the US.

In an era of peer competition and persistent threats, the US-Israel mutually-beneficial two-way-street remains indispensable. Policymakers and citizens alike would do well to recognize Israel as one of the US’ most astute investments.  It delivers to the American people unmatched financial and defense returns that secure freedom, prosperity, and deterrence for generations to come.

The author is a commentator and former Israeli ambassador.