Egyptian deep strike request.

In January 1970, during The War of Attrition, Nasser requested the Soviets supply Egypt with deep strike aircraft on the assumption that if he could strike deep into the heart of Israel (as Israel was to Egypt) Egypt would win the War of Attrition. In the event the Soviets declined and supplied more SAMs, Mig21 and even Soviet flown Su15 interceptors. This decision led to the thick SAM/AAA defences encountered in the 1973 war.

But WI the Soviets had decided to supply the Egyptians with deep strike capabilities? What would they have supplied in 1970; Tu-16, Tu-22 or maybe even ballistic missiles? What would Israel do? What would the 1973 was look like if Egypt had less SAMs but more long range bombers?
 
In January 1970, during The War of Attrition, Nasser requested the Soviets supply Egypt with deep strike aircraft on the assumption that if he could strike deep into the heart of Israel (as Israel was to Egypt) Egypt would win the War of Attrition. In the event the Soviets declined and supplied more SAMs, Mig21 and even Soviet flown Su15 interceptors. This decision led to the thick SAM/AAA defences encountered in the 1973 war.

But WI the Soviets had decided to supply the Egyptians with deep strike capabilities? What would they have supplied in 1970; Tu-16, Tu-22 or maybe even ballistic missiles? What would Israel do? What would the 1973 was look like if Egypt had less SAMs but more long range bombers?
Tu22s would be better choice than Tu16s. Being subsonic the latter would have been cut to pieces by the IAF.
 
Wouldn't that end up hurting Egypt more? Such bombers would be battling the IAF in the Israeli's home turf while sams, IIRC, did a good job IOTL. OTOH, the Egyptians don't need something with the range of the Tu-22.
 
To be honest, I can't see any of those options being hugely helpful.

Tu-16's are the most likely to be supplied, but as others have pointed out the IAF will probably make short work of them. That's not to say they couldn't drop some bombs on cities, but I doubt it would be enough to have any real effect. The Tu-22 (I presume you mean the Blinder rather than the Backfire) is more of a challenge for the IAF, but it had problems with serviceability at the best of times IIRC. Again, I'm not sure the Egyptian ground and air crews are up to the challenge of making either of these bombers a real threat to Israel.

The ballistic missiles couldn't realistically be stopped by Israel without the equivalent of Scud-hunting missions by the IAF, but Egypt would have to launch a lot of IRBMs in order to achieve much. Scud missiles of some sort are probably the most likely types to be supplied. If fired in large enough numbers at cities they might cause a moderate number of civilian casualties - early Scuds had an appallingly large CEP, so they're not really practical for precision strikes. Against that the warhead isn't particularly large and I imagine Israeli radar would provide at least a few minutes warning of incoming attacks.

The major effects I see for any of these options are firstly (and perhaps more importantly) the diversion of IAF effort away from ground support and air superiority tasks. While the bombers won't last long against fighters, as long the threat of raids continues (or as long as it's hunting Scud's in the desert) the IAF cannot put it's full weight into other aspects of the air war. This might have some implications for the struggle on the ground.
Secondly, especially in the case of the Blinder and IRBM attacks, there won't be a great deal of warning for the targets. The need to be constantly ready to take shelter might have an impact on the activities of those in the target areas. I don't imagine the psychological impact making it any more likely that Israel would give in, of course, in fact it would likely have the opposite effect. Still, it might have some economic consequences.
 
Firstly, when Egyptian shelling and raids in the Sinai got too heavy the Israelis would escalate with air strikes and commando raids deep into Egypt. The Egyptians seemed to lack the capability to strike deep into Israel, this is what Nasser was seeking.

Egypt did have some Tu16s, they fired some anti-radar AS5s in 1973 on targets in the Sinai and Israel itself, but this doesn`t seem to have been enough for Nasser, perhaps the Tu16s were too vulnerable to regularly strike Israel. I don`t know what Nasser wanted exactly, perhaps some Su20s would have been enough, or perhaps fighters to escort bombers on long range missions.

As for the impact, the main thing would have been the lack of a very dense SAM network on the canal, which would have been easier for the IAF to penetrate to get to the invasion bridges.
 
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