Amos Yadlin

Aluf (Major General, res.) Amos Yadlin (עמוס ידלין; born 1951) is a former Israeli Air Force (IAF) general, Israel Defense Forces military attaché to Washington, D.C. and head of the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate (Aman).

Biography
Amos Yadlin was born in Kibbutz Hatzerim and in 1970 enlisted in the IAF. Yadlin obtained a B.A. in Economics and Business Administration at Ben Gurion University in the Negev. He received a master’s degree in Public Administration from the JFK School of Government, Harvard University.

Military career
After qualifying as a fighter pilot, Yadlin joined the 102 "Flying Tiger" Squadron, with which he flew the A-4 Skyhawk during the Yom Kippur War. In the early 1980s Yadlin was among the first batch of Israeli pilots to fly the F-16 Fighting Falcon and was among the eight pilots selected to carry out Operation Opera against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981. A year later, Yadlin participated in Operation Peace for Galilee. In all he had accumulated about 5,000 flight hours and flew more than 250 combat missions. Yadlin commanded two fighter squadrons (116 and 106), two Israeli Air Force bases (Nevatim and Hatzerim) and between 1990 and 1993 headed the IAF's planning department. He then served as Deputy Commander of the IAF.

In February 2002 Yadlin was awarded the rank of Major General and appointed commander of the IDF's Military Colleges and National Defence College. Between 2004 and 2006 he served as Israel's military attaché to the United States. Upon his return to Israel, Yadlin was named head of Aman, the IDF's Military Intelligence Directorate.

After his retirement from the IDF in November 2010, Yadlin joined the Washington Institute for Near East Policy as the Kay Fellow on Israeli national security. In November 2011, he was appointed director of Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies.