no different from the battles over the pro-
curement of high-ticket military items in
the U.S., like the Abrams tank and the
MX missile: there's something in a democ-
racy that doesn't love a very expensive,
untried new weapons system. In Israel, as
in the U.S., its proponents must prove that
it's needed, that it will work, and that it's
worth the money. But the Israelis must
also wrestle with several vexing questions:
Should billions of dollars be spent to pro-
duce a home-made fighter when the same
money, or perhaps less, could buy U.S.
fighters that are acknowledged as the
global standard? Specifically, couldn't the
F-16, at the moment the most sought-after
fighter in the world, be modified to Israeli
specifications for much less than the cost
of the Lavi? Besides, is it wise for Israel
to sink so much of its work force, techno-
logical skills, and money into a single pro-
ject? What happens when the project's
complete? Must thousands of engineers be
assigned to another new plane?

The center of this controversy is a tiny,
graceful aircraft, weighing barely 18,000
pounds without its bomb load.
The Lavi will have extreme maneuver-
ability but not necessarily extreme speed.
At a flat-out 1,221 m.p.h., the Lavi will be
slower than the principal aircraft it's
meant to replace — the Kfir. The retreat
from pure speed reflects the realization by
air war specialists that there isn't much
use for ultra-fast straight-away sprints ex-
cept at each end of a sortie. In the three
critical battle situations — SAM evasion,
close air support of ground forces, and air-
to-air combat — excessive speed is useless.
It can even be fatal.
No existing fighter can out-race a
locked-on SAM, but it's possible to out-
maneuver the missile by veering more
sharply than it can. While the Lavi isn't
designed for flat-out speed at high alti-
tude, it will be exceptionally quick in mak-
ing the darting maneuvers required down
close to the battlefield — or, as pilots say,
on the deck. Paradoxically, this agility
comes from a design so unstable aerody-
namically that the plane would pitch out
of control and disintegrate if its four flight-
control computers were not constantly
guiding it.
Like an unstable person, the plane is
easily tipped one way or the other. But
that can be a virtue, since it means that
less energy is required to overcome the in-
ertia of a given flight path. Moshe
Blumkine, chief engineer for the Lavi, com-
pares an unstable aircraft to a broom

balanced on your finger. You must con-
stantly adjust your finger to keep the
broomstick balanced. The Lavi's four com-
puters can, together, adjust nine different
maneuvering surfaces as many as 70 times
a second. The pilot still uses his stick and
throttle to command the airplane, but the
computers determine how to carry out
each order — or even modify it if the pilot
is too quick with his commands.
Yet the Lavi's extreme agility, so use-
ful in evading SAMs, may be only occa-
sionally beneficial in future forms of aerial
combat. In the classic dogfight, opposing
pilots maneuvered at close range, each at-
tempting to get behind the other, from
which position cannon fire or (since the
1960s) heat-seeking missiles could best
make the kill. These spiraling three-
dimensional jousts in the air may still oc-
cur, but with diminishing frequency, be-
cause a new generation of air-to-air
missiles is designed to pick off enemy air-
craft at distances of up to 30 miles —

he Lavi's
cockpit will have a TV-like
screen showing a battle pic-
ture in up to seven colors:
Enemy aircraft in red,
friendly planes in blue,
unknowns in yellow. It will
be, said an Israel official, a
"big video game."

beyond visual range, or what the trade
calls BVR.
These new missiles may be radar-guided
or heat-seeking or both. In the last case,
radar guides the missile until, as it nears
its target, a heat-seeking capability takes
over. This type of missile doesn't have to
fly up the enemy's tail pipe, as earlier heat-
seekers did. It can zero in on the wide heat
plume behind the airplane, which offers a
bigger target, and even hit head on. The
targeted pilot doesn't have a prayer of
evading the missile. And by the time the
BVR missile has done its job, the attack-
ing fighter can be well on its way
elsewhere.
' The problem in BVR combat is that the

aircraft that takes a missile on the nose
may turn out to be a "friendly." Sophisti-
cated HT (identification friend or foe)
equipment is meant to analyze the elec-
tronic emission of what is otherwise only
a blip on the radar screen. But IFF can be
misled. And the problem is compounded
by the need for a swift decision on whether
to fire the missile: even at a distance of 30
miles, pilots in two fighters closing at 800
m.p.h. will be eyeballing each other in less
than 70 seconds. He who hesitates to pull
the trigger may be blown out of the sky.
The Israelis pride themselves on their
scrupulous use of IFF techniques — and
have scoffed at the Arabs for being "trig-
ger happy" and shooting their own planes.
But as recently as during the Lebanon
War of 1982, Israeli armored units fired on
what they were convinced was the enemy
— only to discover they'd out hit other
Israeli tanks. If such confusion could reign
on the ground, where battle lines tend to
be more clear cut and movements are rela-
tively slow, then the situation in the air
above could be calamitous. One of the
most intriguing arguments advanced by
some Israelis for building the Lavi rather
than buying American aircraft involves
IFF. According to this view, since the U.S.
sells F-16s to the Arabs as well as to Israel,
how do you tell a Saudi F-16, say, from an
Israeli F-16? Until such time as Lavis are
sold to the Arabs, Israel's pilots will be
more likely to identify an aircraft unique-
ly their own than one flown by nine other
countries.
The decline in the primacy of the dog-
fight and the increase in anti-aircraft-
missile capabilities would seem to portend
a fall-off in the use of the on-board cannon
which has long been the fighter pilot's
trustiest weapon. After some debate, it
was decided to arm the Lavi with one can-
non — mostly as a pacifier for pilots, who
don't seem to be comfortable without
guns, whether they use them or not.
As fat back as 1965 the French propos-
ed that the Mirages then being sold to
Israel be delivered cannonless. In their
place would be a new generation of French
missiles. The customer resisted. Two years
later, on the first morning of the Six Day
War, the destruction of the Egyptian air
force was carried out almost entirely by
cannon fire from those Mirages. By the
time of the Lebanon War, the Israelis had
at their disposal of a whole range of ad-
vanced air-to-air missiles. Even so, about
half a dozen of the 85 Syrian fighters shot
down during air-to-air combat were
reportedly dispatched by cannon fire. And

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