Mock-up of Lavi
for fitting and
testing of
components.

Richard Nowitz © Discover Magazine 7/87, Time Inc.

aircraft for reconnaissance. Israel has
more recently produced a heavy tank
called the Merkava (meaning "chariot"),
which has proved to be the equal of any
produced by the superpowers.
The Lavi, however, should surpass these
attainments. At least 4,000 Israelis owe
their jobs to it. About 100 U.S. sub-
conctractors, employing many thousands
more, are working on Lavi systems. The
ultimate cost of developing and building
300 Lavis for the Israeli air force by the
early 2000s may exceed $8 billion — near-
ly all of it in U.S. aid money.
Although designed from scratch, the
Lavi won't be a revolutionary aircraft.
"We don't need to re-invent the wheel,"
says Eini. Rather than creating an entire
airplane, the Israelis to a large extent have
used the latest available components —
most of them American. For example, the
wings, being built by Grumman, represent
the state of the art in carbon-fiber corn-
posite technology. The powerful PW1120
turbofan engine is one of Pratt & Whit-
ney's most advanced. The "fly by wire"
flight-control system is made by Lear
Siegler and Moog. Israel's principal con-
tributions are in the field of avionics (air-
borne electronics). They include a sophis-
ticated home-grown radar, a weapons de-
livery system, an advanced cockpit design,
and, most important, a whole package of
"black boxes" dedicated to the highly
secret art of electronic warfare.
One might think that developing a
fighter with a maximum capacity for sur-
vival would command almost universal
support among Israelis. Not so. The Lavi
has a startling number of critics, who on-
ly seem to grow more numerous as the pro-
ject gets further along. Many are members
of Israel's defense establishment, in-
cluding General Dan Shomron, the Israeli
deputy chief of staff and commander of the
famous Entebbe hostage rescue operation
of 1976. In January he charged that the
Lavi was taking too much money from
other essential defense projects.
The Lavi has also been forsaken by Ezer
Weizman, the former air force chief who
was among the first to propose that Israel
develop a new fighter-bomber. He doesn't
approve of the way the project has ex-
panded and been made more complex tech-
nically. Skeptical voices can be heard even
at Israel Aircraft Industries, where one-
fifth of the workers are involved in build-
ing the Lavi. Perhaps most surprising, the
plane hasn't been fully embraced by those
who will fly it.
The battle over the Lavi is, in one sense,

-

development project ever undertaken by
Israel — the creation of a highly advanced
fighter-bomber called the Lavi (Hebrew for

"Lion").
In its multiple roles, the Lavi will be the
equal of opposing fighters — so long as it
isn't burdened by bombs, of which it can
carry seven tons. But the plane's real dis-
tinction is its toughness. It's designed to
survive in the same environment in which
Eini's Phantom died: while making bomb-
ing runs over targets ringed by missiles.
Israel's stakes in this undertaking are
high. "We're in the unique position of hav-
ing to face enemies who have the best of
both Free World and Eastern Bloc wea-
pons," says the project's deputy director.
"Survivability must be our priority."
Above all, the Lavi is meant to survive the
next generation of Soviet SAMs by using
technology unavailable in the Phantom
and the fighters that have come after it.
In tiny Israel, with its population of 4.2
million, the loss of any soldier or weapon
looms large. And among Israeli weapons,
none is more precious than the fighter air-
craft, which can cost as much as $25

34

Friday, September 19, 1986 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

million (the "flyaway" price of an F-15).
The case for putting survivability first
among the Lavi's priorities, however, has
ramifications beyond the obvious one of
cost. Says the deputy director, "If our air
force suffers, say, a two percent loss rate
in battle, it doesn't sound too bad, given
the ferocious anti-aircraft environment our
pilots must enter. But if we have two hun-
dred and fifty aircraft each flying four sor-
ties a day, we're actually losing two per-
cent of a thousand sorties. That's twenty
aircraft. Still that may not sound too bad.
But after one week, we're without more
than a hundred of our airplanes. And
we've lost more than just airplanes, be-
cause the remaining pilots no longer per-
form the way they should. They just drop
their bombs as fast as they can and run."
In many defense areas, Israel has dis-
played a technological prowess far out of
proportion to its size and national wealth.
It has created its own small arms like the
Uzi submachine gun, the Gabriel surface-
to-surface missile, sophisticated electronic
jamming equipment, and remote-con-
trolled, television-camera-equipped drone