The Sword And The Olive (52 page)
Read The Sword And The Olive Online
Authors: Martin van Creveld
The first complete major weapons system to be produced in Israel was the Kfir in the early seventies, which was not original or able to match the new generation of U.S. combat aircraft then coming into service, the F-15s and F-16s. Seeking the ability to design and develop aircraft from scratch, IAI during the late sixties started work on two other machines, the Arava and the Westwind. The former was a light transport aircraft especially adapted to operating from the short, primitive runways that might be found near the battlefield or in less-developed countries. The latter was a twin-engine executive jet, its design having been purchased from a U.S. firm; IAI converted it to a naval patrol aircraft by adding complex electronics in the nose. It was intended that both aircraft would also be exported, but in the event sales proved disappointing; by 1976 neither plane had even remotely approached the break-even point and the huge losses that ensued led to the resignation of IAI’s founder, Al Schwimmer.
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All the while the company was sinking money into the design of an advanced Israeli-designed fighter-bomber. The idea that the IAF’s combat structure should have two tiers—a few high-performance aircraft and many less sophisticated machines—had originated with Ezer Weizman when he commanded the air force in the 1960s. As minister of defense, he pushed for its realization.
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All the while the company was sinking money into the design of an advanced Israeli-designed fighter-bomber. The idea that the IAF’s combat structure should have two tiers—a few high-performance aircraft and many less sophisticated machines—had originated with Ezer Weizman when he commanded the air force in the 1960s. As minister of defense, he pushed for its realization.
Originally, the Lavi, as the aircraft was called, was a small, lightweight fighter-bomber intended to replace the nearly obsolete Skyhawks and Kfirs at reasonable cost. Later, though, technical considerations caused refinement after refinement. Like counterparts elsewhere, Israeli engineers found it difficult to resist building the best and most advanced machine; but whenever they thought they had achieved it a new and even more promising technical advance appeared on the horizon, begging to be incorporated.
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Consequently the aircraft grew until it became something like a little brother of the F-16; one can imagine Begin’s bemusement when, during his term as minister of defense, he was called upon to decide whether the two aircraft should share the same engine. Under Sharon its prospects continued to look good, and in 1983 they improved again when the defense portfolio was taken over by Moshe Arens. Former IAI director, he liked the Lavi for its own qualities and for the potential impact its development would have on Israel’s high-tech industry.
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Consequently the aircraft grew until it became something like a little brother of the F-16; one can imagine Begin’s bemusement when, during his term as minister of defense, he was called upon to decide whether the two aircraft should share the same engine. Under Sharon its prospects continued to look good, and in 1983 they improved again when the defense portfolio was taken over by Moshe Arens. Former IAI director, he liked the Lavi for its own qualities and for the potential impact its development would have on Israel’s high-tech industry.
At this point the project ran into problems. The United States much preferred that the IAF purchase U.S.-made aircraft, and consequently it limited, though never completely prohibited, the conversion of military aid into Israeli currency. As Israel went into an economic recession in 1983-1984, the IAF was forced to cut back the number of Lavis it intended to purchase by more than one-half, from 350-400 to 150-200. As a result, per-unit price shot up, and it became imperative that the aircraft be exported so as to recover the development costs. However, the United States controlled much of the technology earmarked for the Lavi, including besides the engine the advanced composite materials for the airframe and wings. Hence prospects for exporting the Lavi, if completed, depended entirely on U.S. approval. When Rabin, who was strongly pro-American and since the sixties had opposed many native arms production projects, took over from Arens in 1984, the writing was on the wall. A year into office, he decided to cancel the Lavi and purchase F-16s instead.
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Although efforts to build a fighter-bomber did not yield fruit, Israel did produce a major weapons system, the Merkava tank. Tal in the sixties had developed an armored doctrine that differed significantly from that of other armies. The latter regarded mobility as the key and talked about using tanks on the offensive (although they never actually did so until 1991). Not so the IDF, which, considering the tank’s greatest advantage to be protection under fire, preferred to fight defensively behind cover whenever possible. However, the U.S. M-60 was one of the tallest tanks ever produced and thus was not really suitable for that purpose. It had several other weaknesses, among them comparatively weak armor; a large and therefore easy-to-hit turret; and a tendency, which it shared with older U.S. tanks, to go up in flames when hit.
Accordingly, when the Merkava was unveiled it displayed some highly unusual features. The engine, the same 900-horsepower one as used in the M-60, was located in the front instead of the rear, thus placing several extra tons of steel between glacis and crew. The extra room allowed for a large compartment that, for the sake of rapid turnover, was capable of being loaded with ammunition from a forklift; it could also be used to transport several infantrymen or to carry a casualty or two. The turret was exceptionally well designed, flat and tapered. Like the Uzi in its time, the fifty-something-ton monster could almost stand as a metaphor for the IDF; wits claimed that it had a big body, a small head, and a gigantic....
The Merkava, with its 105mm gun, laser range finder, computerized fire-control system, and TAAS-designed, elongated “Arrow” armor-piercing ammunition, was able to take on any enemy tank, including the Soviet-made T-72 with its enormous 125mm gun. Even so, it merely was the centerpiece of Israel’s effort to upgrade its armor by means of native industries. In 1956 and 1967 the ratio of forces to space in the Middle East had been relatively low, permitting the IDF to wend through the less mobile Arab formations and attack from unexpected directions. This was much less the case in 1973 when the Golan front in particular had been crowded chock-a-block with units and weapons, leaving no gap uncovered and forcing the advance on Damascus to be made in the teeth of tenacious Syrian resistance. Considering its own subsequent growth and that of the enemy the IDF expected the future battlefield to be more crowded still; it would, to use a favorite phrase of the time, be “saturated with fire.”
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Accordingly it was necessary to find new means for protecting not only the Merkavas but the other tanks as well.
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Accordingly it was necessary to find new means for protecting not only the Merkavas but the other tanks as well.
When they were put on display in the early eighties, the IDF’s U.S.built M-48s and M-60s had sprouted curious protrusions, like short horns with holes. The mystery was solved when Israel invaded Lebanon. A major surprise of the October War was the Sagger antitank guided missiles, used by Egyptian and Syrian infantry to stop the previously unstoppable Israeli tanks. The Israeli armor was designed to resist tungsten bolts fired from high-velocity guns, but it proved vulnerable to the “hollow” warheads that tipped the Saggers. Whereas the Merkava had been designed to overcome that problem, the IDF’s other tanks had to be adapted by adding “active” armor. Active armor used explosives inside flat boxes made of thin steel; they were designed to deflect the jet of gas that resulted when a hollow warhead hit its target. Screwed onto the above-mentioned protrusions, active armor made the tanks look like a man in an inflatable swimsuit.
When the IDF marched into Lebanon, only the tanks and self-propelled artillery had received the new protection. Not so the mechanized infantry; with aluminum-covered M-113s, the men discovered they were death traps—when hit by a hollow warhead they would burst into flame. Accordingly the APCs received a layer of Israeli-made active armor, which added weight and in time made it necessary to re-engine them. Not content with this, Tal pushed for the adoption of heavier carriers truly capable of marching alongside tanks on the fire-soaked battlefield. The result was the NAGMASHA (the feminine of NAGMASH, the Hebrew acronym for APC), a unique Israeli contraption with no foreign equivalent. Its hull consisted of a modified Centurion tank with the turret removed and the interior adapted to carry infantry and their weapons (e.g., machine guns and antitank missiles).
Less visible than combat aircraft and tanks, the systems developed to counter the Arab antiaircraft defenses represented revolutionary technology. Understandably, not much was said about the subject during the seventies, but when the IDF next went into action it unveiled a series of new technologies. They ranged from humble flares—designed to mislead heatseeking air-to-ground missiles—to electronic jammers to ground-to-air missiles that locked on enemy radar and stayed locked even after the radar was switched off. Some older planes were fitted with new radar built by Elta, others with modern navigation and computerized ordnance-dropping systems. To orchestrate this technology the IAF needed an entirely new network of command, communications, and control. That, too, was accomplished, with the result that in 1982 the gigantic system functioned like clockwork.
Another product that attracted attention during the Lebanon War was remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs). In 1973 the Israelis often suffered from lack of tactical intelligence as heavy enemy fire prevented aircraft and ground units from gathering it. Thus two different companies, IAI and Tadiran, started work on two different RPVs. In some ways the contraptions exemplified Israel’s defense industry at its best; developed in close cooperation with the IDF, they were simple, robust, and well adapted for use under field conditions; owing to the use of off-the-shelf components (such as wheels taken from baby carriages) they were also cheap. The original models carried television cameras that relayed pictures to the operators, literally enabling them to see events on the other side of the hill. Later models were provided with laser range finders, which permitted them to act as artillery spotters. Other models carried radar-jamming equipment or carried out kamikaze strikes against enemy radar stations. The RPV family of weapons proved a hit, and many models were exported.
A shipping industry had long been developing near Haifa, Israel’s major port and largest industrial center. Though it never had the capacity to construct large oceangoing vessels, it was capable of overhauling the navy’s missile boats and building small vessels from scratch. During the seventies and early eighties it constructed hulls for the second- and third-generation missile boats. The engines still had to be imported, as were some of the weapons systems. Other systems, including of course the new versions of the Gavriel missile, were produced in Israel, as were the radar, computers, and electronic countermeasures designed to protect ships from enemy missiles such as the French Exocet, made famous during the Anglo-Argentine Falklands War. With Israel’s navy supplying most all of its workload, the company that built the missile boats, Mispenot Yisael, later went bankrupt. This did not prevent other companies, such as MABAT (Mifalim Bitchoniyim, an IAI subsidiary), from manufacturing smaller patrol boats, some of which were exported.
Perhaps the most important component of Israel’s arms manufacturing was also the least visible. This book, based mostly on non-Israeli sources, has already discussed the acquisition of nuclear weapons, an objective apparently achieved by 1967 (even though the devices at the time may have been too crude for operational use).
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Based on calculations pertaining to the size of the reactor that had been provided by France, during the decade or so after 1973, foreign experts assumed that Israel was capable of producing enough plutonium for approximately two or three devices per year. By the mid-eighties this should have resulted in a modest arsenal numbering perhaps thirty to forty bombs
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(although Israel, in a formula first developed under Eshkol, still insisted that it would not be the first to introduce them into the Middle East). In 1979 a flash in the Indian Ocean picked up by a U.S. satellite was widely interpreted as a joint Israeli-South African nuclear test. The Israelis, however, denied that they had tested a weapon, and the United States backed them up, saying the satellite might have been faulty.
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Based on calculations pertaining to the size of the reactor that had been provided by France, during the decade or so after 1973, foreign experts assumed that Israel was capable of producing enough plutonium for approximately two or three devices per year. By the mid-eighties this should have resulted in a modest arsenal numbering perhaps thirty to forty bombs
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(although Israel, in a formula first developed under Eshkol, still insisted that it would not be the first to introduce them into the Middle East). In 1979 a flash in the Indian Ocean picked up by a U.S. satellite was widely interpreted as a joint Israeli-South African nuclear test. The Israelis, however, denied that they had tested a weapon, and the United States backed them up, saying the satellite might have been faulty.
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Aside from occasional references, matters rested until 1986. That year the experts were sent scurrying back to their figures by the defection of Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Dimona plant. From the point of view of the mass media, Vanunu’s greatest significance consisted in that he made available the first pictures of Israel’s highly sophisticated plutonium separation plant, thus filling in a critical gap in the puzzle that had mystified experts since the sixties. To those in the know, however, two other points were more important.
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First, it appeared that the capacity of the reactor had been enlarged at least once. Based on these calculations, it should have been able to produce much more plutonium than originally thought; this caused the estimate of the number of bombs already built to be revised, up to as many as 100-200.
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Second, Israel apparently had been interested in lithium deutride; indeed heavy isotopes of hydrogen were later said to have been among the materials Israel provided South Africa.
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This in turn indicated plans to build hydrogen bombs (either true fusion devices or so-called boosted fission devices with lithium cores), neutron bombs, or tactical nuclear weapons. Supposing it weighed about a half-ton, a warhead belonging to any one of the three types would have explained the Rabin government’s decision to purchase short-range but deadly accurate Lance missiles from the United States.
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At any rate, in principle Israel should have been able to pursue all three courses simultaneously had it wanted to.
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First, it appeared that the capacity of the reactor had been enlarged at least once. Based on these calculations, it should have been able to produce much more plutonium than originally thought; this caused the estimate of the number of bombs already built to be revised, up to as many as 100-200.
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Second, Israel apparently had been interested in lithium deutride; indeed heavy isotopes of hydrogen were later said to have been among the materials Israel provided South Africa.
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This in turn indicated plans to build hydrogen bombs (either true fusion devices or so-called boosted fission devices with lithium cores), neutron bombs, or tactical nuclear weapons. Supposing it weighed about a half-ton, a warhead belonging to any one of the three types would have explained the Rabin government’s decision to purchase short-range but deadly accurate Lance missiles from the United States.
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At any rate, in principle Israel should have been able to pursue all three courses simultaneously had it wanted to.
If Israel, as foreign reports have claimed, did in fact acquire its first nuclear devices before the Six Day War, then its only delivery vehicle would have been the French-made Vautour light bombers available at the time (assuming, that is, a bomb weighing no more than a ton and also that IAI would have had the capacity to carry out the necessary modifications). In 1968-1970 these aircraft were joined by Skyhawks and Phantoms, both of which possessed much larger ordnance payloads. At any rate, and in light of the losses it took during the war, the IAF cannot have felt comfortable with aircraft as the only delivery vehicle.
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