Let the Lavi live?

[zen]

What would it take for the IAI Lavi to make it to service?

Could it be possible say for another provider of systems be to involved? Say another country, investing in the project and becoming a supplier of components.
Would Israeli politics allow that?
Would the US allow that?

 

[Archibald]

Just like the Arrow, TSR-2, Mirage 4000... it had all three physical dimensions correct but politics and budget all wrong.
Very hard for Israel to avoid "so what ? buy more F-16s" pressure.
Shame, because it was a prodigious aircraft with colossal growth potential.
Maybe team with South Africa or PRC but apartheid and Tian An Men made them international pariahs back then.
Or try the " Kfir connection" across South America but once again, politically very difficult. If Uncle Sam with its big stick says "die Lavi", hard to upturn that kiss of death.

 

[zen]

Yes but my point is rather had a another state become a partner on the Lavi, then not only us cancellation much harder, but even if Israel is forced to abandon it, the other partner is not necessarily going to give up.

 

[Archibald]

Just like Concorde, Typhoon or ISS then. How about Turkey ?

 

[galgot]

There is the Chinese connection. Maybe if they bought the all project when cancelled and put a Russian engine, instead of just using Israeli cooperation for doing the J-10.

Why China Looked To Israel's Lavi Jet For Its J-10 'Vigorous Dragon'

Though not a cutting-edge stealth aircraft, it marked an important milestone in China’s military modernization—achieved, most likely, with a little foreign assistance.

news.yahoo.com

 

[zen]

I wasn't getting to specific states.
Rather just thinking if say a Georgia, or Belgium or Khalistan or Kurdestan or somesuch was in a position of moderate economic progress and allied to Israel. Then they might be alternative suppliers or even have a second assembly plant set up.

 

[Fluff]

Sorry, I'm just a little confused - we are in alt history - this could be very confusing, the Lavi is alive and well, living as the J10 in china. In the real world.

 

[galgot]

Sorry, I'm just a little confused - we are in alt history - this could be very confusing, the Lavi is alive and well, living as the J10 in china. In the real world.

While they are both single-engine delta-canards, they are really not the same planes. They J-10 being bigger, and optimized for higher speed than the Lavi (see intake) I think. But it's true some of the Lavi expertise went into the J-10 design.

As for alternative equipment suppliers countries, had the US kept the program going, maybe Taiwan ?
They could have integrated few local equipments and set a local plant, instead of buying M2000-5s maybe ?
That of course would have killed the Israeli-ChinCom connection and maybe the J-10 would have been completely different.

 

[zen]

Sigh.....at the risk of thread hijacking which is what certain comments be...
What a brief examination of Chinese design efforts would show. Is how unremarkable and consistent with their efforts the J10 be.

Anyway back to topic.
While there are components sourced from the US, and licenses of others. A lot of that could be sourced elsewhere.
A number of state industries invested in things like licensed engines, wing construction etc...and so it's not beyond conception that a state might have approached Israel to collaborate on this aircraft.

This could put the US and it's funding into question.
Say for example an AH Greater Croatia, perhaps being like Austria or Sweden officially neutral post war, but facing a number of possible local threats....the obvious one being a AH Serbia.
Such a state might have both the need, the industry and the finance to involve itself with Israel. Choosing it over Sweden for export reasons.

 

[Fluff]

I'm not sure who's being tarnished as a hijacker....

Anyway, the mention of Sweden, if the Saab story ends with the Viggen (and nothing wrong with that) then they could go shopping, and while trying to keep unaligned, the Lavi could fit the bill. I cant think of many negatives, not much history between Sweden and Israel/Jews.

Already been mentioned is South Africa, as one of the few untouchables - could add North Korea - if Russia/China didnt want them getting anything beyond the Mig 21.

Maybe Argentina retains the Junta(no falklands Folly) and becomes almost another South Africa, and decides to revisit fast jet production.

 

[galgot]

I'm not sure who's being tarnished as a hijacker....

Anyway, the mention of Sweden, if the Saab story ends with the Viggen (and nothing wrong with that) then they could go shopping, and while trying to keep unaligned, the Lavi could fit the bill. I cant think of many negatives, not much history between Sweden and Israel/Jews.

Already been mentioned is South Africa, as one of the few untouchables - could add North Korea - if Russia/China didnt want them getting anything beyond the Mig 21.

Maybe Argentina retains the Junta(no falklands Folly) and becomes almost another South Africa, and decides to revisit fast jet production.

My bad, i was the one who first mentioned China and J-10...

 

[kaiserbill]

The logical choice for co-operation was the existing axis of Israel-South Africa-Taiwan.
There are many examples of missile (Gabriel etc), nuclear, naval vessels, and other co-operative programmes.
All 3 had an existing indigenous fighter programme at roughly the same time, give or take a few years. The Lavi, the Carver Project, and the Ching Kuo.
Lavi engineers were hired by South Africa after the Lavi cancellation.
I doubt very much a blatant straight Lavi would end up in Taiwan or South Africa, or even a derivative, as history demonstrated.
In any event, Taiwan had US help on the Ching Kuo, and South Africa had invested heavily in their own aviation development infrastructure (various wind tunnels, aero-structure/machining, computers etc).
But, I guess the opportunity to cross pollinate subsystems between the 3 would have been possible... Radar, avionics, weapons, ancillaries (enviro control, wheels, transparencies...etc etc)

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

The point of Lavi was to avoid dependence on other nations. However, US technical assistance and more importantly cash was needed, so the US was effectively already a partner bankrolling the project, and complicating things. I can't see Israel wanting anyone else involved.

Best way to get Lavi built is a US order to replace A-10 and A-7. Grumman had an agreement signed for US Lavi production.

 

[Hood]

My AU choices would be; South Africa or Argentina, both of which had fighter development programmes around the same time so could have been possibilities to jump onto an existing programme.

 

[kaiserbill]

I doubt South Africa and Israel could have carried that off.
As Paul states, the Lavi was being funded by the US.
A straight South African version would not have been acceptable.
The Cheetah carried plausible deniability due to it being an existing type, upgraded in more than one nation previously.
The non-Lavi fact is borne out by South African investment into their own fighter jet infrastructure development, and their own designs.
The only thing I can imagine that would be of real value would be the PW1120 engine of the Lavi.
Getting that would have been a major prize for South Africa, and prevented the really, really expensive route of developing an indigenous engine, with the Atar Plus as a stepping stone. Gas turbine development had started to that end, but one can imagine the cost if no engine options eventuated.
Argentina is a brighter candidate for a straight Lavi purchase, as witnessed by the Dagger purchase.

 

[1635yankee]

What would it take for the IAI Lavi to make it to service?

Could it be possible say for another provider of systems be to involved? Say another country, investing in the project and becoming a supplier of components.
Would Israeli politics allow that?
Would the US allow that?

The US certainly assisted Israel, to the tune of about $2 billion (https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...project/ec6a0eeb-66ae-4593-9b16-58d7d560c831/) and permitted US defense contractors (among others, Norden) to bid development projects (Norden drastically underbid the costs for the Lavi radar, an error which ended up severely damaging that division of UTC). At the time, there was just about no one who would partner with Israel on an international program, certainly nobody who could be of significant financial and technical help. Israel had a population of about 7.8 million at the time, about that of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

It was also rather foolish for the US to fund a program that was, in many ways, a direct competitor to the F-16.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

What would it take for the IAI Lavi to make it to service?

Could it be possible say for another provider of systems be to involved? Say another country, investing in the project and becoming a supplier of components.
Would Israeli politics allow that?
Would the US allow that?

The US certainly assisted Israel, to the tune of about $2 billion (https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...project/ec6a0eeb-66ae-4593-9b16-58d7d560c831/) and permitted US defense contractors (among others, Norden) to bid development projects (Norden drastically underbid the costs for the Lavi radar, an error which ended up severely damaging that division of UTC). At the time, there was just about no one who would partner with Israel on an international program, certainly nobody who could be of significant financial and technical help. Israel had a population of about 7.8 million at the time, about that of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

It was also rather foolish for the US to fund a program that was, in many ways, a direct competitor to the F-16.

Norden's APG-76 radar was for the F-4 upgrade, not Lavi. Lavi used an Israeli Elta EL/M-2035 radar.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

What if the original conception of Lavi as a smaller F404 engined "A-4 Skyhawk for the 1990s" had been followed though?

1) Cheaper
2) Less obviously F-16 competitor
3) Export potential?

 

[Fluff]

What if the original conception of Lavi as a smaller F404 engined "A-4 Skyhawk for the 1990s" had been followed though?

1) Cheaper
2) Less obviously F-16 competitor
3) Export potential?

New Zealand??

 

[zen]

What about Yugoslavia?
Relations are rumoured to have not improved after '82, due to the then Foreign minister's pro-Arab sentiments.
Certainly there was longstanding contacts across a wide spectrum despite the formal break after '67.

The Novi Avion project and tbe Lavi are quite close conceptually, it would seem.

 

[Archibald]

What if the original conception of Lavi as a smaller F404 engined "A-4 Skyhawk for the 1990s" had been followed though?

1) Cheaper
2) Less obviously F-16 competitor
3) Export potential?

Once again like the CF-105... requirements and performance creep drove costs to the roof.

Maybe the initial project - Arie - would have been better... a Super Kfir with a modern engine.

 

[1635yankee]

What would it take for the IAI Lavi to make it to service?

Could it be possible say for another provider of systems be to involved? Say another country, investing in the project and becoming a supplier of components.
Would Israeli politics allow that?
Would the US allow that?

The US certainly assisted Israel, to the tune of about $2 billion (https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...project/ec6a0eeb-66ae-4593-9b16-58d7d560c831/) and permitted US defense contractors (among others, Norden) to bid development projects (Norden drastically underbid the costs for the Lavi radar, an error which ended up severely damaging that division of UTC). At the time, there was just about no one who would partner with Israel on an international program, certainly nobody who could be of significant financial and technical help. Israel had a population of about 7.8 million at the time, about that of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

It was also rather foolish for the US to fund a program that was, in many ways, a direct competitor to the F-16.

Norden's APG-76 radar was for the F-4 upgrade, not Lavi. Lavi used an Israeli Elta EL/M-2035 radar.

This is from memory, but I think it's accurate. Israel (or IAI) issued a fixed-price contract with very demanding requirements to Norden for the Lavi radar. Norden's bid was about $640 million. After spending that money, Norden was unable to meet the specs. Usually, the US DoD would renegotiate in this situation, and this was likely the expectation at Norden (this was certainly the feeling of the people I knew who worked there), but the Lavi project office would not. Norden was pretty much ruined by this contract (note that I completely blame Norden's management for this, as they knowingly accepted a fixed-price contract for a very demanding project that was far out along the bleading edge)

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Lavi wasn't built. You are confusing this with the Kurnass 2000 F-4 upgrade.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

A secret document dated 3 September 1977 mentioned Weizman's "crazy idea" to develop a "post F-16" aircraft with Iran.

https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1977STATE211727_c.html

SUBJECT: FMS SUPPORT OF KFIR PROGRAM AND NEW AIRCRAFT DEVELOPMENT

" 3. I THEN TURNED TO HIS "CRAZY IDEA" CONCERNING JOINT ISRAELI-IRANIAN CO-PRODUCTION OF A POST F-16 AIRCRAFT (WITH OR WITHOUT U.S. ASSISTANCE) "

From Lavi topic. This scenario requires the Shah to remain in power longer.

 

[apparition13]

What would it take for the IAI Lavi to make it to service?

Could it be possible say for another provider of systems be to involved? Say another country, investing in the project and becoming a supplier of components.
Would Israeli politics allow that?
Would the US allow that?

The cabinet vote was 12-11 against. Switch one vote and Lavi lives. That's the simplest solution.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

What would it take for the IAI Lavi to make it to service?

Could it be possible say for another provider of systems be to involved? Say another country, investing in the project and becoming a supplier of components.
Would Israeli politics allow that?
Would the US allow that?

The cabinet vote was 12-11 against. Switch one vote and Lavi lives. That's the simplest solution.

It was still doomed financially, regardless, unless the US was prepared to bankroll it.

 

[Archibald]

As I said in the Lavi thread - that aircraft was yet another LWF in an already crowded area. It was, somewhat, an accident of history that it was allowed to happen in the first place - by Congress in the early 80's.

Note that, while the Lavi is often mistaken for a F-16 derivative, IAI before 1983 actually tried to get agreements with Northrop and MDD to try and tweak the F-18 and F-20 to Israel requirements. Which shows how Lavi ran straight into the "LWF trio" right from the beginning.
But these options were rejected, probably for RANGE issues.
Osirak was obviously fresh in Israli minds. The F-16s had done the bombing quite well, but the Lavi come exactly from there - to do far better.
The motto essentially was: less drop tanks and much less tankers; more bombs !

In such context, no surprise both F-18 and F-20 were rejected: range was a weakness of both
- F-18 had its ass kicked by the older A-7 it was to replace
- F-20 was the son of F-5, of which range was a liability

Crap, now I'm left wondering whether the best answer to Lavi requirement wasn't... the A-7F.
- big bomb load: check
- big range: check
- supersonic: check
- secondary A2A capability: check (it was a return to the A-7 Crusader roots)

Alas, just like the Lavi (dang !) the A-7F was screwed by... "MOAR F-16s !"

 

[zen]

What would it take for the IAI Lavi to make it to service?

Could it be possible say for another provider of systems be to involved? Say another country, investing in the project and becoming a supplier of components.
Would Israeli politics allow that?
Would the US allow that?

The cabinet vote was 12-11 against. Switch one vote and Lavi lives. That's the simplest solution.

It was still doomed financially, regardless, unless the US was prepared to bankroll it.

Hence why another state needs to be involved.

 

[Hood]

Going to toss in a completely crazy random idea - what about India?
Sure the rebirth of India's indigenous aviation efforts didn't really begin until the 1990s in earnest after the baby steps with Marut and Ajeet, but imagine if they had gone with a joint-produced Lavi instead of continuing to churn out Jaguars and MiG-27s?
India's electronic industry was probably far less capable of then of really contributing much in terms of avionics, and US embargoes would still have applied. But it might have opened up the chance for some GEC-Marconi or CSF goodies instead.

 

[zen]

Going to toss in a completely crazy random idea - what about India?
Sure the rebirth of India's indigenous aviation efforts didn't really begin until the 1990s in earnest after the baby steps with Marut and Ajeet, but imagine if they had gone with a joint-produced Lavi instead of continuing to churn out Jaguars and MiG-27s?
India's electronic industry was probably far less capable of then of really contributing much in terms of avionics, and US embargoes would still have applied. But it might have opened up the chance for some GEC-Marconi or CSF goodies instead.

Rather like Novi Avion, India's LCA Tejas is a Mig21 replacement.
Lavi would fit quite nicely as it would allow funds for modernisation of Jaguar to flow into more Lavi production.
Certainly India would benefit from Israeli and UK input on Kaveri Turbofan.

 

[Archibald]

Going to toss in a completely crazy random idea - what about India?

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=momI9XSV3kM


Brilliant idea, really. Can't be worse than OTL Tejas.

 

[galgot]

Israel, India, Sweden, Yougoslavia all join force to do the ultimate Single-engine Delta-Canard LWF.
And call it the Griplavitejavion-2000, which in service would have been commonly called "the thing"...

 

[riggerrob]

The logical choice for co-operation was the existing axis of Israel-South Africa-Taiwan.
There are many examples of missile (Gabriel etc), nuclear, naval vessels, and other co-operative programmes.
All 3 had an existing indigenous fighter programme at roughly the same time, give or take a few years. The Lavi, the Carver Project, and the Ching Kuo.
Lavi engineers were hired by South Africa after the Lavi cancellation.
I doubt very much a blatant straight Lavi would end up in Taiwan or South Africa, or even a derivative, as history demonstrated.
In any event, Taiwan had US help on the Ching Kuo, and South Africa had invested heavily in their own aviation development infrastructure (various wind tunnels, aero-structure/machining, computers etc).
But, I guess the opportunity to cross pollinate subsystems between the 3 would have been possible... Radar, avionics, weapons, ancillaries (enviro control, wheels, transparencies...etc etc)

South African Carver suufered from a change of mission part-way through development. From reading the Carver thread, I got the impression that the Carver program started under a general who had flown Mirages. He wanted Carver to be a single-seat, single-engined, light-weight, strike fighter similar to Lavi.
Unfortunately, when he retired/posted elsewhere, he was replaced by a general who had flown Buccaneers. The Buccaneer pilot wanted a big, two-seater, twin-engined naval strike bomber. This required a complete re-design and vastly increased costs.

We wonder if the "Mirage general" had controlled the Carver program longer, it might have reached production????????

 

[Archibald]

Israel, India, Sweden, Yougoslavia all join force to do the ultimate Single-engine Delta-Canard LWF.
And call it the Griplavitejavion-2000, which in service would have been commonly called "the thing"...

I keep reading gripaviaire - goddam COVID flu, after attacking bats and birds, now it attacks aircraft.

Common, with so many brands of excellent DNA, it can only be a winner.

Although... Indominus Rex... oh well forget it.

 

[Archibald]

I have a TL in a corner of my head where the Chinese solve their lingering "indigenous turbofan" problem by shooting down an AQM-91 stealth drone trying to spy Lop Nur circa 1970.

By eviscerating the drone remains their get their hands on its General Electric J97 "leaky turbojet" and reverse-engineer it.

For the record, J97 was related to GE1, itself related to YJ101, itself related to F404, then F414...

Then the chinese start selling the resulting medium-size jet-engine to any country in the need... Yougoslavia, South Africa, and others...

Then this connects to that other clandestine business - of Mirage III clones: Kfir, Cheetah....

Even more funny: after the fall of Saigon in 1975 the Chinese get their hands on some ex-SVNAF F-5 Tiger and also reverse-engineer them.

With J97s !

End result: Chinese P.530 Cobra and Chinese F-20 clones... and god damn it: PRC Ching Kuo clones ROTFL

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

I have a TL in a corner of my head where the Chinese solve their lingering "indigenous turbofan" problem by shooting down an AQM-91 stealth drone trying to spy Lop Nur circa 1970.

By eviscerating the drone remains their get their hands on its General Electric J97 "leaky turbojet" and reverse-engineer it.

For the record, J97 was related to GE1, itself related to YJ101, itself related to F404, then F414...

Then the chinese start selling the resulting medium-size jet-engine to any country in the need... Yougoslavia, South Africa, and others...

Then this connects to that other clandestine business - of Mirage III clones: Kfir, Cheetah....

Even more funny: after the fall of Saigon in 1975 the Chinese get their hands on some ex-SVNAF F-5 Tiger and also reverse-engineer them.

With J97s !

End result: Chinese P.530 Cobra and Chinese F-20 clones... and god damn it: PRC Ching Kuo clones ROTFL

J97 was a single shaft pure turbojet, no leaky. Also only 8000lb thrust, so you'd need 2. Other than that, it's good.

 

[Archibald]

The Chinese tried to reverse engineer the Spey and R-29, plus an indigenous design, the WS-6. All three failed. Would J97 be easier to reverse ?

 

[kaiserbill]

Then the chinese start selling the resulting medium-size jet-engine to any country in the need... Yougoslavia, South Africa, and others...

Then this connects to that other clandestine business - of Mirage III clones: Kfir, Cheetah....

South Africa was VERY anti-communist, shown in part of their friendliness, along with expediency, with Taiwan.
There is no way in hell they would buy, or rely on, a Chinese engine, which had terrible MTBO figures anyway.
At that stage, they probably could build a better engine anyway. Single crystal castings of blades had been accomplished, as had production of hot sections of the ATAR 9k50 they held a licence to manufacture. Turmo engine hot sections were also manufactured. (I have pics somewhere of these being manufactured dating from the 80's.)
The problem was mostly finance for an engine that would be produced in limited quantities.
The figures given for Carver totals would have been around 130 produced.
If a new engine had to happen in the end, then it would, but it made far better fiscal sense to procure existing.
Great efforts were made to acquire engines already in existence. The Snecma M53 and M88 were mentioned.
But at the same time, research had begun on the technologies required to first upthrust and redesign the ATAR 9k50, and build a follow on design.
There was an active aviation gas turbine technologies programme for a reason.

I would be most interested to see if there was any interest in the PW1120 for the Lavi, which was to be manufactured by Bet-Shemesh Engines in Israel.
The likelihood of that happening would have been wholly dependent on whether the US was willing to turn a blind eye or not.

And that leads to the a point of this thread I made before:
The Lavi could have had a cash injection into the programme not simply by a straight sale, but by leveraging technology and subsystems from it.
This did happen in the end to a degree with Lavi upgrades and the Cheetah.
Edit: I mean leveraging into Kfir upgrades from Lavi.

 

[Lascaris]

Look at it from a different perspective. Kill LWF in a plausible way and Lavi does not have F-16 to compete with...

 

[BLACK_MAMBA]

The logical choice for co-operation was the existing axis of Israel-South Africa-Taiwan.
There are many examples of missile (Gabriel etc), nuclear, naval vessels, and other co-operative programmes.
All 3 had an existing indigenous fighter programme at roughly the same time, give or take a few years. The Lavi, the Carver Project, and the Ching Kuo.
Lavi engineers were hired by South Africa after the Lavi cancellation.
I doubt very much a blatant straight Lavi would end up in Taiwan or South Africa, or even a derivative, as history demonstrated.
In any event, Taiwan had US help on the Ching Kuo, and South Africa had invested heavily in their own aviation development infrastructure (various wind tunnels, aero-structure/machining, computers etc).
But, I guess the opportunity to cross pollinate subsystems between the 3 would have been possible... Radar, avionics, weapons, ancillaries (enviro control, wheels, transparencies...etc etc)

South African Carver suufered from a change of mission part-way through development. From reading the Carver thread, I got the impression that the Carver program started under a general who had flown Mirages. He wanted Carver to be a single-seat, single-engined, light-weight, strike fighter similar to Lavi.
Unfortunately, when he retired/posted elsewhere, he was replaced by a general who had flown Buccaneers. The Buccaneer pilot wanted a big, two-seater, twin-engined naval strike bomber. This required a complete re-design and vastly increased costs.

We wonder if the "Mirage general" had controlled the Carver program longer, it might have reached production????????

General Earp flew in Korea and he wanted a LWF. From what I have seen - very Mirage 2000 in size but lacking a proper engine. When Earp was replaced by Van Loggerenberg who demanded this new fighter be a do-all to take on Buccaneer missions too the program was doomed. I honestly believe the smaller single engine might have at least reached a flying prototype had it been allowed to persist. The switch to a bigger and heavier aircraft meant the already underpowered for the role Atar was no longer suitable essentially leaving them dead in the water. The Russian SMR would have been the final choice I gather speaking with engineers involved at the time. Quite a few Carver enginners were involved with the SMR project.

But back to topic - considering the real similarities between Carver "1" and Lavi I always wondered why South Africa and Israel didn't join forces. The amount of US involvement most likely explains it. South Africa was the black sheep in the international community and the US wasn't going to indirectly sell them Lavi's. Without the US the program loses a suitable engine and tons of funding which means they end up pretty much where Carver ended up anyway - stuck because no suitable engine was available.