765 Iran to acquire Israeli-designed (US-funded) Lavi fighter (based on F16) from China as J-10

Iran to acquire Israeli-designed (US-funded) Lavi fighter (based on F16)
from China as J-10

Newsletter published on 6 August 2015

(1) Iran to get Chinese J-10 fighters in return for oil rights
(2) Has Israel’s U.S.-Funded Lavi Jet Been Reborn as China’s J-10 Warplane?
(3) U.S. Military Technology sold by Israel to China upsets Asian Power
Balance
(4) The Flight of the Lavi - by Dov Zakheim, a Zionist and the Pentagon
official who killed it
(5) Israel planned to sell the Lavi to other countries, in direct
competition with U.S.-built fighters

(1) Iran to get Chinese J-10 fighters in return for oil rights
http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20150805000189&cid=1101

Staff Reporter

2015-08-05

Iran will become the second overseas user of Chengdu Aircraft Industry
Group's J-10 fighter without paying a dollar to China by signing a
contract to allow Beijing to exploit its largest oilfield over the next
20 years, according to our sister paper Want Daily.

China will provide the Iranian Air Force with a total number of 24 F-10
Vigorous Dragon jets, the export version of the J-10, to equip its two
fighter groups. The cost of a single J-10 is estimated at US$40 million,
making the value of the deal around US$1 billion. This could be bartered
through permitting Beijing 20 years of exploitation rights to the
Azadegan oilfield.

With a range of 2,940 kilometers, the fighters are capable of defending
Iran's entire airspace and that of the Persian Gulf.

Several Chinese military analysts believe the United States may not be
happy about such a deal and China will face international pressure
should Iran use the fighters in combat against US allies in the region.
Others meanwhile pointed out that 24 fighters will not make a major
difference to the strategic situation in the Middle East.

It has been alleged — though officially denied — that the J-10 was
developed with technology provided by Israel. If this is the case, it
would be somewhat ironic if that technology ends up in the hands of
Israel's primary and avowed enemy in the region.

Pakistan is the first overseas customer for the J-10. Back in 2009,
China agreed to sell 36 export version of the advanced J-10B fighters
known as FC-20 to Pakistan in a contract worth US$$1.4 billion. The
aircraft is designed to be equipped with new weapons system such as the
SD-10A Beyond Visual Range Air to Air Missile. None of the aircraft have
yet been delivered to the Pakistan Air Force, however.

(2) Has Israel’s U.S.-Funded Lavi Jet Been Reborn as China’s J-10 Warplane?

http://www.wrmea.org/2007-april/has-israels-u.s.-funded-lavi-jet-been-reborn-as-chinas-j-10-warplane.html

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, April 2007, page 42

By John Gee

CHINA HAS unveiled an aircraft that some observers suggest bears a
suspicious resemblance to the Lavi, a jet that Israel developed in the
1980s and then decided not to produce. China says that the J-10 was
designed and produced by the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Corporation. It
entered service with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) in
2004 and its existence was officially confirmed when the PLAAF issued
photographs of the aircraft on Dec. 29, 2006. The official Chinese news
agency, Xinhua, later distributed them.

The Lavi is like one of the undead in a vampire story: killed off, it
obstinately refuses to be laid to rest.

Israel wanted to develop an advanced fighter aircraft of its own that
would come into use in the 1990s. Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) took
on the job. It was an ambitious project. Israel had previously produced
the Kfir, but that was essentially an adaptation of the French Mirage
III: the Lavi was intended to be Israel’s very own creation. As such,
its production became a matter of national pride, and it also promised
to enhance considerably IAI’s international standing.

Israel soon discovered that it needed U.S. cooperation, however, and
therein lay the cause of the Lavi’s (possibly temporary) demise. It was
not feasible for Israel to develop one of the world’s most sophisticated
aircraft on a self-sufficient basis, as originally hoped. The Lavi
project consequently involved joint research, the use of some U.S.
components (such as Pratt and Whitney engines) and U.S. taxpayers’ money.

Some $1.3 billion of U.S. aid went into the Lavi before alarm bells went
off in Washington: why was the U.S. paying Israel to develop and produce
an aircraft that would compete on the international arms market with
planes produced by its own companies and put American workers out of
their jobs? The Reagan administration, averse to putting pressure on
Israel over issues such as stopping settlement construction in the West
Bank, leaned on the Israeli government, which duly caved in: the Lavi
project was cancelled in 1987.

There were reports soon after that both South Africa and China were
interested in taking over the Lavi project, but those about China
remained vague and unsubstantiated at the time. The South African
connection seemed more probable, given the record of military
cooperation between Israel and South Africa, which included work on
developing nuclear weapons and Israeli help in the development of the
Cheetah, a South African version of Israel’s Kfir fighter aircraft. Many
Israeli technicians who had worked on the Lavi were reported to have
migrated to South Africa.

The collapse of the apartheid regime rolled down the curtain on
Israeli-South African military cooperation, and if there were any plans
to create a South African version of the Lavi, that is when they would
probably have been shredded.

The Chinese J-10 has no U.S.-made parts: the engine is Russian-made, and
nearly everything else is made in China. According to military affairs
writer Tim Kennedy, however, “after Israel discontinued the largely
U.S.-funded project, it sold China the plans for the Lavi and the
associated secret U.S. technology.”? (See “U.S. Military Technology Sold
by Israel to China Upsets Asian Power Balance,”? January 1996 Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs, p. 12.)

Despite the fact that Israel’s collusion with China over the production
of the new Chinese aircraft has been a cause of friction with Washington
for over a decade, Tel Aviv apparently decided nevertheless to help
provide weaponry to China that would strengthen Beijing’s position
against Taiwan and give it the marketable aircraft that U.S.
manufacturers did not want Israel to produce.

Just as the Jewish state looked to the U.S. when France no longer was
willing to provide it weaponry, Israel may be looking to the future, and
a China ascendant as an emerging world superpower.

John Gee is a free-lance journalist based in Southeast Asia, and the
author of Unequal Enemies: The Palestinians and Israel, available from
the AET Book Club.

(3) U.S. Military Technology sold by Israel to China upsets Asian Power
Balance

http://www.wrmea.org/1996-january/u.s.-military-technology-sold-by-israel-to-china-upsets-asian-power-balance.html

WRMEA, January 1996, pgs. 12, 96

By Tim Kennedy

Israel's Lavi fighter-bomber was designed to be one of the deadliest
weapons in the air. However, it now has been revealed that after Israel
discontinued the largely U.S.-funded project, it sold China the plans
for the Lavi and the associated secret U.S. technology. This has enabled
the Chinese to build their own version of this new generation of fighter
aircraft.

The illegal transfer of plans for the Lavi aircraft from Tel Aviv to
Beijing first became known by the Pentagon when an American surveillance
satellite orbiting over China spotted several new fighter planes on the
runway of a Chinese air base traditionally used for the test and
evaluation of prototype aircraft. Imagery experts at the U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) created rough sketches of the jet, then
processed the graphic data through high-speed supercomputers in order to
obtain three-dimensional representations of the prototype Chinese
fighter planes. Stunning Images

CIA officials specializing in aviation technology were stunned at the
3-D images generated by the computers. China's newest fighter jet was in
fact a copy of the Israeli Lavi, which itself was modeled upon the U.S.
F-16 Fighting Falcon multi-role aircraft.

Although Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), Israel's biggest state-owned
manufacturer of arms and defense technology, was the Lavi's prime
contractor, nearly 90 percent of the Lavi was funded by the Pentagon.
This is just one astonishing aspect of the story of the U.S.-Israeli
aircraft, the evolution of which was almost as Byzantine as its surprise
ending as the most formidable weapon in China's military arsenal.

The Lavi program, as conceived in the early 1980s by Israeli military
planners and their supporters in the Pentagon and Congress, was intended
as an exceedingly generous gift from America to the people of Israel.
The Pentagon never had any intention of including the Lavi in its own
military aviation fleet.

The thinking among U.S. Defense Department officials was that the United
States, having provided Israel for two decades with some of America's
best fighter aircraft—including F-4 Phantoms, F-15 Eagles and F-16
Fighting Falcons—now should give the Jewish state the ability to
manufacture its own state-of-the-art fighter planes.

It took American military officials very little time to decide which
American fighter plane should serve as the model for the Lavi. They
chose the F-16 Fighting Falcon.

The F-16 was—and still is—the American fighter plane most sought after
by foreign governments. Compact and with a highly maneuverable design,
it has proven itself in air-to-air combat and air-to-surface attack.

General Dynamics, the prime contractor for the F-16, touts the Fighting
Falcon as an "aircraft that provides a relatively low-cost, high
performance weapon system...While operating in air combat role, the
F-16's maneuverability and combat radius exceed that of all potential
threat fighter aircraft. It can locate targets under all weather
conditions and detect low-flying aircraft in radar clutter. In an
air-to-surface role, the F-16 can fly more than 500 miles, deliver its
weapons with superior accuracy, defend itself against enemy aircraft,
and return to its starting point. An all-weather capability allows it to
accurately deliver ordnance during non-visual bombing conditions."

Foreign military sales officials at the U.S. Department of Defense
traditionally are tolerant of Israeli mismanagement of U.S. arms
programs. However, as the delays, cost overruns and blatant moves by IAI
to stamp "Made in Israel" on American-made Lavi avionics evolved, the
Pentagon decided to terminate the program.

The U.S. Department of Defense therefore formally ceased sending money
to Israel for the Lavi program in 1987, but only after American
taxpayers had paid some $1.5 billion to fund the project. The
interruption of cash flow effectively killed the program, but left
Israel with two fully functional Lavi prototypes.

While the Lavi program was underway, China repeatedly initiated talks
with U.S. government officials regarding purchase of the F-16. These
requests always were turned down, largely because American defense
officials feared China's possession of the F-16 could destabilize
Beijing's relationships with its neighbors, specifically Taiwan, India,
Russia, Japan, and the Philippines.

Unbeknownst to U.S. officials, however, at some point the Chinese also
initiated talks with Israel. As a result, according to a declassified
Air Force study obtained by the Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs,, the Chinese version of the Lavi—which has been dubbed the F-10
by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—will be "built in large
numbers" by the year 2003 "and will possess a radar-evading [read
stealth] capability."

Currently, China's most sophisticated aircraft are domestically-produced
copies of the Russian MiG-21 Fishbed fighter, a relatively slow,
short-range day fighter which first saw service in 1956.

Morton Miller is a retired State Department intelligence analyst who
formerly tracked sales to Beijing of other Israeli weapons, some of
which also have involved illegal Israeli export of other sophisticated
U.S. defense technology to China. He has told journalists that the close
defense relationship between Israel and China dates back to the
mid-1980s, and involves the transfer of "five billion dollars' worth" of
U.S.-made computers, high-tech electronics and advanced manufacturing
equipment used to create long-range missiles, nuclear weapons and other
weapons of mass destruction.

Ignoring these charges, the Israeli Ministry of Defense officially
acknowledges that it is working with China to manufacture jointly an
advanced fighter plane, but denies that any of the technology from the
Lavi is used in the Chinese F-10. Nevertheless, IAI documents dating
from 1985 credit the enormous role the Pentagon played in helping to
build the Lavi, and acknowledge that "about 50 percent of the Lavi is
built in the United States...The program is supported by the
capabilities of no less than 120 American firms."

Pentagon sources revealed to the Washington Report on Middle East
Affairs, that when U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry confronted
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin with the allegations concerning
transfer to China of U.S. stealth and other fighter aircraft
technologies last year in Tel Aviv, Rabin promised to "resolve the
issue." That was before Rabin's Nov. 4 assassination.

Requests to IAI by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, for
further details on the Lavi technology transfer to China were
stonewalled. "That's a story that's been going around for a number of
years," said Lisa Gordon, assistant to the director of IAI's military
aircraft office in Washington, DC. "We're just seeing it come around
again," she said. "Beyond that, we aren't commenting on it."

The CIA, which for some time has been concerned about the increasingly
close link between Israeli and Chinese defense industries, and the
threat this alliance poses to world stability, has been similarly
frustrated.

Former CIA director R. James Woolsey informed the U.S. Senate in late
1993 that he was "alarmed" by the military partnership between Tel Aviv
and Beijing, and officially accused Israel of "illegally supplying China
with classified defense technology from sources in the West."

Reading from a declassified CIA report while appearing before the Senate
Governmental Affairs Committee, Woolsey added: "We believe the Chinese
seek from Israel advanced military technologies that U.S. and Western
firms are unwilling to provide."

Woolsey revealed that Israel has been selling military technology to
China for over a decade, and that the sales may amount to several
billion dollars.

During subsequent testimony, Woolsey said the CIA is convinced China
also is relying on its friends in Israel to assist in developing
advanced engines for the next generation of Chinese combat vehicles. He
said also that China will rely on Israeli expertise to create
sophisticated airborne radar that employs super-secret technology that
has been entrusted to Israel for another multibillion dollar joint
project—production in Israel of the Arrow missile defense program which
also has been funded largely by the United States.

"[These are] systems," concluded Woolsey in his testimony, "the Chinese
would have difficulty producing on their own." Now it appears that,
thanks to Israeli transfer of highly classified U.S. military
technology, the Chinese have done just that, setting off alarm bells
among China's neighbors, and America's allies, all around the rim of Asia.

Tim Kennedy is a free-lance writer specializing in military affairs
based in Washington, DC.

(4) The Flight of the Lavi - by Dov Zakheim, a Zionist and the Pentagon
official who killed it
http://www.palestine-studies.org/jps/fulltext/40579

VOL. 27

1997/98 No. 4 P. 111 Recent Books Zakheim: Flight of the Lavi

Dov S. Zakheim, who served as a deputy under secretary of defense for
planning and resources during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, found
himself in 1983 in a very difficult position. A practicing Orthodox Jew,
Zakheim was born in Brooklyn, into a Zionist family whose father
numbered Menachem Begin among his closest friends and had grown up in
the same small Polish town as Yitzhak Shamir. Zakheim was educated in a
Jewish schools, attended Zionist summer camps, and was fluent in Hebrew.
In a way, he seemed to fit the stereotype of the militant Jewish West
Bank settler. Yet Zakheim, in his capacity as the U.S. official
responsible for the Pentagon's system acquisition and strategic planning
processes, was assigned by Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger to
investigate and then lead the opposition to the production of Israel's
prized plane, the Lavi, which threatened to demand billions more U.S.
taxpayer dollars before it was complete. The low-key defense policy wonk
and the long-time supporter of Israel suddenly turned into an "enemy of
the Jewish people." He was described by then Israeli defense minister
Moshe Arens (who had known Zakheim since he was a boy), as a "traitor to
the family" and, together with his family, was severely attacked in the
American-Jewish and Israel press, at synagogues, and even by his
children's classmates in elementary school. In a way, as Zakheim put it,
he became the "antithesis" to Jonathan Pollard, the American-Jewish
naval intelligence officer sentenced to a long jail term for spying for
Israel. As an Israeli television reporter described it, "Jonathan
Pollard is seen in Israel as the American Jew who helped Israel. Dov
Zakheim is seen as the American Jew who hurt Israel" (p. 124).

  Zakheim's troubling experience helps to provide his book, a dry and
detailed study by a Washington policy wonk trying to analyze and explain
the economic, technological, and strategic problems involved in the
high-stakes U.S.-Israeli crisis over the Lavi, with a interesting and
colorful personal touch, transforming what Israelis call the Lavi Affair
into something more than just another policy case involving complex
cost-effective calculations in Zakheim's four-year Pentagon career. For
Zakheim, the Lavi Affair has turned into a major test of the ability of
an American-Jewish official to deal in an objective way and by applying
professional standards with a sensitive policy issue involving the
Jewish state. As Zakheim argues in his book, which focuses on his
two-year odyssey of investigation, negotiations, and persuasion, he
passed the test with flying colors, standing up to Israel's leaders and
the Jewish state's supporters in Washington and the American-Jewish
community, and securing U.S. economic and strategic interests.

In anything, one of the main arguments that Zakheim presents in this
book (that with some good editing could have been condensed into a
shorter but more readable magazine-length essay) is that his successful
campaign to cancel the Lavi project was not only in U.S. interests; in
the long-run, the decision by the Israeli government not to go ahead
with the costly project and, instead, to continue its earlier policy of
buying additional advanced U.S. fighters to add to those already in its
inventory, also ended up serving Israeli national interests.

As Zakheim describes in his policy memoir, beginning in 1983, the
Israeli embassy in Washington working together with key U.S.
congressional staff members and lawmakers pushed forward a program for
the sharing of specific advanced U.S. technologies and identified large
amounts of U.S. funding to be allocated to the Israeli development of a
new advanced fighter aircraft, the Lavi. Zakheim, leading an Pentagon
investigation team to assess the Lavi program and the U.S. involvement
in it, found that it would require the investment of billions of U.S.
taxpayer dollars. Moreover, he learned that the Israelis were planning
to sell the Lavi, and its advanced American-designed weapon systems, to
other countries in direct competition with the very U.S. aerospace
companies that would provide their proprietary technology. Of course,
the objectives of the fighter development went well beyond export
revenue and included stoking Israeli national pride, stimulating the
high-technology sector of Israel's economy, and making the country more
self-sufficient in its defense. The driving force for the new plane came
from Arens, the former defense minister, who was strongly supported by
Israeli labor unions and the industries involved in the Lavi
development. Arens became Zakheim's leading nemesis after the U.S.
expert team concluded, following a full and careful analysis, that the
Lavi would be far over budget and would cost significantly more than if
the Israelis continued to buy U.S-made fighters.

Arens and his supporters in Israel and the United States then launched a
political and personal campaign against Zakheim and his team's
conclusions, forcing the Pentagon official to argue against the Lavi on
two fronts: at home in the United States and in Israel's political and
defense establishment. At the end, in the battle between the two New
York-born Jews, Zakheim and Arens, it was the American who had the upper
hand both in Washington and Jerusalem, leading to a suspenseful,
contentious, and extremely close vote of the Israeli "national unity"
cabinet (with the Labor ministers supporting the American position
against the pro-Lavi Likud group). The Lavi project was canceled, and
Arens resigned from the cabinet in protest; but the Lavi continued to
engender friction between Israel and the United States after reports
revealed that Israel exported Lavi technology to South Africa and China.
Moreover, the Lavi crisis provided an important lesson to U.S.
policymakers, suggesting that despite Israel's enormous political power
in Washington, the United States, working together and effectively with
sympathetic players in Israel (politicians, the press, public opinion)
can affect Israeli policy-making in a direction that serves both U.S.
interests as well as Israeli ones. Indeed, this lesson was studied
apparently by the Bush administration, whose campaign to end the Likud
government's settlement policies was based very much on the Zakheim game
plan: standing up to Israel's ardent supporters in the United States and
establishing policy coalitions between officials in Washington and
Jerusalem and working to win the support of the Israeli press and public
for the U.S. position. The policy proved to be very successful, helping
to weaken Israeli public support for the Likud government and
contributed to its electoral defeat. Unfortunately, it is a policy
lesson that has not been reviewed by the Clinton administration and
certainly has not be applied to its dealings with the current Likud
government.

--- Leon T. Hadar covers international politics and economics for U.S.
and foreign publications.

(5) Israel planned to sell the Lavi to other countries, in direct
competition with U.S.-built fighters
http://www.meforum.org/1187/flight-of-the-lavi

SEPTEMBER 1997 • VOLUME 4: NUMBER 3

The Flight of the Lavi: Inside a U.S.-Israeli Crisis

by Dov Zakheim Washington: Brassey's, 1996. 296 pp. $25.95.

Reviewed by Patrick Clawson

Middle East Quarterly September 1997

Zakheim's fascinating account reveals how an important Jewish American
official deals with the issue of conflicting ties to both Israel and the
United States. Hebrew speaker and Orthodox, Zakheim served as assistant
secretary of defense in the Reagan Administration. His father came from
the same small town in Lithuania as Yitzhak Shamir, the Israeli prime
minister with whom Dov Zakheim dealt and whom he knew nearly all his
life. At the same time, Zakheim rejects the essence of Zionism, the
belief that all Jews should immediately move to Israel.

In 1985-87, as the Pollard affair was unfolding, Zakheim led a
successful Pentagon effort to kill an Israeli plan to build the Lavi, an
advanced fighter aircraft. The Lavi made some sense in its original
conception, as a low-technology inexpensive ground attack plane with a
U.S. engine. But it then evolved into a high-technology plane requiring
advanced U.S. technology. The cost became prohibitive, and it required
extraordinary concessions, such as Washington's permission for Israel to
market the plane to third countries in direct competition with
U.S.-built fighters. In the end, Israel could get more planes cheaper by
buying U.S.-built fighters, and so killed the Lavi.

Zakheim retained his equilibrium through the personal insults and
threats to which he was subjected by Israeli officials. But he is too
ready to attribute bad will to the Lavi's supporters when they plausibly
disagreed with him about the utility of the program and Israel's
procurement procedures. After all, the Pentagon's intricate
cost-accounting system, responsible for $500 hammers and other
monstrosities, is not necessarily the model all wish to adopt. Zakheim
also underplays the concern of Israeli officials to be as independent as
possible, with the laudable goal of defending their country by themselves.