In yet another demonstration of how America benefits from its Israeli partnership, the IDF took one of America’s greatest military technologies and made it next level.
Interestingly this isn’t the first time this happened. Sometimes the US participates, sometimes they permit, and sometimes they just stand aside and pretend it’s not happening.
When I first went to work for the Haze-Grey Navy I worked on the E-2C program. A couple years earlier, we’d sold some of them to Israel—they figured prominently in the Bekaa Valley operations in 1982—and the Israelis wanted to modify the radar to allow them to detect and track low-velocity, low-altitude targets—ships at sea and aircraft on takeoff. We thought that was fine and we worked closely with them to achieve their goals.
A few years later I happened to be in a conversation with a guy I knew who worked on Harpoon. He told me that there were three variants: the A variant which we—the US—used, along with Great Britain; the B variant, which we sold to our other NATO allies, Japan, and Australia; and the C variant, which we sold to everyone else.
Israel was on the C-list. But apparently they’d come in and said, OK, we reverse-engineered our missiles and now they’re as good or better than the A version. So how about you just put us on the A-list and everyone benefits? Apparently—according to my friend—there was vigorous discussion about this and eventually we said no. But we didn’t tell them to stop doing what they were doing, either.
I suspect the Israelis have done similar things with pretty much every weapon system they’ve ever acquired—whether from us or elsewhere—and we just kinda pretend it’s not happening to avoid unnecessary diplomatic issues with the Arab world.
David, I spent sixteen years in the E-2 community some of which was tangent to the FMS program for the E-2. Radar mods were but one story. By the time they finished, it was not operationally much like U.S. E-2s. Same story as the Tomahawk… “no, we won’t let you have “x” “ but, we may very quietly look the other way and perhaps offer some technical guidance. “No” was not a rollover command for the IDF.
Well, I was but a lowly contract specialist when I first came into the organization in 1981. By the time I heard the Harpoon story I was either a senior contract specialist (GM-13) or already a PCO (GM-14). So I heard these stories second-hand mostly.
But as you say I gathered it was the norm rather than the exception. Israel wasn't terribly concerned with managing a massive battlespace: they cared about threats that were in their lap when they spooled up on the runway...or were poking around a few miles offshore. So it's entirely understandable they modded the you-know-what out of the stuff we sold them.
By the same token it was a good deal for them to be under the aegis of the US logistics support structure. Dunno if you remember the F-20 saga but the received wisdom most of the folks I spoke to was that an aircraft that the US didn't seem interested in putting into their own inventory was probably a bad bet.
The F-20 Tigershark program is an excellent acquisition case study in itself that had three insurmountable problems: 1) it was an extension of a dated design. Even magic avionics and more engine couldn’t get around wing loading and external store limitations; 2) final cost estimates placed it at about 85% of the F-16, with limited growth potential. Although estimated operating costs were just over half of the F-16’s. It was seen as a stopgap; 3) Politics of the Regan Administration eased sales of frontline systems. Those factors pretty much killed it… shame that, as it was a pretty little fighter.
I completely agree—but it had the collateral effect of completely killing any further attempts by US contractors to independently develop and sell hardware without the umbrella of the Pentagon.
Also bear in mind the original sales target was Taiwan, which had been cut off from US military procurement under the previous administration. So your point #3 was a correction of that, but it could hardly have been predicted.
David… second thought… “lowly Contract Specialist” is the point at which resulting contracts either work and achieve a requirement or not. The best engineers can’t fix bad and un workable requirements.
Great article on Israel and the F 35. I enjoyed learning that nugget.
It seems to me there’s one country- Iran- that is the largest terrorist state wanting to fight kill and conquer everyone else on the planet. China Russia and Korea need to stay out of it. If they are funding Iran’s proxies they need to stop.
Iran is not going to have anything left to fund as time goes on if China Russia and Korea will just mind their business. We need to eliminate the proxies just because they’re Islamic Muslim terrorists who are going to fight until they die killing everyone they touch. Look at what happened on the flight in Israel today. China needs to stop sending their drugs, their spies and bio labs to the USA. We need to stop allowing their students in the USA and in fact just deport all of them that are here, they are spies. The bottom line is if we got rid of all the Islamic Muslims most of the fighting and human degradation would go away. If we deport the Muslims & illegal aliens from the United States and close our borders we could survive we could thrive. We could make George Washington Thomas Jefferson & abe Lincoln proud. I have a picture of them rolling in their graves right now.
It is inspiring to see how focused use of resources and innovation can make a seemingly impossible task become reality.
Indeed. And the collaboration greatly improves each country's tech in a virtuous cycle.
I’m still laughing and very impressed with the pager fiasco.
Low tech, and an extremely successful strategy to remove some terrorist garbage off the streets.
Interestingly this isn’t the first time this happened. Sometimes the US participates, sometimes they permit, and sometimes they just stand aside and pretend it’s not happening.
When I first went to work for the Haze-Grey Navy I worked on the E-2C program. A couple years earlier, we’d sold some of them to Israel—they figured prominently in the Bekaa Valley operations in 1982—and the Israelis wanted to modify the radar to allow them to detect and track low-velocity, low-altitude targets—ships at sea and aircraft on takeoff. We thought that was fine and we worked closely with them to achieve their goals.
A few years later I happened to be in a conversation with a guy I knew who worked on Harpoon. He told me that there were three variants: the A variant which we—the US—used, along with Great Britain; the B variant, which we sold to our other NATO allies, Japan, and Australia; and the C variant, which we sold to everyone else.
Israel was on the C-list. But apparently they’d come in and said, OK, we reverse-engineered our missiles and now they’re as good or better than the A version. So how about you just put us on the A-list and everyone benefits? Apparently—according to my friend—there was vigorous discussion about this and eventually we said no. But we didn’t tell them to stop doing what they were doing, either.
I suspect the Israelis have done similar things with pretty much every weapon system they’ve ever acquired—whether from us or elsewhere—and we just kinda pretend it’s not happening to avoid unnecessary diplomatic issues with the Arab world.
David, I spent sixteen years in the E-2 community some of which was tangent to the FMS program for the E-2. Radar mods were but one story. By the time they finished, it was not operationally much like U.S. E-2s. Same story as the Tomahawk… “no, we won’t let you have “x” “ but, we may very quietly look the other way and perhaps offer some technical guidance. “No” was not a rollover command for the IDF.
Well, I was but a lowly contract specialist when I first came into the organization in 1981. By the time I heard the Harpoon story I was either a senior contract specialist (GM-13) or already a PCO (GM-14). So I heard these stories second-hand mostly.
But as you say I gathered it was the norm rather than the exception. Israel wasn't terribly concerned with managing a massive battlespace: they cared about threats that were in their lap when they spooled up on the runway...or were poking around a few miles offshore. So it's entirely understandable they modded the you-know-what out of the stuff we sold them.
By the same token it was a good deal for them to be under the aegis of the US logistics support structure. Dunno if you remember the F-20 saga but the received wisdom most of the folks I spoke to was that an aircraft that the US didn't seem interested in putting into their own inventory was probably a bad bet.
The F-20 Tigershark program is an excellent acquisition case study in itself that had three insurmountable problems: 1) it was an extension of a dated design. Even magic avionics and more engine couldn’t get around wing loading and external store limitations; 2) final cost estimates placed it at about 85% of the F-16, with limited growth potential. Although estimated operating costs were just over half of the F-16’s. It was seen as a stopgap; 3) Politics of the Regan Administration eased sales of frontline systems. Those factors pretty much killed it… shame that, as it was a pretty little fighter.
And as much as we correctly criticize Pentagon procurement today, I have to say, the F-15EX is certainly a great improvement on that sad story.
I completely agree—but it had the collateral effect of completely killing any further attempts by US contractors to independently develop and sell hardware without the umbrella of the Pentagon.
Also bear in mind the original sales target was Taiwan, which had been cut off from US military procurement under the previous administration. So your point #3 was a correction of that, but it could hardly have been predicted.
David… second thought… “lowly Contract Specialist” is the point at which resulting contracts either work and achieve a requirement or not. The best engineers can’t fix bad and un workable requirements.
Well...that accords with my own experience! :-)
Although by "lowly" I was alluding to the fact that I started as a trainee and didn't really know what I was doing for the first year or so.
But I used to jokingly introduce myself as "the guy who's responsible for translating engineerese into contractese." ;-)
And if I had a nickel for every time I had to explain the distinction between "will" and "shall"... :-)
Great article on Israel and the F 35. I enjoyed learning that nugget.
It seems to me there’s one country- Iran- that is the largest terrorist state wanting to fight kill and conquer everyone else on the planet. China Russia and Korea need to stay out of it. If they are funding Iran’s proxies they need to stop.
Iran is not going to have anything left to fund as time goes on if China Russia and Korea will just mind their business. We need to eliminate the proxies just because they’re Islamic Muslim terrorists who are going to fight until they die killing everyone they touch. Look at what happened on the flight in Israel today. China needs to stop sending their drugs, their spies and bio labs to the USA. We need to stop allowing their students in the USA and in fact just deport all of them that are here, they are spies. The bottom line is if we got rid of all the Islamic Muslims most of the fighting and human degradation would go away. If we deport the Muslims & illegal aliens from the United States and close our borders we could survive we could thrive. We could make George Washington Thomas Jefferson & abe Lincoln proud. I have a picture of them rolling in their graves right now.