Why the Royal Australian Air Force went for Israeli Python-4 AAM's over US AIM-9L's

(phil hunt) wrote in message ...
On 10 Jul 2003 04:19:47 -0700, Quant wrote:

I don't have the information to calculate how profitable this project
was but its a fact that the dependence of Israel on the US is also
because of the American planes Israel has. On the 80's as you know, US
preasured Israel by stopping shipments of F-16 parts. This dependence,
as you know and wrote, has also its heavy price.

Does Israel manufacture jet engines? If it doesn't (and IIRC that
is the case), then it won't be independent in aircraft manufacture
anyway. I imagine there are many other itesm used in advanced
fighter aircraft, such as composite materials, which are simply
uneconomic for small production runs.


Engines were indeed large part of the problem. Israel wanted to
produce American engines in Israel. Then, first, there were technical
problems to do it, and then the American approach has been changed and
they retreated from their initial consent to enable to Israelis to
produce the engines by their own.


I searched the web and found the following quotes from:
"Dov S. Zakheim, Flight of the Lavi: Inside a U.S. Israeli Crisis"
http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/lavi.html


The quotes:

1.
"The Israelis recognized that they would have to look overseas for the
plane's engines, as well as for other key components. Indeed, the more
sophisticated the plane they wished to build, the more dependent they
would be on foreign support.

To minimize their degree of dependence on foreign suppliers, the
Israelis conceived of a relatively simple plane, termed the Aryeh,
that would capitalize upon the technical advances that IAI was
expected to have achieved in the 1980s but would nevertheless remain
on the low end of the spectrum of sophistication associated with
ground attack aircraft. It was in that spirit that Minister of Defense
Ezer Weitzmann approached his American counterpart, Harold Brown, in
April 1980, to obtain American support for the coproduction of General
Electric F-404 engines in Israel."


2.
The situation was actually worse than even the Courant had reported,
and it offered some real insights into the management problems that
were bedeviling the aircraft. The Israelis had planned initially to
coproduce the engine with Pratt & Whitney, and then to produce the
follow-on engines entirely on their own. In the event, the Bet Shemesh
engine plant was incapable of carrying out even the initial, more
limited, task. Pratt & Whitney had reapportioned the coproduction work
several times, giving the Israelis increasingly less complex tasks.
Finally, frequent changes of managcmcnt, labor problems, and other
management deficiencies forced the cancellation of the coproduction
effort only a few weeks after our visit to Israel in April, although
the decision to cancel coproduction remained a closely held secret.
....




Again, I don't sure if the comparison is good, but look at the
Merkava. This project is one of the most profitable projects ever was
in Israel. The cost of manufactring the Merkava to the IDF is much
smaller than the cost of buying the M1A2 tanks

Do you have costs for this?


Not an accurate cost, but yes.

The cost of one Merkava Mk3 including all the systems in it to the
Israeli Ministry of Defence is around $3 million. Merkava Mk4 could
cost up to $4 million.

To the US army it costs around $4.3 mn per M1A2 tank.
General Dynamics tried to sell 1000 M1A2 tanks to Turkey in a price of
$5 million per tank.


and there's sde effect
such as industry of upgraing M60 tanks and selling tank systems to
India or upgraded tanks to Turkey.

How much commonality of parts do these have with Merkava?


All the upgraded parts I know of the M60's are based on the Merkava
project.

The armour is based on the same technology, we just fit it to the
M60's shape.
The fire control systems are the same.
The communication systems are the same.
The Israeli M60's tracks are Merkava tracks.
etc.