From a comment to the blog by Steiner:
Steiner said...
"What use the F-35 might be against an opponent like Hezbollah that possesses no AF or even SAM weaponry beyond a few handhelds is unclear. What is clear, unfortunately, is that any and all technology that can be gleaned from the Lightning II by the Israeli defense establishment will be quickly transferred to Communist China in accordance with longstanding arrangements."
When all mention is made of Israel weapons transfer to China think of the Lavi?
"The IAI Lavi was a single-engined fourth-generation jet fighter developed in Israel in the 1980s"
"The Lavi was planned to be the mainstay of the Israeli Air Force, and considerable export sales for the aircraft had been forecast. The uniqueness of its design was in the combination of a small, aerodynamic, highly maneuverable plane, with sophisticated, software-rich systems"
Nice looking air superiority lightweight fighter plane. Indigenous Israeli design but also incorporating certain specific American warplane features and avionics.
Most decidedly so a major source of concern to the Pentagon this specific allegation regarding the Lavi:
"In 2008, aviation publishing house Jane's alleged that China's development of the Chengdu J-10 had benefited from technical information from the Lavi project, citing Russian engineers who claim to have heard this from Chinese colleagues"
ALLEGATION OF CHINESE AND ISRAELI COOPERATION SUGGESTED BUT TO AN EXTENT DENIED! PERHAPS ISRAEL AVIONICS "SOPHISTICATED" AND "SOFT-WARE RICH" INCOPRORATED INTO THE CHINESE COMBAT WARPLANES?
Any suspicion of Israel and Chinese sharing of weaponry design extremely troubling to American authorities, EVEN IF TOTALLY UNFOUNDED!!
coolbert.
Just to expand on your comments coolbert, I find it odd how selective memory tends to be.
ReplyDeleteDuring the 1980s the United States was planning to sell a complete avionics package for China's J-8 fighter, including a radar derived from the AN/APG-66 from the F-16. Even after the events at Tiananmen Square the United States continued to provide technological assistance to China's aerospace industry, including the launch of U.S. satellites and the manufacture of components for Boeing commercial aircraft. The U.S. also did nothing to deter the supply of sophisticated weapons technologies to China from Europe or elsewhere. China was seen as an important bulwark against Soviet and later Russian threats to the Far East.
When that attitude finally did change during the late 1990s, the U.S. pressured Israel into cutting off all military cooperation with China, something that America's NATO allies did not do. The British continued to supply engines for China's JH-7 strike aircraft, the Italians continued to supply assistance for Chinese helicopter development, and Canada supplied engines for Chinese helicopters. More recently, we saw Turkey carry out a joint air combat exercise with China, yet we still hear complaints about how Israel might have sold weapons or technology to China in the 1990s.
Also, to clarify, the primary role of the Lavi was air-to-ground, not "air superiority". As detailed in the recently published book on the subject, the Lavi was intended as a strike jet first, and an air-to-air platform only second:
http://www.amazon.com/Lavi-United-States-Controversial-Fighter/dp/1612347223
The book's author has also published a short summary on the design trades that went into the program:
http://john-golan.blogspot.com/2016/05/lavi-engineers-perspective.html