The IAI Lavi was a single-engined 4th generation fighter developed in Israel in the 1980s.
Developed by Israel Aircraft Industries, the choice to develop the Lavi was controversial,
both with the Israeli public due to the enormous associated costs and particularly with the
U.S. government due to competition with American fighters on the export market. These issues
led to its ultimate cancelation. 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, low armed drag, and the ability to carry a
large payload at high speed and over long distances. As of 2012, two of the prototypes
have been preserved, and have been on public display.
Development Origins
Conceptually, the Lavi had its origins in the idea espoused by IAF commander and minister
of defence Ezer Weizman that Israel's combat aircraft should fall into 'two-tiers' – a
small number of high performance aircraft and a larger bulk with less sophistication
and complexity. In the mid-1970s, the plane that was to become the Lavi was meant to be
a small fighter-bomber to replace aging IAF aircraft such as the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk and
IAI Kfir; however continuous revisions of the proposed aircraft led to the incorporation
of more advanced technologies and ideas to produce an ambitious and advanced aircraft.
The Lavi can be said to have formally begun development in February 1980, which is the
point where the Israeli government had authorized the IAF to present a list of technical specifications
and requirements for the development of the IAF's future fighter. The adoption of certain
components such as an engine produced by Pratt & Whitney were foregone conclusions; the Bet
Shemesh engine plant already had an established relationship with the company and planned
to co-produce the engine, thus enabling some of the manufacturing to be carried out domestically
in Israel. In addition to the primary intention to perform
air-to-ground missions, the IAF sought to equip the Lavi to operate in other roles,
as Israel could have potentially faced a sustained war for aerial supremacy against multiple
neighbours. The Lavi was therefore designed with the flight performance and capabilities
to perform as a supplement to the IAF's own F-15s in air-to-air combat duties. As the
Lavi was viewed as being relatively easy to fly, the aircraft was also under consideration
as an advanced jet trainer as well. The aircraft featured a delta wing with large,
steerable canards situated in the front of the aircraft. While this configuration afforded
excellent maneuverability it also exhibited natural instability in flight. To compensate,
the Lavi was fitted with a sophisticated digital fly-by-wire system which allowed the plane
to take advantage of this particular wing design while eliminating its shortcoming.
The Lavi was one of the first aircraft to feature this type of configuration which has
become more common in many other fighter aircraft. On 31 December 1986, the first prototype of
the Lavi took off on its maiden flight. The test pilot, Menachem Shmul, head of IAI's
Air Operations section, took off at 13:21 and stayed in the air for 26 minutes, during
which he checked the engine and controls. The handling was described as "excellent",
with a high degree of stability in crosswind landings. Both B-01 and B-02 were tandem two-seaters,
with the rear cockpit occupied by test equipment. About three months later, a second Lavi prototype
took to the air; it featured improvements and additional features over the first, with
a belly-mounted fuel tank, a special midair refuelling probe and several new avionic systems.
By August 1987, the month in which the Lavi was canceled, a total of 82 sorties had been
flown between the two prototypes and a significant proportion of the flight envelope had been
explored. Controversy and cancelation
While the Lavi had attracted the steadfast support of IAF veteran and Likud minister
Moshe Arens, there was considerable dissent over the development. While the U.S. was a
key partner in the aircraft's development, there was vocal political opposition to financing
the Lavi, which may have been a competitive aircraft in the export market against American
aircraft such as the F-16C/D and the FD. The Lavi would have also required a great deal
of other competing military requirements and sought investments to be abandoned, thus there
were elements of the armed forces that did not support the project and those officers
who felt that the F-16 possessed similar performance to the Lavi and was readily available already,
making the foreign F-16 cheaper and easier to procure. IAF Major General Avihu Ben-Nun
argued in favour of canceling the Lavi and acquiring 75 F-16s instead.
Proponents, such as the Minister without Portfolio Moshe Arens, advocated that the Lavi was a
high prestige program, asserting Israeli technological capabilities and would work to the nation's
economic advantage. A failure to proceed with the development could lead to significant
job losses and possibly contribute to emigration; the Israeli State Comptroller argued the resulting
unemployment was negligible. Arens was keen to promote potential partnerships and technology
exchanges in regards to the Lavi. Perhaps optimistically, IAI had projected export sales
of the Lavi to be as many as 407 units to customers including South Africa, Chile, Taiwan,
and Argentina; there were reports of significant South African interest and involvement during
the early development of the Lavi. In later development, however, Israel had given the
U.S. explicit guarantees that the Lavi would not be made available to export.
Prior to and following the cancelation, IAI employees organised numerous demonstrations
and public appeals to rally support for the Lavi; public opinion was roughly evenly divided
on the subject of the Lavi. In the US, there was considerable opposition to the Lavi program
from the Pentagon due to the fear that the heavy financial costs would impair other military
capabilities, there were also questions about the financial soundness of the project and
that Lavi technologies may be shared with South Africa, which had a history of close
military cooperation with Israel. The financial burden of developing the Lavi were such that
the Governor of the Bank of Israel, Michael Bruno, publicly stated that Israel could not
realistically afford the "luxury of producing fighter-aircraft" and would harm economic
growth. On 30 August 1987, Israel's cabinet conducted
a decisive vote on whether to continue the development of the Lavi; this development
was influenced by considerable lobbying by the U.S., who made several compensatory proposals
in exchange for the cancellation. The Cabinet rejected the continuation at a margin of 12–11,
with one cabinet member abstaining. Following the outcome of the vote, Lavi supporter Moshe
Arens offered his resignation, refusing to be associated with the decision to terminate
the aircraft. Shortly afterwards, Israel approved the purchase of 90 F-16Cs from the United
States, which acted as an effective replacement to the Lavi.
Aftermath and legacy
When the Lavi project was canceled in 1987, a total of five airframes had been built.
Prototypes B-01 and B-02 were completed, while B-03, B-04, and B-05 were incomplete. Parts
from B-01 and B-02 were pulled to complete B-03. The gutted airframe of B-02 was put
in the Israeli Air Force museum at the Hatzerim Airbase for static display, and the remaining
units, B-01, B-04 and B-05, were all scrapped. Two years after the project's cancelation,
IAI completed the third Lavi prototype; the aircraft went on to serve as a Technology
Demonstrator and as a flying testbed for internal IAI projects; later use was as a ground testbed.
While the Lavi project had come to an end, the development represented an important opportunity
to demonstrate and advance the capabilities of Israel's aerospace industry. Many of the
aircraft's subsystems, avionics, and components went on to be developed and made commercially
available, fueling defense export sales and proving to be a lucrative business in its
own right. The EL/M-2032 pulse doppler radar, developed originally for the Lavi was an example;
it has since been exported for use on a wide range of aircraft.
Despite the Lavi’s cancelation, the investment in its development had significant results.
The technological knowledge accumulated during the development contributed to the achievement
of Israel's first launch of a satellite into space in 1988. It resulted in a new level
in avionics systems, and contributed to Israel's high-tech boom of the 1990s by releasing into
the economy the technological talents of almost 1,500 engineers who had been employed on this
one project. In July 2013, the Israeli Air Force announced
that the Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master, an advanced trainer aircraft under procurement,
would receive the name Lavi in Israeli service; a total of 30 M-346s are to be operated from
2014. The China Question
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, relying on information
from Russian engineers who said they head heard this from some of their Chinese colleagues.
The J-10 underwent an 18-year long development period from 1988 - 2003, as the aftermath
of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre forced them to turn to Russia for engines and other
technologies, while developing their own substitutes. Those choices, in turn, do much to dictate
the plane's structure because they affect its fuel needs, center of gravity, etc. A
design with a different engine and equipment set may offer ideas, but won't solve key engineering
problems. The J-10 looks rather different when compared directly, but shares the Lavi's
"tail-less canard delta with underbody intake" configuration type.
Even so, technology sharing remains a serious issue. In view of the high level of American
involvement in the Lavi, in terms of technology sharing as well as funding, the sale of a
Lavi and/or technical assistance in J-10 production could represent an illicit transfer of American
technology to the Chinese by the Israelis. There have been no public statements or formal
charges along those lines; by 2000, however, advanced technology transfer of any origin
had become anathema to the USA, which forced Israel to cancel a sale of Phalcon airborne
early warning planes. The designer of the J-10, Song Wencong, has
denied any connection whatsoever with Lavi program, pointing to similarities with the
J-9, which was developed in the 1960s and predates the Lavi. This was echoed by a PLAAF's
major Zhang Weigang in a 2012 interview. Design
Overview The Lavi was rather smaller and lighter than
the F-16, with a less powerful engine, and lower thrust-to-weight ratio. The wing was
unusual in having a shallow sweep on the trailing edge, giving a fleche planform. The straight
leading edge was swept at 54 degrees, with maneuver flaps on the outboard sections. Two
piece flaperons occupied most of the trailing edge, which was blended into the fuselage
with long fillets. Nine different control surfaces were controlled by quadruplex fly-by-wire,
with no mechanical backup, giving the Lavi an instability of between 10 and 12%. The
engine air intake took the form of a plain chin type scoop, externally resembling that
of the F-16, yet internally very different, not exposing the jet-engine compressor stage
forwards, thus drastically minimizing the frontal cross-sections of IR and radar alike.
The wingtips were cropped and fitted with missile rails to carry Rafael Python 3 air-to-air
missile. At 38.5 square meters, the wing area was 38% greater than the F-16. The wing aspect
ratio was 2.10 – barely two-thirds that of the F-16. The canards, located slightly
astern of and below the pilot, caused minimal vision obstruction in vision. They allowed
for pitch control in a single-piece, all-moving arrangement. The wing and fin development
were the responsibility of Grumman who were contracted to produce at least the first 20
of each. The nose wheel was located aft of the intake
and retracted rearwards, with the light-weight main gear mounted on the fuselage. A sharply
swept vertical tail was mounted on a spine on top of the rear fuselage, and was supplemented
by two steeply canted ventral strakes, mounted on the ends of the wing root fillets. Composites,
used in 22% of the airframe, allowed aerolastic tailoring to the wings. They were used also
in the vertical tail, the canards, and various doors and panels. IAI claimed a significant
reduction in radar cross section. The standard practice of providing a second
seat for conversion training, by means of reduced fuel or avionics was shunned by IAI.
They designed the two-seater as the base model which was then adapted into a single-seater,
leaving ample space for avionics growth. It was intended that the first 30 production
aircraft would be two-seaters to aid service entry.
Avionics and cockpit
The Lavi's avionics suite was almost entirely of Israeli design, and employed a modular
design capable of adding upgrades via the Elbit ACE-4 mission computer. The Lavi had
a bootstrap-type hydraulic system, pressurised by Adex pumps providing 207 bars of pressure
to the flight surfaces. The electronics were powered by a Sundstrand 60 kVA integrated
drive generator, with a SAFT main battery and Marathon standby; Sundstrand also provided
the actuation system. The emergency power unit and environmental control system were
produced by Garrett AiResearch, as was the secondary power system.
All-round pilot vision was provided by a wrap-around windshield and bubble canopy. Unlike the F-16's
steeply raked seat and sidestick controller, however, the Lavi employed a conventional
upright seat and central control column. The cockpit employed HOTAS, with a Hughes Aircraft
wide-angle diffractive optics head up display seated on a single El-Op up-front control
panel. There were three conventional displays, two of which were color. Display redundancy
was ensured by data-sharing between the HMDs. There was an Elta ARC-740 fully computerized
onboard UHF radio system and a navigation system which included the Tuman TINS 1700
advanced inertial navigation system. Aspects such as flexibility and situational
awareness were emphasized in the design to reduce pilot workload at high g and in a dense
threat environment. The tilted seat was ruled out since it would raise the pilot's knees
and cause a reduction in panel space, and would also allow for the high-g neck and shoulder
strain injuries common with F-16 pilots. A sidestick controller was discounted for three
reasons: it took too much space on the starboard console; it was difficult for an instructor
pilot to monitor his pupil as it was a force transducer; and even a minor right arm injury
could jeopardise the mission. Operators
Israel Israeli Air Force
Specifications
Data from Wilson General characteristics
Crew: 1 Length: 14.57 m
Wingspan: 8.78 m Height: 4.78 m
Wing area: 33.0 m² Empty weight: 7,031 kg
Loaded weight: 9,991 kg Max. takeoff weight: 19,277 kg
Powerplant: 1 × Pratt & Whitney PW1120 afterburning turbofan, 91.5 kN
Performance Maximum speed: 1,965 km/h / Mach 1.6
Range: 3,700 km Service ceiling: 15,240 m
Rate of climb: 254 m/s Wing loading: 303.2 kg/m²
Thrust/weight: 0.94 Armament
1 × 30 mm DEFA cannon 7,260 kg of stores
See also Aircraft of comparable role, configuration
and era Saab JAS 39 Gripen
Chengdu J-10 F-16
JF-17 Thunder Mitsubishi F-2
References Citations
Bibliography Farley, John. Vision of the Future. Flight
International, 29 January 1991. pp. 22–25. Haglund, David G. The Defence Industrial Base
and the West. Routledge, 1989. ISBN 0-4150-0923-5. Hunter, Jane. Israeli Foreign Policy: South
Africa and Central America. South End Press, 1987. ISBN 0-8960-8285-7.
Rabinovich, Itamar and Haim Shaked. Middle East Contemporary Survey: Volume XI – 1987.
Westview Press, 1989. ISBN 0-8133-0925-5. Senor, Dan and Singer, Saul. Start-up Nation:
The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle. Hachette Book Group, 2009. ISBN 0-446-54146-X.
Van Creveld, Martin. The Sword and the Olive: A Critical History of the Israeli Defense
Force. PublicAffairs, 2008. ISBN 0-7867-2546-X. Wilson, Stewart. Combat Aircraft since 1945.
Fyshwick, Australia: Aerospace Publications, 2000. ISBN 1-875671-50-1.
External links "The United States and the LAVI" by Col James
DeLoughry, USAF, Federation of American Scientists "Israel Aircraft Industries Lavi" by Ruud
Deurenberg, Jewish Virtual Library