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Aviation History
1985
1985 - 0166.PDF
DEFENCE Israel reveals Lavi mockup TEL AVIV Israel Aircraft Industries, battling to thwart attempts to stop the Lavi multirole fight er, has released photographs of the aircraft's engineering development mockup (see Flight, last week, page 8). The anti-Lavi lobby wants the Lavi project to be ditched as part of Israel's national budget trimming. IAI manag ing director Shalom Ariav tells Flight that if the Lavi project is stopped it would mean that nearly 3,000 work ers would be laid off. Lavi project manager Moshe Blumkin says that six prototypes are scheduled to be built, and that the company will produce about 20 Lavis a year. The Israeli Air Force is expected to order about 300 aircraft. While it is still hoped to fly the first prototype in February 1986, Blumkin says that, because iAl is depending on 111 Lavi subcontractors, it is possible that there could be a delay of a few months. Ariav, in answer to the anti- Lavi/pro-F-16 lobby, says that the option of licence- building more F-16s in Israel, with locally-built electronic warfare systems, has been examined but found uneconomical. Actual assem bly of the F-16 by IAI is no problem, says Ariav, but financial conditions laid down by General Dynamics made the idea unattractive. Israel's need for Lavi stems from the increased arms ship ments to her Arab neighbours. The Israelis say that Syria now has about 30 MiG-25 Foxbats, 150 MiG-23 Flog- gers, 90 Su-20/22 Fitters, "sundry" MiG-17 Frescos, MiG-21 Fishbeds, and Su-7 Fitters, and about 240 heli copters, 70 of which are Mi-6 Hip E and Mi-25 Hind (export designation of Mi-24) attack helicopters. # Shalom Ariav says that IAI will have a turnover of $900 million this year, compared with $710 million in Fiscal Year 1983/84. Exports are up from $320 million to $430 million and will account for about 48 per cent of IAI's output. Despite military budget cuts, Ariav considers that IAI will show a profit for FY 1983/84, but does not yet know the actual figure. The Lavi engineering mockup shows the aircraft's resemblance to General Dynamics' F-16. The airbrake position, just ahead of the fin, and the large ventral strokes are visible as is the canard-spar location hole, just ahead of the Star of David national marking on the fuselage. Syria receives SA-13s DAMASCUS Syria has started to deploy Soviet-supplied SA-13 Gopher surface-to-air missiles, says the Israeli Air Force. The SA- 13s, which will replace SA-9s, are more effective than the latter missile against low- flying targets. Developed for mobile point- defence of armoured forma tions, the SA-13 entered Soviet Army service in 1975, and two versions have been reported. Of similar canard configuration to SA-9, Gopher is infrared-guided with a clear-weather range of about 10km and an engage ment envelope of between 50m and 5,000m. The SA-13 seeker head operates in two frequency bands, which gives better discrimination against infra red countermeasures, such as flares. Israeli aircraft have made extensive use of infrared decoy flares during raids in Lebanon and against Syrian SAM sites. Gopher is moun ted on an AT-P tracked chas sis with four containerised rounds, two on each side of a trainable ranging radar, and, it is believed, four reloads in each vehicle. Arms talks resume GENEVA ~ Arms negotiations are to begin again in earnest, follow ing the two-day meeting in Geneva last week between US Secretary of State George Schultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. Emerging from 14|hr of talks, Schultz reported that the USA and USSR had agreed to new negotiations on nuclear and space-based weapons. The ensuing talks will be divided into three parts covering space-based weapons, strategic nuclear, and intermediate-range nuclear weapons. A joint statement issued by US and Soviet negotiators says that the forthcoming talks will be aimed at finding effective agreements "to prevent an arms race in space and terminating it on Earth and limiting and reducing nuclear arms". Both sides express a commitment to rebuilding strategic stability. Dates for the new talks and the names of the negotiating teams will be released within a month. Negotiating teams will divide into three groups to discuss the three topics. Speaking after the meeting, Schultz said that both sides agreed that the problems of space and nuclear weapons are "interrelated". Both sides "attached priority to achiev ing radical reductions in nuclear weapons as a first step towards their complete elimi nation". The negotiating teams came to Geneva divided on the question of President Reagan's Strategic Defence * Initiative (SDI)—the so-called "Star' Wars" plans. Schultz revealed that, although Soviet and US opinions differ on the questions of strategic defence, the USA had agreed to discusss the matter. Both sides had worked out a "forum for tackling the issues head- on, with the objectives of seeking reductions in nuclear . arms and strengthening stra tegic stability", he said. Both sides appear hopeful, but realistic. Schultz said that the agreement to talk is an "important beginning" to wards arms controls, but i stressed that it is only a begin ning. FLIGHT International, 19 January 1985
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