Special Report: U.S. Military Technology Sold by Israel To China
Upsets Asian Power Balance
By Tim Kennedy
Israel's Lavi fighter-bomber was designed to be one of the
deadliest weapons in the air. However, it now has been revealed
that after Israel discontinued the largely U.S.-funded project, it
sold China the plans for the Lavi and the associated secret U.S.
technology. This has enabled the Chinese to build their own version
of this new generation of fighter aircraft.
The illegal transfer of plans for the Lavi aircraft from Tel Aviv
to Beijing first became known by the Pentagon when an American
surveillance satellite orbiting over China spotted several new
fighter planes on the runway of a Chinese air base traditionally
used for the test and evaluation of prototype aircraft. Imagery
experts at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) created rough
sketches of the jet, then processed the graphic data through
high-speed supercomputers in order to obtain three-dimensional
representations of the prototype Chinese fighter planes.
Stunning Images
CIA officials specializing in aviation technology were stunned at
the 3-D images generated by the computers. China's newest fighter
jet was in fact a copy of the Israeli Lavi, which itself was
modeled upon the U.S. F-16 Fighting Falcon multi-role
aircraft.
Although Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI), Israel's biggest
state-owned manufacturer of arms and defense technology, was the
Lavi's prime contractor, nearly 90 percent of the Lavi was funded
by the Pentagon. This is just one astonishing aspect of the story
of the U.S.-Israeli aircraft, the evolution of which was almost as
Byzantine as its surprise ending as the most formidable weapon in
China's military arsenal.
The Lavi program, as conceived in the early 1980s by Israeli
military planners and their supporters in the Pentagon and
Congress, was intended as an exceedingly generous gift from America
to the people of Israel. The Pentagon never had any intention of
including the Lavi in its own military aviation fleet.
The thinking among U.S. Defense Department officials was that the
United States, having provided Israel for two decades with some of
America's best fighter aircraft--including F-4 Phantoms, F-15
Eagles and F-16 Fighting Falcons--now should give the Jewish state
the ability to manufacture its own state-of-the-art fighter
planes.
It took American military officials very little time to decide
which American fighter plane should serve as the model for the
Lavi. They chose the F-16 Fighting Falcon.
The F-16 was--and still is--the American fighter plane most sought
after by foreign governments. Compact and with a high-
ly maneuverable design, it has proven itself in air-to-air combat
and air-to-surface attack.
General Dynamics, the prime contractor for the F-16, touts the
Fighting Falcon as an "aircraft that provides a relatively
low-cost, high performance weapon system...While operating in air
combat role, the F-16's maneuverability and combat radius exceed
that of all potential threat fighter aircraft. It can locate
targets under all weather conditions and detect low-flying aircraft
in radar clutter. In an air-to-surface role, the F-16 can fly more
than 500 miles, deliver its weapons with superior accuracy, defend
itself against enemy aircraft, and return to its starting point. An
all-weather capability allows it to accurately deliver ordnance
during non-visual bombing conditions."
Foreign military sales officials at the U.S. Department of Defense
traditionally are tolerant of Israeli mismanagement of U.S. arms
programs. However, as the delays, cost overruns and blatant moves
by IAI to stamp "Made in Israel" on American-made Lavi avionics
evolved, the Pentagon decided to terminate the program.
The U.S. Department of Defense therefore formally ceased sending
money to Israel for the Lavi program in 1987, but only after
American taxpayers had paid some $1.5 billion to fund the project.
The interruption of cash flow effectively killed the program, but
left Israel with two fully functional Lavi prototypes.
While the Lavi program was underway, China repeatedly initiated
talks with U.S. government officials regarding purchase of the
F-16. These requests always were turned down, largely because
American defense officials feared China's possession of the F-16
could destabilize Beijing's relationships with its neighbors,
specifically Taiwan, India, Russia, Japan, and the
Philippines.
Unbeknownst to U.S. officials, however, at some point the Chinese
also initiated talks with Israel. As a result, according to a
declassified Air Force study obtained by the Washington Report, the
Chinese version of the Lavi--which has been dubbed the
F-10 by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization--will be "built in
large numbers" by the year 2003 "and will possess a radar-evading
[read stealth] capability."
Currently, China's most sophisticated aircraft are
domestically-produced copies of the Russian MiG-21 Fishbed fighter,
a relatively slow, short-range day fighter which first saw service
in 1956.
Morton Miller is a retired State Department intelligence analyst
who formerly tracked sales to Beijing of other Israeli weapons,
some of which also have involved illegal Israeli export of other
sophisticated U.S. defense technology to China. He has told
journalists that the close defense relationship between Israel and
China dates back to the mid-1980s, and involves the transfer of
"five billion dollars' worth" of U.S.-made computers, high-tech
electronics and advanced manufacturing equipment used to create
long-range missiles, nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass
destruction.
Ignoring these charges, the Israeli Ministry of Defense officially
acknowledges that it is working with China to manufacture jointly
an advanced fighter plane, but denies that any of the technology
from the Lavi is used in the Chinese F-10. Nevertheless, IAI
documents dating from 1985 credit the enormous role the Pentagon
played in helping to build the Lavi, and acknowledge that "about 50
percent of the Lavi is built in the United States...The program is
supported by the capabilities of no less than 120 American
firms."
Pentagon sources revealed to the Washington Report that when U.S.
Secretary of Defense William Perry confronted Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin with the allegations concerning transfer to
China of U.S. stealth and other fighter aircraft technologies last
year in Tel Aviv, Rabin promised to "resolve the issue." That was
before Rabin's Nov. 4 assassination.
Requests to IAI by the Washington Report for further details on the
Lavi technology transfer to China were stonewalled. "That's a story
that's been going around for a number of years," said Lisa Gordon,
assistant to the director of IAI's military aircraft office in
Washington, DC. "We're just seeing it come around again," she said.
"Beyond that, we aren't commenting on it."
The CIA, which for some time has been concerned about the
increasingly close link between Israeli and Chinese defense
industries, and the threat this alliance poses to world stability,
has been similarly frustrated.
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey informed the U.S. Senate in
late 1993 that he was "alarmed" by the military partnership between
Tel Aviv and Beijing, and officially accused Israel of "illegally
supplying China with classified defense technology from sources in
the West."
Reading from a declassified CIA report while appearing before the
Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Woolsey added: "We believe
the Chinese seek from Israel advanced military technologies that
U.S. and Western firms are unwilling to provide."
Woolsey revealed that Israel has been selling military technology
to China for over a decade, and that the sales may amount to
several billion dollars.
During subsequent testimony, Woolsey said the CIA is convinced
China also is relying on its friends in Israel to assist in
developing advanced engines for the next generation of Chinese
combat vehicles. He said also that China will rely on Israeli
expertise to create sophisticated airborne radar that employs
super-secret technology that has been entrusted to Israel for
another multibillion dollar joint project--production in Israel of
the Arrow missile defense program which also has been funded
largely by the United States.
"[These are] systems," concluded Woolsey in his testimony, "the
Chinese would have difficulty producing on their own." Now it
appears that, thanks to Israeli transfer of highly classified U.S.
military technology, the Chinese have done just that, setting off
alarm bells among China's neighbors, and America's allies, all
around the rim of Asia.
