Word: lavi
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...runways at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport were unusually congested last week -- but this time by people. Several hundred aircraft workers gathered to protest a Cabinet decision to scrap the Lavi jet fighter. After months of impassioned debate, the final ballot was close: 12 to 11, with one abstention. Most Labor Party members voted against the project, while most Likud members were for it. After the vote Likud's Minister Without Portfolio Moshe Arens angrily quit the Cabinet...
...advanced attack aircraft, the Lavi was a financial turkey. Slated to cost $800 million when first approved in 1979, the project has set Israel back $1.8 billion, most of it provided by Washington. An additional $2.75 billion in cost overruns was projected by 1993. The Reagan Administration, which opposed further investment, has pledged early delivery of up to 100 U.S.F-16C jet fighters in the 1990s...
...Israeli generals would gladly kill it, and so would Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Yet rising criticism and soaring costs have so far failed to force Israel's Lavi jet fighter program off course. The time has come, however, when Jerusalem must decide whether to funnel more billions into the troubled Lavi (Hebrew for lion) or scrap a warplane that has become a symbol of national pride and a key source of jobs. The need to make that choice has triggered a vitriolic debate in which military and economic issues have frequently given way to pure emotion. "The real question," shouted...
...decision seemed simple enough when the Israeli Cabinet approved the Lavi in 1980. Jerusalem had long wanted an advanced fighter that could dodge antiaircraft missiles while skimming battlefields to blast enemy targets. As then Defense Minister Ezer Weizman envisioned it, the plane was to be "small and cheap -- but a bastard" in combat. Over the years, though, Weizman has become a leading opponent of the plane. Says he: "It is too costly, comes too late and at the expense of more important objectives." Today the aircraft represents the perils that a small, defense-minded country can confront when it sets...
...Israel's chief benefactor, Washington has become an increasingly uncomfortable hostage of the Lavi affair. While the U.S. Government gives Israel $1.8 billion a year in military assistance -- far more than to any other country -- the Lavi claims an ever growing portion of that aid. Washington has so far provided most of the $1.8 billion that Israelis have spent to develop the Lavi and build two prototypes since 1979. But that is just the beginning: development costs that were estimated at $800 million when the project began could reach at least $2.75 billion by the time the first...