Yes I know about Col. Epstein. Retired 1997. 17 kills (8 in 1967 and 9 in 1973), all in Mirage.
Also, Col. Korn, 10,5 kills. He is reserve pilot.

But it would be fine if we had kills of in-service pilots.

Here it is common that pilots retire in their 50s, a few got to the age of 60.
If you think about rather young pilots, who were about 30 years old in 1982, they should be around 53 years old today. And as Sens said, the last kill was in the middle of the eighties. So it’s hardly surprising that we don’t have names of pilots that are still active and shot down planes in combats. The overwhelming majority of the Israeli fighter pilots were never in a real war. They all carried combat sorties, but not as part of a war with any real enemy airforce.

Golden Dragon according to you the Lavi is a failure but the Chinese J-10 is basicly a Lavi with racked inlet and a more powerful engine so the J-10 must be another failure is not it? 😀 , also Russia helped all the way China and it carries Israeli missiles and Russian head seekers on it`s SD-10s.

Also look that Israel is only a tiny nation it`s population is less than 1% of what is China`s and still China bought Israeli missiles.
The Lavi was as great airplane and the Chinese knew it, besides Grumman helped Israel in the IAI Lavi airframe design that is important it was not General Dynamics as in the case of the Ching Kuo where you can see the F-16 lineage right away but Grumman who developed the F-14 but did not the F-16

Actually, Grumman only produced the aircraft’s composite made parts, but didn’t design them.
They were supposed to deliever the wings for the prototypes and the first batches of Lavis, and the production was supposed to transfer to the IAI’s Ramta factory.

GD, it’s sad to read your replies since you ingnore so much of what I wrote. So again, I’m going to answer each and every one of your claim, since you didn’t answer mine with counter claims – just the same old stuff. And since you wrote the same stuff so many times, I’ll repeat them whenever needed. So forgive me for being a robot sometimes, but I’ll write these things until they will get your proper and full attention.

You said “family” resemblance. So it is pretty clear that you are attempting to link the J-10 to a Israeli betrayal of the US for “money” because there wasn’t much else China could have given Israel besides money.

In a way. But keep in mind a single thing – Israel isn’t a part of the United States. Never was, never will be. We share same interests but not all of our interests are identical. We might have sold the Lavi tech to China. So what? the US can’t do anything about it as long as it’s not their tech. And as you can see, no engine technology was transfered. We don’t know about the FBW.

French design (Nesher), French design(Kfir) and French design (Magister). No experience in developing a new aircraft. The Lavi is American just as Nesher, Kfir and Magister were French.

Indeed the Nesher and the Fouga were French. But you said, and I’m quoting:
“Israel doesn’t have an advance airframe design and manufacturing industry”
So manufacturing – the hell yeah. And these examples are perfect for that.
The Kfir, which is 60% a Mirage V and 40% an Israeli developed redesign, gave us the real first push with aircraft designs. The next project, the Arye, made use of fully home grown designs.
And that ends your ridiculous claim.

They were only able to kill it because the technology belongs to them. If it was yours, you would go ahead with it no matter what the Americans say.

(copied from an earlier post. I ask you to take notes of my arguments instead of just ignoring them and repeating the same old “Lavi is American” story.)
Some people try to claim that the Lavi was all American financed. In fact, only 40% was American financed. The program costed 2.2 billion dollars when it was cancelled – no more than the development costs of other airplanes in the world in the Lavi’s class. In 1987 the US removed its share of the cost of Lavi project. Since development was near completion, the US made clear it will not participate in the cost of building 300 Lavis for the Israeli airforce. In other words, they let us bring the plane’s technology to maturity but killed the plane. Why? because they had a perfectly good idea that this plane could directly compete with their own F-16s and F-18s. Why would they finance a plane that will hurt their sales? everyone here agrees that it makes no sense. Israel alone couldn’t bear the cost of production of the Lavi. The project was also canelled due to the fragile political climate of Israel at the time, and was cancelled in the vote with 12 for and 11 against, with the 12th voice persuaded in the last minute as a political move.

Now, if Israel closed down the Lavi because of “politics” then there is no way your government would risk even more political censure by passing along the Lavi to China.

Not only due to politics. There was also a huge pressure by the American aviation giants.
But what I meant in that post were internal politics in Israel, in which you obviously have no idea, but they are essential in order to understand the story of the Lavi project.

You can’t bear the cost of of reproducing every American component that the Lavi needed. It was basically an American plane. If it were yours and you used Israeli parts then you would have built it.

No, we simply couldn’t afford the money it took us to build any fighter plane on our on. Just as we can’t really buy large amounts of American made fighter jets without using the aid money. Once the Lavi was out of the aid package, it was made unaffordable for us.

1. If the Lavi was Israeli then the US wouldn’t be able to stop its development. The US did and did so easily because the Lavi depended on US tech.

Nonsense. The real reasons for the cancellation, at least the main ones, were already mentioned by me.

3. If the Israel government closed down the Lavi because of adverse political pressure from the US then it be suicidal to then give that project to China which would bring even worse American pressure.

First of all, remember that the American pressure was eventually the fact that they took their 40% of development costs. On the other hand, we could have sold what we already got and they couldn’t do anything about it. Still, as Israel tends to do when it comes to arms deals, it was made under the table. That’s the reason both Israel and China denied it. For Israel, the risk of losing the aid is just too great to take against a single arms deal. Dening it is the easy way out of political mass.

Have you actually read up on the Lavi at all?

Before recommeding reading material for us, read this web page first:
http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~pettypi/elevon/baugher_other/lavi.html

oh please!

did i use abusive language try to make it personal instead of topic oriented?

you yourself have said you have nothing new to bring any more credibility to your claims, so the ‘repeating yourself’ bit is accurate.

since you have zero new ‘evidence’ to bring to support your case, what other reason apart from excessively repeating yourself can you achieve from bring this up again? and since this is clearly another attempt to draw in support your your baseless claim, the ‘repeating yourself’ bit is accurate as well.

the only thing that might have been slightly harsh is ‘shut up’, but that is far from an unsuitable term.

respect is earned, and not something you can just ask god for when it runs out. just as your words can earn you respect, it can also loose you it. i have treated you like i have everyone else in that i have given you the same clean sheet i have given to everyone else i have replied to. if i seem a little less patient with you compared to others, it is because your stubberness to cling onto unproven theories regardless of logic and evidence does not strike me as worthy of much more serious consideration.

I’m not speaking about respect towards this opinion of mine solely – I’m speaking about respect between people.
You are more than welcomed to disagree with me, but I didn’t appreciate the “shut up” part.

Exactly. Israel is not great aircraft design and manufacturing center. The examples put by Erez and myself were all French while the Lavi was American.

Even the Astra, Galaxy, G-150 and Arava were American/French?
Didn’t know that.
And the Lavi was American as much as the Gripen is American. Because of your nationalistic feelings I’m sure it’s easy to you to see the Gripen as Swedish with some American systems, but when it comes to the Lavi, and its J-10 connection, you refer to it as an American plane, while in both of the planes the use of foreign designed systems was similar.

yes, aircraft BUILDING experience. even today, israel has zero experience in independly DESIGNING a successful fighter.

the LAVI was an israeli upgrade of an existing airframe, just as all provious israeli fighters have been modified foreign designs.

its funny that part of your reasoning behind why the J10 cant be chinese is the assumption that china couldnt make such a big leap from ‘merely copying and modifying’ russian and soviet designs. yet israel apparently has no such problems.

Remeber that GD also claimed that we don’t have experience in building aircraft. So I brought these example. At least, it seems, you acknowledge that Israel produced quite a number of airplanes so far.
The Lavi is the Israeli experience is designing our technologically succesful fighter plane. Along with the Lavi, there was the Arye, which (except concept #33) was a paper lion, but gave the IAI experience in designing local airplanes.
As I already gave details before, the IAI’s transfer from the Kfir (a Mirage) to the Lavi (a new plane) was deeply routed in the Arye project. It took us over four decades of work to reach the point where we could have built our own fighter plane. While in the Chinese case, the J-10 is like a shining light in a sea of drakness – While China still produces mostly redesigns of Russian designed equipment, suddendly it came out with their own brand new 4th generation fighter plane. Personally, I don’t think it’s possible.
And before GD will pop up with the J-9, I’ll say this: Yes, China had and has tonnes of experience with fighter jets, they also designed a few of their own or made real changes in the Russian designs, such as with the J-8II. They knew very well what canard delta configuration is, but from that, to reaching a fourth generation fighter plane with delta canard configuration, years after the J-9 project was stopped, and while it bears physical similarity to the Lavi, and in the background there are always reports in the international aviation industry that the Lavi tech was transfered to China – You may believe what you will, but I think that it’s just too obvious than to be a coincidence.

if the LAVI cost 2.2bn, the US only contributed 40% (0.88bn), and china was supposed to have paid over 1bn for the LAVI tech, the irsaelis still didnt have enough funding to complete the plane?

Correction – the technological development of the plane was completed in 1991, when the Lavi’s radar development ended. What we couldn’t afford was the serial production of the plane. Also the US made it clear it will not permit any Lavi exports, as these included American technology, so it became uneconomical.

euqlly, the J10 project started before the alleged LAVI tech transfer and the J10 is still supposed to be based on the LAVI. the same thing happens with the LAVI in regard to the F16 and the LAVI cant have benefitted from F16 design?

If to follow your logic, I already proved to you that the design of the Lavi was years before we got our F-16s – and yet you and GD continue to claim it’s based over the F-16.

if israel had the tech and china had the money, what was stopping co-opertation like that with the Python, Harpy and many other weapons systems? could it be that the LAVI was basically a modified F16 with israeli avionics that couldnt be built with US components and the tech couldnt be shared without permission?

The Lavi was not a modified F-16. Yet you still have some truth in what you say – the Lavi did included American technology that couldn’t have been transfered from Israel to China. The misssing of these technologies are the main reason for the redesign China had to put the plane through, and example for this is the engine – China had to replace the American engine of the Lavi with a russian engine (and that changed the intake and airframe).

also, do you know how much money the US gives israel annually? israel would be willing to risk that for a mere 1bn? please.

Exactly. That’s the reason it was made under the table and with Israeli technology only. It doesn’t worth it.

even less reason for china to buy the LAVI then, since the design was old and china had access to far newer western tech at the time (pre-tiananmen).

That American official was more or less an idiot, because he knew nothing about aviation. The planes that took off in the time of the Lavi were the Gripen, the Rafale and the Eurofighter. They all originated from the 80s, but are they considered old today?

well that pretty much rules out airframe design transfer since thats not israeli tech.

The term “military technologies” doesn’t rule out airframe design.

And the crux of those arguments were

1. Israel doesn’t have an advance airframe design and manufacturing industry; beyond the Kfir (which is a Mirage), Israel has not created a mass produced plane on its own,

2. the Lavi was American technology and based on the F-16; it was dependent on American willingness to allow its technology to be used. It was finally cancelled because of the US.

3. it was a project failure even worse than say the Chinese Y-10 which actually flew far more miles and actually carried passengers and goods to multiple cities. There has been no Lavi since three prototypes nailed together with American subsystems and they never flew beyond test flights,

4. if we take the argument that the Lavi was a technical success and was cancelled only under American pressure then why bring on even worse American pressure in transferring that same cancelled project to China? If it was a technical success and Israel was willing to bear the American pressure it would for transferring the Lavi to China then why not just mass produce the Lavi in spite of the US?

Any idiot could see that if the Israel government had acted politically by canceling the project under US pressure, it’s certainly not going to risk worse political fallout by giving that same project to China.

What does Israel have to gain from China that would balance out such a risk of US retaliation? The risk-reward analysis of this Lavi-given-to-China scenario makes no sense whatsoever.

Just remember, I’m not the one who turned the subject of this thread to another J-10-Lavi argument. I brought that picture, yes, but not to restart these flames but to have some physical reference between the J-10 and the Lavi.

Here goes.
1. Israel produced the Nesher (100% Mirage V), the Kfir (60% Mirage V) and the Fouga Magister jet aircraft before the Lavi. Before the Lavi we had over 20 years of jet aircraft building behind us, so it would be idiotic to claim we can’t mass produce airplanes. And that’s without mentioning the Arava, the Astra and Galaxy. In short, the Israeli Aircraft Industry was and still is building aircraft for about 40 years now. Only a few weeks ago the IAI G-150 was unveiled.
Between the Kfir, which is clearly a Mirage development, and the Lavi, there was the Arye project. From 1974 to 1979, the IAI was developing its next generation fighter. Some of the Arye designs were almost Mirage look alikes and enlarged and redesigned Mirages, and some of them were more advanced. All shared the same single concept – a canard delta configuration. Conceptual design #33 of the Arye was chosen in the year 1980 to be the Lavi.

2. The Lavi was designed in Israel. It made use of American technologies such as engine and fly-by-wire. Despite this, the airframe design and the majority of systems were Israeli developed, such as avionics, radar and and the plane’s overall design. How could the Lavi, developed as concept #33 of the Arye between the years 1974-1979 be based over the F-16, which Israel got only in 1981, and without having the Americans involved in the Arye project?
Moreover, some people try to claim that the Lavi was all American financed. In fact, only 40% was American financed. The program costed 2.2 billion dollars when it was cancelled – no more than the development costs of other airplanes in the world in the Lavi’s class. In 1987 the US removed its share of the cost of Lavi project. Since development was near completion, the US made clear it will not participate in the cost of building 300 Lavis for the Israeli airforce. In other words, they let us bring the plane’s technology to maturity but killed the plane. Why? because they had a perfectly good idea that this plane could directly compete with their own F-16s and F-18s. Why would they finance a plane that will hurt their sales? everyone here agrees that it makes no sense. Israel alone couldn’t bear the cost of production of the Lavi. The project was also canelled due to the fragile political climate of Israel at the time, and was cancelled in the vote with 12 for and 11 against, with the 12th voice persuaded in the last minute as a political move.

4. The Lavi is considered a technological success, and as witnesses we can see many of its systems, avionics, ECM, computers and radar mostly, being used in many of today’s Israeli airforce fighter planes, in other IAI made upgrade projects, which are known for their high quality, and even in the Arrow. That’s all came from the Lavi.
The answer to your question is simple – we simply couldn’t bear the cost of producing the Lavi alone.
The post Lavi IAI was near total loss in 1988. I’m opining that the IAI and Israel couldn’t care less about the US, and according to the Ha’aretz newspaper from 1994, the Chinese paid over 1 billion dollars for the Lavi technology.
Moreover, when the newspaper asked an American government official about the subject he said “we are a aware of the Israeli technology transfer from Israel to China, but the US doesn’t feel a need to be afraid, since the Lavi is based over technologies from the 1980s, that will be very old when the plane will enter service around the years 2000”.
A few weeks before David Ivri, former airforce commander and the then CEO of the ministry of defense said something like “we did transer military technologies to China, and still do, including aviation technologies, but they are fully Israeli and therefore has nothing to do with the American embargo over China”.

so Erez, instead of repeating the same tired old lines over and over again trying to convince yourself that if you repeast something enough times it becomes true, why dont you take your own ‘advice’ and shut up about it till you can find something resembling hard evidence to back up your claims?

plawolf, please keep a civilized level of language, as I do with you.
I don’t expect you to agree with me, but I do expect mutual respect between us and our opinions.

GD, I’m sorry but I really don’t have any desire to rewrite all the stuff that I already did in previous threads about the history of the Lavi. Please proceed with the regular course of this thread.

Well it wasn’t a technological failure, so the Chinese might have jumped over the opportunity to get the technology of a 4.5 generation fighter (from the IAI, which was near crash after the project, so any good sum of money could have helped them), and to make out of it either a 4 or 4.5 generation aircraft (we can’t know for sure since we have no idea what’s the avionics’ level in the J-10).
But since it’s a Chinese thread I won’t go further… Addiotional info is available in pervious threads in this forum, and in other websites.

BTW can anyone alse see the ‘family’ resemblance here? :dev2:

How can you say that they are, naturally, largely unknown. They are completelly unknown.
Nobody knows, outside IAF of course, who are Israel’s best scoring pilots in any war. I am talking of pilots who are not retired.

We all know best pilots of USAF, US Navy, RAF, Argentina, even Vietnamese pilots, and their scoring.

And you say, Israeli pilots are naturally unknown. When Israel hide them and their kills from public, how can you expect from anybody to believe officialy stated numbers of lost aircraft ?

When we saw the best Israeli pilots names, pictures, their kills etc that would be different story.
Then it would be like in democratic states.

Giora Epstein, for example, is the world’s ace in jet dogfights, with 17 confirmed kill marks:
http://wind.prohosting.com/flyaces/usr/home/web/f/flyaces/acesandeightsjetengineaces_giora_epstein_even.htm
And a bit more detailed:
http://www.iaf.org.il/Templates/Kills/FirstDown.aspx?lang=EN&subfolderID=294&folderID=43&lobbyID=40
Some other kill stories of all times:
http://www.iaf.org.il/Templates/Kills/FirstDown.aspx?lang=EN&subfolderID=293&folderID=43&lobbyID=40
A few other names:
General Avihu Ben-Nun: Former air force commander, four kills.
General Dan Halutz: Former air force commander, three kills.
General Herzl Budinger: Former air force commander, three kills.
Brigadier General Yoel Peledsho: Two kills (MiG-23s).
Colonel Miki Levi: One kill.
Brigadier General Moshe (last name unknown): Nine and a half kills.

There are other names, but the names aren’t the point. In Israel, when active duty pilots under Brigadier General are interviewed, only the first letter of their first name is written. In a few cases, the whole private name. Most of the Israeli pilots that flew in 1967 and 1973 were already interviewed with their full names. But if I’ll try to make the full a list of names, it could take me a month. I just gave you some of the more outstanding examples.