@Jay

Perhaps you should go watch CSPAN for a while.

Members of the military are always in front of Congress, answering questions. Politicians do not embed either themselves or members of their own staff in DoD programs. Instead, they ask for reports from the Military directly or from Civilians that are tasked with that kind of duty (ie GAO).

I am sure that Israel does it in a similar manner.

The 10,000 pages come from the JPO, which Israel is a part of, not “just” LM. It’s also not just “PowerPoint”, but reams of raw test data.

As far as what the Politicians know or don’t know.. you would have to take that up with them as they would need to meet with members of their own military for a briefing. Remember, it’s members of the respective military branches and assigned civilian contractors that are members of the JPO, not politicians.

From the gist of the original article, it seems that in the minister’s stated quest not to be a “rubber stamp” for the military request, that he purposefully went outside the available (and official) information sources in his gathering of information. While I have no problem with this, in and of itself, I (and others) take issue with his use (and reliance) of the oldest and most irrelevant information available.

The cynic in me would almost say he did this on purpose in order to validate his unstated goal of cutting the program back even before the request came in. In other words, he went back, way back, in order to find info that fit his narrative.

@Jay

All JSF Partners do have 1st hand knowledge as they are embedded in the JPO.

Israeli Panel Rejects Proposed Increase Of F-35

An Israeli cabinet panel has rejected a decision of the defense minister to procure an additional 31 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters and limited the procurement of Israel’s second batch of JSFs to only 13.

http://aviationweek.com/defense/israeli-panel-rejects-proposed-increase-f-35

That cabinet has now had its “jump the shark” moment.

Leading the surprising opposition to the F-35 deal was Minister for Intelligence Yuval Steinitz, who declared: “We are not rubber stamps for the [ministry of defense] and air force.” In five different meetings of the panel on defense procurement dealing with the JSFs, Steinitz presented several articles published in Aviation Week from 2003 and 2008 raising doubts on the effectiveness of the F-35.

That’s right, he ignored virtually the entire SDD test program to date, JPO documents and went with public info that was between 6 and 11 years old.

SAPIR is an ADD-ON systems to PAWS and is not flying on Israeli F-15/16s (that I have seen) and is tailored for the short-ranged helicopter environment, not the longer ranges that a jet fighter has to deal with.

SAPIR collision alert system as part of IR MWS suite for helicopter fleets

…

SAPIR system provides a suite of IR based situation awareness functions offered as add on system for ELISRA PAWS family of missile warning solutions.

http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=823834
Google Cache:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PWsBFrp0XIMJ:www.spiedl.org/data/Conferences/SPIEP/20004/72981L_1.pdf+&cd=6&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

More info from the MFG:

SAPIR- Situational Awareness Panoramic IR Add –on Power for Mission safety
SAPIR makes a unique contribution to mission success. As an add-on module for Elisra’s PAWS family or as a stand alone panoramic vision pilotage and situational awareness system, SAPIR adds a critical dimension to mission safety and increase the probability of successful mission completion.

In other words, it’s a separate systems of sensors or possibly an addon to process MAWS data.

And who is flying SAPIR?

The EODAS can detect, classify, track, geolocate, and share that info with everyone on the network. It can do that now with planes, AAMs, SAMs, and AAA with TBMs, arty, mortars, and tank fires coming in a likely Blk4/5 update.

Current MAWS/MLD systems can only give the warning of a launch (AAM/SAM) and a maximum of a vector for the AAM/SAM. They don’t track anything (except maybe the active radar MAW of the Typhoon) , especially other planes. They also do not have the capability to EVER detect/track planes, ground fires, AAA, etc.