In his op-ed on the Lavi fighter plane (“The three lies that shot down the Lavi,” September 28), Moshe Arens sinned against the truth, apparently due to a lack of understanding. It wasn’t three lies that killed the Lavi, but two weighty and correct considerations, which saved the country from both an economic Holocaust and a critical error in building its military force.
While the Lavi project was in operation, I served as head of the air force’s Weapons Department. Thus together with my superiors, I bore the burden of deciding what planes the air force should buy in the future, and whether the Lavi was suitable for inclusion among those planes. My vehement opinion, both then and now, was that the Lavi was neither operationally nor economically appropriate for the air force.
Before beginning my explanation, it should be said that the Lavi as planned, and as demonstrated in several prototypes, was a plane laden with cutting-edge, ambitious technology and was an extremely impressive feat of engineering on an international scale. But that isn’t enough.
The main problem was the management of a project of this scope, a problem Arens didn’t understand then and, as evidenced by his op-ed, still doesn’t understand today. A project like this has a magic triangle consisting of cost, performance and supply time. During the Lavi’s development and test flights, new information was discovered that required changes, and these disrupted the original plan, requiring it to be altered.
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https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.815182
