Can Israel develop its own stealth fighter jet

[jgarbuz]

Iran is not a second rate power anymore

They probably could create their own boomers but why bother? It would be an open admission of Nuclear capability, politically nightmarish given the Israeli-US stance on Iran's reactor projects.

Plus, the Israeli cruise missile arsenal, while sub-par for attacking a first-rate power will still be effective against the Iranian defences, not just now but for years to come. Short of a revolution in the military situation in the area SSBN would be an absolute waste (and I don't know what the Med is like for Boomer ops and I doubt anyone who knows much will be speaking openly on a public forum, there may be operational reasons why Israel would not find them to be useful).

Most are still thinking of Iran in terms of being a "second rate" power, but I don't.
I don't underestimate Iran for even an instant. And neither does Israel. How many US drones have the Iranians intercepted in the last year or two so far?
But the question of Boomers being able to physically operate in the Mediterranean is one that others have told me might not be feasible, but who says they have to operate only in the Mediterranean? The whole point of this, is that Israel must have a credible nuclear deterrent that Iran cannot destroy in one fell swoop. Same reason why the US developed them initially, so that that the USSR could not destroy the whole land-based US deterrent in one fell swoop.

 

[jgarbuz]

Israel developed Dimona in the late '50s and early '60s

They'd have to license a PWR from someplace I'd have guessed as the technology of shoving a small and dense core together is challenging (and get it wrong, the whole thing lands in tiny pieces across a wide area)

It's a non starter, I don't think they've the welding expertise to put the hull together, let alone design one. There's so many different technologies they'd have to grasp...The UK's Successor program, using a leased ballistic missile, indigenous warheads, an established manufacturer of nuclear submarines and a native PWR capability is costed at £20-25 billion over the life of the program. If you're costing out building and testing an ICBM as well, it's just science fiction.

Israel, with French help, built the Dimona reactor in the late 1950s and early 1960s when it was really a tiny impoverished state. And remember, it was Jewish-American Admiral Hyman Rickover that pushed for nuclear subs back in the 1950s. If Israel's physical survival is at stake, it is amazing what even a tiny country like that can accomplish. Where there is the will, there is a way. Sweden and Switzerland are small countries too. Sweden in particular has some amazing stuff.

 

[swerve]

Sweden has acquired its expertise gradually, over decades, carefully focusing its efforts on what was thought of most importance to Sweden, & selectively importing technology for the things it wanted to build & couldn't do unaided, & importing systems whole when it didn't have the resources to develop them. Submarine technology was one of the areas it focused on, just as Israel has focused on avionics. And yet, when Kockums (which had been building submarines for much longer than Israel has existed) tried to scale up an existing successful submarine design much more than it had previously scaled up, there were major problems. Imagine trying to do that all at once, with no previous experience in the field - then multiply it by ten, for all the associated technologies Israel would have to learn before it could build workable submarines, & the greater difficulty of building a submarine big enough for SLBMs.

Sweden is, & always has been, richer & more populous than Israel, BTW, & it's never tried anything anywhere near so ambitious. Piece by piece, build on the previous achievement, has always been the way.

The Dimona reactor is small & as you say was built with French help. At about the same time, quite a few countries built small reactors with foreign help, e.g. Argentina, Australia, Egypt, Austria, Brazil, Belgian Congo, Philippines & Yugoslavia. The only special thing about Dimona is that it did not have the same safeguards against diversion of nuclear material as the others. It doesn't give Israel the ability to build reactors to power submarines.

What has Hyman Rickover got to do with a hypothetical submarine programme in Israel? Is this an attempt to say that because a Jewish-American played a major role in the US nuclear submarine programme there is some kind of Jewish genetic ability to build nuclear submarines?

 

[StobieWan]

Israel, with French help, built the Dimona reactor in the late 1950s and early 1960s when it was really a tiny impoverished state. And remember, it was Jewish-American Admiral Hyman Rickover that pushed for nuclear subs back in the 1950s. If Israel's physical survival is at stake, it is amazing what even a tiny country like that can accomplish. Where there is the will, there is a way. Sweden and Switzerland are small countries too. Sweden in particular has some amazing stuff.

The Dimona reactor was a weapons production facility - it's utterly different to the dense core required to successfully power a submarine or other vessel. Military PWR's are finely balanced systems with very tightly packed components to produce quite a bit of power in as small a volume as possible. Add to which any of the people involved in designing Dimona are now likely to be in their 80's, I'd suggest Israel would be starting afresh.

I'm with Swerve on the WTF? thing with Rickover. You may as well chuck in Einstein and claim all Israeli's are theoretical physicists.

 

[jgarbuz]

Israel does not have that luxury...

Sweden has acquired its expertise gradually, over decades, carefully focusing its efforts on what was thought of most importance to Sweden, & selectively importing technology for the things it wanted to build & couldn't do unaided, & importing systems whole when it didn't have the resources to develop them. Submarine technology was one of the areas it focused on, just as Israel has focused on avionics. And yet, when Kockums (which had been building submarines for much longer than Israel has existed) tried to scale up an existing successful submarine design much more than it had previously scaled up, there were major problems. Imagine trying to do that all at once, with no previous experience in the field - then multiply it by ten, for all the associated technologies Israel would have to learn before it could build workable submarines, & the greater difficulty of building a submarine big enough for SLBMs.

Sweden is, & always has been, richer & more populous than Israel, BTW, & it's never tried anything anywhere near so ambitious. Piece by piece, build on the previous achievement, has always been the way.

The Dimona reactor is small & as you say was built with French help. At about the same time, quite a few countries built small reactors with foreign help, e.g. Argentina, Australia, Egypt, Austria, Brazil, Belgian Congo, Philippines & Yugoslavia. The only special thing about Dimona is that it did not have the same safeguards against diversion of nuclear material as the others. It doesn't give Israel the ability to build reactors to power submarines.

What has Hyman Rickover got to do with a hypothetical submarine programme in Israel? Is this an attempt to say that because a Jewish-American played a major role in the US nuclear submarine programme there is some kind of Jewish genetic ability to build nuclear submarines?

No, but there is a genetic paranoia gene in Jewish DNA that makes us very survival conscious. Or maybe it is just an accumulated history of constant persecution. I'm quite sure that many saw Hyman Rickover as a paranoid person in the Navy. Another paranoid Jew named Leo Szilard was most responsible for the Manhattan project and the building the first nuclear reactor, along with his partner Enrico Fermi.

Israel was built on waves of paranoid people who had to rapidly adapt. The Zionist Jews who had no history of farming whatsoever, within a single generation managed to get more milk out of a cow than the average Danish farmer. It soon became a leader in desert farming. For a people who had no state and no army, it soon developed very good one. Israel developed its own miniature satellites back in the 1980s. It's own ballistic missiles based on an old French design. Israel got those Dolphins from Germany, and I believe if the US fails to contain Iran's nuclear program, then if Israel has no other choice, Israel will build submarines too. Stranger things have happened.

 

[swerve]

Look at the sort of ballistic missiles Israel produced, starting with French help. They started out short range, with small payloads After 50 years, Israel now has long-range missiles.

A ballistic missile submarine is a much bigger programme.

 

[Cailet]

Most are still thinking of Iran in terms of being a "second rate" power, but I don't.
I don't underestimate Iran for even an instant. And neither does Israel. How many US drones have the Iranians intercepted in the last year or two so far?.

Let's see, there was the RQ-170 that went rogue and ran out of fuel in Iran and the one they tried to intercept using a ground-attack aircraft that missed and, ummm... can't think of any others off the top of my head.

Iran has a large military but thouroughly limited in quality equipment, one of the reasons Israel and the US can afford to rattle their sabres so furiously is precisely because they know that Iran cannot resist any aggression they may choose to indulge in.

 

[jgarbuz]

Again, it all depends on Iran's nuclear program.

Look at the sort of ballistic missiles Israel produced, starting with French help. They started out short range, with small payloads After 50 years, Israel now has long-range missiles.
A ballistic missile submarine is a much bigger programme.

Israel has no choice but to respond to the threats it faces. If Iran is persuaded not to weaponize its nuclear program, then Israel will need neither stealth planes nor nuclear subs. Iran is past the point where its strategic programs could easily be stopped by military strikes, short of a nuclear attack. If Israel is faced with a nuclear Iran, it will be forced into the MAD strategy of having ballistic missile subs. I'd rather Iran be stopped, but that is up to Iran and the US. Israel cannot take on Iran alone.

 

[jgarbuz]

Let's see, there was the RQ-170 that went rogue and ran out of fuel in Iran and the one they tried to intercept using a ground-attack aircraft that missed and, ummm... can't think of any others off the top of my head.

Iran has a large military but thoroughly limited in quality equipment, one of the reasons Israel and the US can afford to rattle their sabres so furiously is precisely because they know that Iran cannot resist any aggression they may choose to indulge in.

How is the US and Iran the ones threatening Iran? The US got rid of Iran's number one adversary, Saddam Hussein. I thought it was Iranian missiles that recently were fired at Tel Aviv, not Israeli or US missiles fired at Teheran. Hezbollah is an arm of Iran. It is Iran that has sworn to eliminate the "Zionist cancer," not Israel that has sworn to eliminate the Islamofascist cancer. If the Iranian saber is as weak as you claim, they shouldn't be threatening the "Great Satan" and the "Little Satan."

 

[swerve]

Israel has no choice but to respond to the threats it faces. If Iran is persuaded not to weaponize its nuclear program, then Israel will need neither stealth planes nor nuclear subs. Iran is past the point where its strategic programs could easily be stopped by military strikes, short of a nuclear attack. If Israel is faced with a nuclear Iran, it will be forced into the MAD strategy of having ballistic missile subs. I'd rather Iran be stopped, but that is up to Iran and the US. Israel cannot take on Iran alone.

Why are you so obsessed with ballistic missile submarines? You've stopped addressing the arguments, but you keep on about "SSBNs, SSBNs, SSBNs" as if it's a mantra.

SLBMs are not the only weapon, & they take a long time to develop & deploy, especially if you've never even built a little coastal submarine.

If Iran's nuclear programme is advanced enough to be an imminent threat for Israel, SLBMs are not the answer. MAD requires having missiles, not conceptual designs of what you might build in some future decade.

 

[jgarbuz]

Why are you so obsessed with ballistic missile submarines? You've stopped addressing the arguments, but you keep on about "SSBNs, SSBNs, SSBNs" as if it's a mantra.

SLBMs are not the only weapon, & they take a long time to develop & deploy, especially if you've never even built a little coastal submarine.

If Iran's nuclear programme is advanced enough to be an imminent threat for Israel, SLBMs are not the answer. MAD requires having missiles, not conceptual designs of what you might build in some future decade.

Because the US has them to protect its own nuclear deterrence, which is why Israel should have the same. If a HUGE country like the US feels that accurate Soviet missiles might have been able to destroy a large part of its own deterrent in a first strike and thus chose to put a large part of it under the sea, then certainly tiny Israel
has to do the same. Iran's potential threat is not yet fulfilled. Within a few more years, it may well be. Before they make actual warheads, they are going to continue to improve the accuracy of their own missile, and improve their own air and space defense capabities. In the same period, the US won't supply the subs it needs, Israel should start a submarine naval program to get those nukes protected and capable of delivering a devastating counterattack. And Iran has to know it.

 

[jgarbuz]

Iran has 19 submarines now.

Iran shows new submarines and warships, touts self-sufficiency in defense

Iran shows new submarines and warships, touts self-sufficiency in defense

Posted by Anup Kaphle on November 28, 2012 at 10:23 am

"Iran’s state television has posted a short video that shows what the Iranians say are “indigenously built” warship and submarines. The two Ghadir class submarines, which can fire missiles and torpedoes at the same time, and the Sina-7 warship were launched at Bandar Abbas, near the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian submarines unveiled near Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday. (Screenshot from Press TV)

In the video, Iranian navy commander Habibollah Sayyari also boasted of the country’s ability to build its own destroyers and submarines.

" Thanks to the Islamic Revolution, Iran has acquired the know-how to build submarines. No one believed that we would reach a point where we would build destroyers capable of carrying helicopters and missiles in the Sea of Oman and oceans … because it’s a very difficult task to build destroyers and submarines."

 

[Bonza]

This has gone so ridiculously off topic that it needs to stop. Jgarbuz, it's supposed to be a thread about the potential for development of low-observable aircraft by Israel, not a platform for your personal ranting on the nuclear balance of the middle east. I don't care where you're from or what you do, either get back on topic or leave. Especially after a gem like this:

And remember, it was Jewish-American Admiral Hyman Rickover that pushed for nuclear subs back in the 1950s. If Israel's physical survival is at stake, it is amazing what even a tiny country like that can accomplish. Where there is the will, there is a way.

What does Rickover's being Jewish have to do with your point that Israel (apparently) needs SSBNs? Bugger-all, that's what, so rather than add to the illogical nonsense with which you've polluted the thread, stay on topic, think before you post, and above all else start making some kind of sense. Two moderators, myself included, have already issued warnings to this effect. You won't get another one from me.

 

[jgarbuz]

This has gone so ridiculously off topic that it needs to stop. Jgarbuz, it's supposed to be a thread about the potential for development of low-observable aircraft by Israel, not a platform for your personal ranting on the nuclear balance of the middle east. I don't care where you're from or what you do, either get back on topic or leave.<<

Okay. This is from the following

Israel working on low-observable UAV

Flightglobal

Israel working on low-observable UAV

By: Zach Rosenberg Washington DC
28 Nov 2012

"The Israeli military is developing a large, classified unmanned air vehicle (UAV) with features consistent with stealthy aircraft designs, according to a knowledgable source.
The secret project involves a "fairly large" UAV in development by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the maker of the non-stealthy Heron and Eitan (which is called the Heron TP for export) UAVs, the source says.

Israel has been openly involved with stealth and minimal-detection programmes. Experts familiar with Israeli industry profess little surprise in a low-observable aircraft capability.

"There have been rumours about it, and you see Israeli companies have rolled out an array of products across the spectrum," says a former US government official. "You would expect that stealth is something they'd be interested in, particularly in light of the threats they face."

Israel, a small nation surrounded by largely hostile neighbors, has long placed an emphasis on operating in denied areas with various means. Recent airstrikes thought to involve Israel include a 2007 strike that destroyed a nuclear plant in Syria, and two more recent strikes on targets deep in Sudanese territory. Operations over denied airspace, particularly airspace protected by sophisticated surface-to-air networks, require both stealth and endurance.

"I know that they were working on small and medium-size variants [of stealth aircraft] for some years now," says one industry analyst, who declined to comment on the record. According to the analyst, IAI has been working on stealth technologies since the mid-1990s or earlier.

"You would think from a national security perspective, that they would be willing to put a lot of money on that project," says one current aerospace executive. "They've been pretty evolutionary with the Heron series of UAVs, I could easily see them trying to trick one out, put some [stealthy] materials on."

"Israel, long known as a leader in UAV technology, is conspicuously quiet on the subject of stealth. An Israeli stealth UAV would join a long list of unmanned projects designed to evade radar detection. The US has launched several projects including the Northrop Grumman X-47 and the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel. Meanwhile, acknowledged European projects include the BAE Systems Taranis and Dassault Neuron. Similar projects have also surfaced in Russia and India."

"It would be a logical next step for either an IAI or an Elbit," says an industry analyst. "If you look at the evolution of the species, you've got [BAE] Tyrannis, you've got [Boeing] Phantom Ray, [Northrop Grumman] X-47, you even have the [MiG] Scat system. I would not dismiss it out of hand."

IAI did not immediately respond to questions."

 

[gf0012-aust]

jgarbuz, you're on holiday for 3 days

I suggest that you read the forum rules before coming back

Your last post demonstrates that you have not read the Forum Rules re posting content and expectations

If you come back, stick by the rules

 

[SolarWind]

This has gone so ridiculously off topic that it needs to stop. Jgarbuz, it's supposed to be a thread about the potential for development of low-observable aircraft by Israel, not a platform for your personal ranting on the nuclear balance of the middle east. I don't care where you're from or what you do, either get back on topic or leave. Especially after a gem like this:



What does Rickover's being Jewish have to do with your point that Israel (apparently) needs SSBNs? Bugger-all, that's what, so rather than add to the illogical nonsense with which you've polluted the thread, stay on topic, think before you post, and above all else start making some kind of sense. Two moderators, myself included, have already issued warnings to this effect. You won't get another one from me.

I think Israel has a right to do whatever it needs to defend itself, including developing SSBNs. Whether or not they can practically do so is a good question but not a good reason to pressure to end further discussion. If this is so outrageously off topic in the current thread, why not offer to move it into a more appropriate one instead? It has not been stated by the mods that this subject is completely inappropriate for discussion, only that the topic of discussion is in the realm of fantasy. So you are entitled to your opinion. Why not direct jgarbuz to argue his point in a more appropriate thread?

 

[Bonza]

I think Israel has a right to do whatever it needs to defend itself, including developing SSBNs. Whether or not they can practically do so is a good question but not a good reason to pressure to end further discussion. If this is so outrageously off topic in the current thread, why not offer to move it into a more appropriate one instead? It has not been stated by the mods that this subject is completely inappropriate for discussion, only that the topic of discussion is in the realm of fantasy. So you are entitled to your opinion. Why not direct jgarbuz to argue his point in a more appropriate thread?

I'm not interested in debating how moderation is undertaken on this site, nor am I interested in your suggestions as to what I should or shouldn't do. And for the record, if a mod suggests a topic is pure fantasy, then for the purposes of quality control on the site (which we do care about) it is essentially inappropriate (or at least pointless) for discussion. We're willing to be shown otherwise and we do confer as a group when such things come up, but this has not been deemed, by any of us, to be one of those situations.

 

[Preceptor]

I think Israel has a right to do whatever it needs to defend itself, including developing SSBNs. Whether or not they can practically do so is a good question but not a good reason to pressure to end further discussion. If this is so outrageously off topic in the current thread, why not offer to move it into a more appropriate one instead? It has not been stated by the mods that this subject is completely inappropriate for discussion, only that the topic of discussion is in the realm of fantasy. So you are entitled to your opinion. Why not direct jgarbuz to argue his point in a more appropriate thread?

Several things to keep in mind. This thread IS on the Mod team's collective radar, and as a group we aren't happy with the quality of some recent posts. For one thing, they have been Off Topic. For another, they have been illogical and fanciful in their content. Such posts and their poor quality, detract from Defence Talk and as such the Mod team is not particularly interested in harboring such discussion. There is a demand that DT discussion needs to be grounded in a degree of reality. So far, all the discussion on SSBN's for Israel have not been grounded in reality, even after the warning that post quality in this thread needs to be stepped up.
-Preceptor

 

[StobieWan]

Well, back on stealth aircraft I guess...there's a large gulf between a UAV and a manned platform, particularly a fighter.

Best look at Swedish experience in building their own aircraft, which has usually involved integrating large chunks of existing hardware into a bespoke design. The engine is a variant of a US design, a lot of the avionics and sensors are sourced elsewhere and the Swedes have forty years of fast jet experience.

Or, have a look at the French experience with Rafale, which has a much larger domestic quotient - and cost a *lot*.

Technically, yes, on a "national survival, must occur at all costs" basis, Israel could , given enough time and money, built a jet fighter with some RCS reduction. Practically? No.

 

[swerve]

What Israel might be able to do is build a long-range stealthy subsonic UAV for strike, as an alternative to submarine-launched missiles & manned aircraft. Using imported (or licence-built) jet engines, & building on existing Israeli expertise in UAV control systems, it should be both within Israel's capabilities in aerodynamics & aero structures, & cheaper than a fighter - though not cheap, by any means. I expect Israel is already working on signature management.


Stobiewan: the Swedes have 65 years experience of building jet fighters, & over 55 years of building fast (if by that you mean supersonic) jets. The Saab 21R flew in 1947, & the Saab 35 in 1955.