Talk:IAI Lavi/Archive 1

Untitled
At first it says the cancellation was due to the US "fearing" a superior plane, so they offered Israel "enticements it could not refuse." And below, it says the Lavi's cancellation was "because of budgetary problems and bickering among various economic and political pressure groups." Contradictory? (I'm new. I'm being bold.)  Danheac 17:43, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Cancellation
If on reads "Israel's Air Force" a book written by a former IAF pilot good insight is given into the Lavi project. In point of fact the United States paid well more then half of the Lavi's development cost. The United States refused to pay further on the project when Israel announced its inention to market the craft overseas. The primary concern for the US was not just because it would compete with US aircraft. But rather that the Lavi had many advanced technologies, some american some unique to the project. Israel's marketing of the aircraft would have caused the US to lose control over where its technologies were going. Afterward Israel charged several hundred million dollars in cancellation fees which it is reported the US paid. Israel's selling of the design to China became a very big issue. And Israel was nearly expelled from the Joint Strike Fighter Program for this act.

that dispute was over harpy drones not the lavi.- Moshe Constantine Hassan Al-Silverburg | Talk 09:53, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Where'd you get that from? Klauth 10:33, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

It's speculated that Israel demonstrated Lavi unit #3 to reps from China, which influenced their design on the J-10. However the J-10 is definately not a "copy" of the Lavi. The dispute over JSF tech-sharring has more to do with US government not happy at Israel for exporting weapons that undermines US policy. When Israel signed agreement to sell Phalcon AWACS and Harpy UAVs to China, the US was notified but did not publically oppose the deal. But afterwards US-China relations worsened (Embassy bombing, EP-3C incident, etc.) and US position changed. The Harpy UAVs were already delivered to China and the US didn't say much, but when China returend the UAVs to Israel for upgrades, the US stepped in to stop it. They resolved the issue by agreeing to send the UAVs back to China without upgrades "as is". I think after these incidents the US stopped looking the other way at the fact that Israel is a strong competitor to US in international arms sales. -- Adeptitus 18:37, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I have a question: Why would US need to exercise political pressure if the engine for the aircrft was produced by US company? They could just stop producing engines for Lavi :) 99.231.46.37 (talk) 04:29, 23 June 2008 (UTC)Pavel Golikov.

Still Cancelation
From the article: "The decision to cancel was approved with a majority of only one vote, that of health minister Shoshana Arbeli-Almozlino.". Given a one-vote majority, aren't all of the aye votes essential? Why is she singled out? --Stephan Schulz 13:56, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

F-16 copy
This was a direct copy of the General Dynamics (Lockheed) F-16. Article should mention this fact. 86.17.246.75 10:54, 17 July 2006 (UTC)


 * DISAGREE The Lavi incorported some design concepts from the F-16, but it cannot be considered a "direct copy". The same is true for Taiwan's AIDC F-CK (IDF) Fighter, and South Korea's T-50 Golden Eagle. -- Adeptitus 18:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I also disagree. I have seen the original preliminary designs as I was a design engineer who consulted on the Lavi program. It was very much "inspired" by the F-16 and was to have perform essentially the same roles and have the same types of systems, so you would expect some similarities in overall appearance and features. However, while the earlier Kfir was a significantly redesigned Mirage, the Lavi was developed from the paper up.


 * Designing a modern fighter – not to mention a state-of-the-art aerospace industry – essentially from scratch is tremendously expensive. It wasn't fear of competition that led the US government to withdraw financial support, but rather that the US taxpayers had just paid to develop two others, the F-16 and F/A-18, so funding a third (which would cost more than these two) just didn't make any sense. Moreover, there was a lot of internal debate in Israel over the wisdom of doing so with such a limited national production base and scant export prospects to lower the unit costs. Israel had to make a hard decision between the great expense that would have to be sunk into building a topflight aircraft design, development and manufacturing industry over a single generation (instead of amortizing it over several generations like the US and Europe) or focusing on a highly sophisticated electronics industry with a lot better economic prospects. In the end, I believe they made the right choice. Askari Mark | Talk 03:55, 4 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed, although I think there was some concern about competition. US taxpayers, it was felt, should not be subsidizing high technology development that would compete with US companies.  There was also the cost-effectiveness of the fighter, as you point out.  The Lavi is arguably somewhat better in certain ways than the F-16 manufactured at the same period (it would not be better than a current-block F-16 made in 2007).  However, the improvement in performance is not sufficient to justify spending billions on a few airplanes.  To put it another way, my group of six F-16s costs the same as your "loose deuce" tactical flight of Lavis, and, given comparable pilot skills, if we went head to head I'd blow you out of the sky, because your airplanes are not that much better than mine. 16:58, 17 August 2007 (UTC)Raryel


 * Nonsense- The reason why USA financed the Lavi from the beginning (about 40% of the development cost) was simple: it want to control the project and to stop it if conflict with it's own interests-USA wouldn't finance the development of a F-16 copy-this is truly ridicules. Any way, only the engine was like this of the F-16, actually, not like, but the same-Israel bought it from the American company which produce it for F-16. Israel also wants to develop a better and stronger engine (and in Israel many people who were involved in the Lavi project will tell you that it made the Americans worried about their controlling on Israel military production) - and start doing so while American heavy pressure stoped the project. The Lavi should been the F-16 competitor, and it's second double-engine version should been better than the F-15, but USA stop it on the right time from it's own side.If you think that Israel is some kind of a third world country and that countries like USA have an obvious technological advantage over it- so you really don’t know nothing about Israel. BTW, you wont find even one serious article which support the idea of the Lavi being a F-16 copy or something like that.
 * If the Lavi should have been an F-16 competitor, why on Earth would you expect the USA to pay for it? The fact is that the Lavi was a "joint" project, that the USA never had any intention of buying, aimed at reducing Israel's visible dependence on foreign aircraft. The USA pulled out because of fears of technology transfer. There was never any risk of the Lavi becoming a competitor to the F-16 because the USA simply wouldn't have let it happen; all they had to do was cut off the supply of engines and threaten to start cutting other aid as well. After all, countries that can build and export modern jet fighters don't need handouts, do they? If IAI is the equal of western aircraft manufacturers why has the Israeli Air Force always used foreign designs? Israel is just too small and doesn't have the industrial base to design and build its own military aircraft. If anything, the Lavi was a lesson in hubris. --FergusM1970 (talk) 20:53, 9 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Nonsense. The capacity to build relatively large numbers of sophisticated jets existed from the 70s. This is 2012. Your post appears to be arrogant underestimation. Irondome (talk) 01:44, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * If the capacity to build large numbers of sophisticated jets exists why has Israel never done it? Why continue to rely exclusively on foreign aircraft? Israel has a lot of advanced industries, but it does not have an aerospace industry capable of building fast jets.--FergusM1970Let's play Freckles 16:27, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Due to economies of scale basically. They actually did by the way. The nesher and Kfir series were hardly trainers and Israel built several hundred. So the Israeli capability to design and build fast jets is not in doubt, rather the economic rationality of such a move at this point. Irondome (talk) 16:34, 25 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I apologise for the rather annoyed tone of my sept remark btw, which ive only just re read. Must have been having a crap day. Irondome (talk) 16:52, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

'A young lion'
So 'Kfir' means lion cub, and 'Lavi' means 'a young lion'? Is this correct? --Joffeloff 19:10, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Both are biblical words, now used almost exclusively in the biblical context or for the respective IAI fighters. Respected, but somewhat old (which is not necessarily bad in this case) Even-Shoshan's dictionary says "kfir" is "one of the names of young, strong lion" and "lavi" is simply "lion". In the english bible translations, "kfir" mostly becomes "young lion"; I'm not sure about "lavi".
 * P.S. I'm neither linguist nor native Hebrew speaker so... Bukvoed 21:26, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * "Lavi" is the masculine form of of "Levia", which is the commonly used word for a lioness. While "Lavi" is not commonly used in popular speech ("Arye" is used instead), it is definately a general word for a male lion, and not for a cub (as mentioned, the Hebrew word for a lion cub is "Kfir"). Also, dictionaries support this. Therefore I'm changing the translation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.138.119.178 (talk) 15:48, August 30, 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I'm Hebrew native speaker and I can tell you what the difference is: Kfir is a lion cub, without no mane - I.E. a baby... While Lavi is a young lion, still with out a status and with only a small mane but fertile. The difference between kfir and lion is like the difference between a baby and an adult, while the difference between lavi and lion (Arye:אריה) is like the difference between youngster/teenager and an adult.--Gilisa 14:26, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Lone survivor
Where is the #3 plane (the tech demonstrator)? Is it still flying?

Hebrew Wikipedia article states it has been grounded during the 90's. 85.130.161.134 13:03, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Stronger emphasis
Given the intrinsic similarities, and the amount of buzz that it generated, I think that we can do a bit better than having a single unsourced sentence saying that the Lavi Influenced the Chengdu J-10.

perfectblue 11:03, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

I heard from the public presses in Chinese, that only the external airframe of Lavi gave some inspirations to the designers of J-10, but the internal design was totally different. ——Nussknacker胡桃夹子^.^tell me... 01:27, 12 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I think it was in a TV documentary about the Lavi on Israeli television that the blueprints were supposedly sold to china and that there was a chines aircraft that was near identical, one of the differences being that it carries a different numbers of missiles. however they said it was unconfirmed or whatever the news people say for a likely to be true, yet only speculation, rumor. Shyisc 06:56, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

error in the text
the lavi wasn't Developed from F-16 Fighting Falcon, the lavi is israeli developed  and here so i delete this error


 * You are right, that's nonsense--Gilisa 09:18, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Resemblance to J-10...?
The Chengdu J-10 looks surprisingly similar to Lavi. What could have happened?Benhpark —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.204.48.71 (talk) 04:16, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Uploading new photos
The pictures of the Lavi in the article are not representative, I need help to find who hold the license for the photos od the Lavi in these links:

http://images.google.co.il/imgres?imgurl=http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/fighter/lavi/lavi_07.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.aerospaceweb.org/aircraft/fighter/lavi/&usg=__g7BwmDkq08cNPpeA7KNqGIWf-1s=&h=286&w=550&sz=30&hl=iw&start=8&sig2=AdtvunKHvoLWTVOgqwM4vQ&tbnid=i3mkTyrHN-EzEM:&tbnh=69&tbnw=133&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlavi%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Diw%26sa%3DG&ei=V9FLStHhA4WNjAfFlJSQCQ

http://images.google.co.il/imgres?imgurl=http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/aircraft/lavi/lavi2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.israeli-weapons.com/weapons/aircraft/lavi/lavi.html&usg=__PqZ0uKI32H65dOzBgfSUN2YUuDc=&h=399&w=600&sz=95&hl=iw&start=11&sig2=37_EdXAg-zxVvHxV6itddA&tbnid=csDxGsczBAdB7M:&tbnh=90&tbnw=135&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dlavi%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Diw%26sa%3DG&ei=V9FLStHhA4WNjAfFlJSQCQ

http://www.militarypictures.info/d/1148-3/lavi-refuel.jpg

Best --Gilisa (talk) 21:18, 1 July 2009 (UTC)



How's that? Wikifan12345 (talk) 22:29, 1 July 2009 (UTC)


 * It's better than the photos on the article (in which the Lavi don't even realy look like a jet fighter) but if you could find a photo of the Lavi in the air or on the runway with free license it would be the best.

Cheers--Gilisa (talk) 06:36, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Spelling, grammar... just terrible.
Jesus... was this article written by a four year old?? Large parts of this article are so badly written that a high school teacher wouldn't accept this. This is the kind of article that is used by people who ridicule the academic credibility Wikipedia. DESEPERATELY needs a rewrite! (118.210.254.207 (talk) 07:40, 6 December 2012 (UTC))
 * So go ahead. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:58, 6 December 2012 (UTC) p.s. you're not invited to my fifth birthday party.

Lavi enters use in the IAF as a training aircraft.
Source: http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/10/11/the-lavi-idfs-newest-training-aircraft/

We will need more information on this before adding it to the article.

Is it still being made by IAI? When did it officially join the air force? What changes have been made? There were talks about Israel buying training aircraft from either Italy or South Korea. Did this win instead? When did they restart the project? - — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.144.63.147 (talk)
 * The name 'Lavi' was assigned to IAF's Italian M-346 trainer aircraft. Flayer (talk) 18:45, 11 October 2014 (UTC)


 * See Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master. - BilCat (talk) 19:40, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 18:40, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
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