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"Israeli Air Force officials are "frustrated" over the Defense Ministry's agreeing to allow the F-16I jets to be equipped with American-made radar."

Why ?"

Now that you see the United Arab Emirates receiving AN/APG-80s with their F-16s. The Israeli's wanted to fit their own radars and seemed unhappy with the radar fit on their F-16Is.

Radar concerns cast shadow over F-16I buy
ALON BEN-DAVID JDW Correspondent
Tel Aviv

The Israel Air Force (IAF) is "highly dissatisfied" with the Northrop Grumman AN/APG-68(V)9 radar installed in its new F-16I multirole fighters, according to senior Israeli defence sources.

With the first of 102 Lockheed Martin F-16Is scheduled to arrive in Israel on 19 February, a growing number of defence officials are now criticising the procurement.

JDW has learned that following a series of test flights at Lockheed Martin's facility in Fort Worth, Texas, IAF pilots assessed the synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) mode of the AN/APG-68(V)9 to be "below IAF operational standards".

Israel's former minister of defence, Moshe Arens, who negotiated the F-16I deal, told JDW he is not surprised to learn about the radar's performance problems. "Our intention was to install Israeli-made radar in the F-16Is, but the US government made the whole sale conditional on the purchase of US-made radar. I argued that [Israel Aircraft Industries' subsidiary] Elta's radar had a proven better performance and lesser cost than the US radars, but the Americans were unrelenting," Arens said.

The Israel Defence Force (IDF) spokesperson's office declined to comment on the matter, and a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin said that "the issue is between the Israeli and the US governments".

Senior IAF officers have recently met with both Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman executives and presented them with what they described as "performance problems of the radar". IAF sources said that "once the aircraft arrive in Israel, further tests will be conducted in co-ordination with the manufacturer".

However, according to a Northrop Grumman spokesman, the company hosted a SAR "summit" for all key principals in January 2004, at the US government's request, to evaluate the radar's performance. At the end of that session, the parties agreed that the radar had met all its performance specifications, that the development phase was completed and that the IAF should now evaluate the radar in its own environment.

IAF sources said that in 1999 the service's preferred option was for Lockheed Martin's F-16I over Boeing's F-15I - partly because an offer to purchase two batches of 50 aircraft had significantly lowered the price per unit. However, the $4.4 billion F-16I deal, Israel's largest-ever single procurement, is now under increasing scrutiny by both former and current defence officials.

"I don't think we should have decided in 1999 on fighters we will still be receiving in 2008," said Brig Gen Eival Giladi, who until last December was head of strategic planning for the IDF. "I am not worried about their technology, but I'm not sure that what we will need in 2008 are fighters. We should have opted for the smaller [F-15] deal. Even though we would have lost the considerable discount, we would have gained much more freedom to decide later on the structure of our air force."

Arens, who supported the F-16I deal at the time, said: "In perspective, it could be that we were a little hasty. Considering the strategic changes in the region, I am not sure we should have made that deal."

While IAF Commander Maj Gen Dan Halutz (now IDF Deputy Chief of Staff elect) maintained that the F16I procurement "was the right decision then and still is today", other senior officers are questioning the decision, which committed a large part of US Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to Israel for almost a decade.

The IDF's budget was drastically reduced in the last two years, making the FMF the only available funds for new procurements.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recently added NIS1 billion ($224.2 million) to the 2004 defence budget, totalling NIS33.4 billion, and pledged an additional NIS1.6 billion in 2005.