Back in April, I noted that Israel has been frozen out of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program over a contract with China to service/upgrade their Harpy anti-radar attack UAVs bought in 1994. I also noted that a compromise was expected - and that has now come to pass.
Israel will now service, but not upgrade, the Harpy UAVs it sold to China several years ago. In return, technical cooperation on the F-35 program (a 2-way street, I should note) will resume. I suspect there has also been an undiscussed backroom agreement that Israeli defense ties with China, which the US once encouraged, will now consist of meeting existing service obligations and nothing more. An excellent analysis along those lines can be found here.
Good, sensible deal all around. An even more sensible deal would have bought a bunch of Harpys (or the upgraded Cutlass) for American use, esp. by the Marines. A very handy system - which may explain its use by Israel, India, Korea, and Turkey as well.
UPDATE: In the wake of additional pressure, the Harpy parts will not be going back to China. Israel and the USA have also signed a formal arms pact that requires them to take each others' security needs into account when selling weapons (even domestically built Israeli weapons) abroad. Something tells me this will be one-way, and won't stop American arms sales to the Saudis et. al...
Dear Joe,
We recently conducted a search for our client one of the top 5 defense contractors for someone to manage a billion dollar+ UAV program. In the course of it I gained significant insight to the efforts of all contractors in this field. It was mind-boggling to say the least, I only wish my clearance was still active so I could have heard more.
Buying from the Israelis would be nice, but not necesssary. We have birds currently available with every function the IAI birds do and more. I also interviewed a former Commander of TOPGUN who made a statement that blew me away last year. He said that the last fighter pilot has already been born. I can't disagree. UAVs and ground, undersea and other remote vehicles will soon be removing many of our troops from harms way.
If you are interested I can do a fairly comprehensive piece about US UAV efforts.
Cordially,
Uncle J
Uncle J - We'd be interested.
Is the U.S. back on board with M-THEL?
As far as I know, the Israelis continue to test the THEL laser defense system, and the US continues to be interested. But I'd need to hunt down specific sources, and I could be wrong about US interest.
Caroline Glick mentioned in a recent article that the U.S. had withdrawn funding. IIRC, it was for political reasons - China - rather than a lack of interest.
Plus we just funded next steps on the Airborne Laser Program although I am unsure exactly how much mission overlap the two systems have.
Cordially,
Uncle J
Military Matters
Here is an article on U.S. interest in M-THEL. Apparently, not as great as it once was, at least among the brass.
Joe, a meta-comment...
I see that the RAW hypertext showing up in the comment preview as been fixed!
Alas, there is still a bug. While it is correctly parsing the HTML now, it appears that it is counting characters in the RAW HTML when determinining the number of leading characters in the comment to display.
Colt's comment just above is an example. It's is cut way shorter than other comments in the preview, I think because it is still counting characters in the link, even though it's displaying the link formatted text correctly.
Oh well. Two steps forward and all that...
This is a really bad deal.
Robin's link to the strategy page says why. A continuing ability to improve PRC aircraft developement is not in our interest.
Robert,
The Chinese efforts to improve their aircraft development will continue regardless. They've been trying to steal/copy the Russian SU-30's engines, for instance, and that sort of thing will continue.
The Harpy deal simply gets China the same UAVs it bought from Israel in 1994, and recently sent back to Israel for regular maintence under that contract. By allowing that contract to proceed, the USa avoids creating a major diplomatic flareup with China. Meanwhile, future military sales by Israel are effectively held hostage via the F-35 JSF program so they won't happen.
I can understand how Isarael would think this is a bad deal. I don't see where the "bad deal" comes in for the USA... and frankly, I don't see the relevance of your "aircraft development" quote to the deal at hand.