The secret of Israel’s Power

by Uzi Eilam

  We crossed the Suez Canal and reached the area where the Egyptian anti-aircraft missile batteries were laid out. There were SA-2 and SA-3 missile systems in their bunkers with the missiles inside. It was all left as if the aircraft detection and tracking radar had just been activated. The general was overcome with excitement and ran from one place to another like a kid in a candy store.

  Not far from the underground headquarters complex was an airfield, which caught General Blesse’s attention immediately. He was particularly interested in the underground airplane hangars built according to Soviet doctrine. We began to discuss possible ways of making immediate use of the information about the systems scattered in the field, such as the structure of the missile batteries, the headquarters’ bunkers and to the defense concepts behind them. We all knew that the cease-fire negotiations would eventually reach a permanent agreement and that our forces would return to the east side of the Suez Canal, leaving us in a situation where we could no longer without access the area to glean battlefield information. During the flight back north we began devising a program of tests that would give us an idea of the durability and weak points of the Soviet fortifications. At the same time we spoke with Blesse and his men about the agreement about the findings of his mission, which still contained elements of contention.

  At the end of the visit I understood that it would be necessary to go to the US and we received the authorization of the CGS to do so. The countdown for withdrawal from the western bank of the Canal was a significant consideration, and this made the issue urgent.

  We had our own interest in collecting data regarding tanks that were hit (ours and the enemy’s), especially the precise measurement of armor penetration. Our teams were at work on all the battlefields and at the Repair and Maintenance Center at Tel Hashomer, accurately and meticulously collecting data. Although we gave a copy of all the data we collected to the Americans, it was only many months later that we saw an interesting but extremely short summary of their findings.

  The Israeli Air Force under the command of Major General Benny Peled had a particularly open relationship with the R&D Unit. This openness was based partly on Peled’s and my mutual respect, and also because my deputy Nahum was an air force man. I had Nahum and Simcha Maoz join me for the general discussion on lessons for the air force, and they were grateful for this rare opportunity. We talked about how guided surface-to-surface missiles that home in on anti-aircraft missile system radar could help in our war against enemy surface-to-air missiles. Israel Aerospace Industries had developed a version of the magnetically-guided Shrike missile, which seemed promising to air force officials at the time.

  I asked Chaim Israeli, assistant to the minister of defense, to schedule a meeting with Dayan. I told him that I did not think that the defense minister knew me well and that I wanted to speak with him about some aspects of the lessons and the impact on future research and development and production of weapon systems. Chaim Israeli got back to me the same morning and told me that “Moshe said that he knows you well and that you are a superb fellow. He said that he would be happy to receive you without any formalities and that you should drop in some time when you can.” With a deep sense of trepidation I eventually got up the courage and dropped in on the defense minister for a short conversation. Although Dayan was preoccupied with diplomatic and political events in Israel at the time, he nonetheless offered encouragement for bold, original research and development programs and the creation of a broader production infrastructure for the defense industries.

  One issue that seemed particularly urgent to us as the battles raged was to find a way to arm the air force with laser-guided bombs. Tzur had asked us to check the possibility of buying laser-guided weapons as soon as possible, and the task was assigned to a team of the R&D Missiles and Rockets Department, the R&D Electronics (and optronics) Department and the Air Force Equipment Department. Colonel Nahum Dayagi’s input was an understanding of the laser-guided bombs based on his long service in the air force, and Yedidia, my wise and experienced second in command, also joined the effort. Within three days we had prepared a short document outlining the ways to equip ourselves with laser bombs. In the best case scenario the Pentagon would provide us with laser-guided bombs from the stock of the US Air Force or the US Navy. In the event that we were unable to acquire the systems in this manner, the document listed three alternate possibilities:

  The Americans would authorize us to produce the bombs ourselves, and provide us with the technology to do so.

  We would be permitted to purchase the sensor installed on the warhead, but we would have to adapt and produce the remaining parts of the system on our own.

  We would receive no assistance from the Americans and must develop and produce the systems on our own.

  Based on this analysis of our options, the document recommended Israel Military Industries as the producer in the case of option A; that the MBT department of Israel Aerospace Industries (which developed and produced the sea-skimming anti-ship Gabriel missile) as the developer and producer in the case of option B; and Rafael as the developer and producer in the case of option C. The document was focused and succinct, and only five pages long. Tzur praised the clarity of its recommendations and the swiftness with which it was prepared.

  The Americans did not authorize the purchase of the smart bombs we wanted. We therefore assembled the senior officials of the five relevant defense industries for a politically charged and difficult discussion that was supposedly technical. We decided to establish a team headed by Missiles and Rockets Department Director Dr. Arieh Lavi in order to draft a recommended plan of action within two months. Eventually, after a few years had passed, it was the MBT department of Israel Aerospace Industries — the second option in our initial document — that assumed leadership of the project. In accordance with the American paradigm regarding the release of advanced technologies, we were permitted to acquire the advanced systems from the Americans only after we produced laser-guided weapons systems on our own.

  A Transition Period

  We entered a difficult period of tense calm in the Golan Heights along with the ceasefire talks at Kilometer 101 and in Geneva. We were plagued by interpersonal tension throughout the senior leadership made more difficult by embarrassment and a sense that Israeli political and military leadership had lost its way. Frequent changes in senior IDF appointments radiated a sense of instability from the top down. During a General Staff meeting held on Tuesday, December 18, the defense minister reviewed the talks that had been held with Henry Kissinger. Dayan did not say much that was new, and his words were received with marked silence. One response that had nothing to do with Kissinger came from OC Southern Command Shmuel Gonen, who was now under the direct command of Deputy CGS Tal. In an emotional tone, Gonen explained that the General Staff was the only forum in which he could speak out and assert his innocence. He then made accusations against Sharon, some implied and some directly, and proceeded to get into an argument with Moshe Dayan, who tried to refocus the discussion on its original subject. Gonen was upset and insisted on continuing his statement, and Dayan needed of all the sternness he could muster to put him in his place.

  Tal was extremely concerned about the threat of the Sagger missiles which he himself had not completely understood before the war. During the years of the War of Attrition along the Canal, our observation posts had observed closed train cars arriving at the front lines. Each time such a train car reached the position of an Egyptian military unit, a long line of soldiers would form near the door, and the soldiers would enter the car one at a time. At first we made jokes about the train cars, referring to them as mobile sexual service units similar to the kind operated by the Syrian army before the Six Day War. However, we quickly realized that the train cars contained training simulators for Sagger missile operators. At R&D, we thought about different ways of addressing the threat with the American developed MK-19 40-millimeter grenade mach
ine gun. This machine gun was vehicle-mounted, and had a firing rate of 350 grenades per minute and a range of 1,500 meters. We conducted a test firing of the weapon, and the entire General Staff Working Group came out to observe the wonder. However, the proposal to add the system to our armored vehicles was decisively rejected by Operations Branch Chief Tal. According to his dogma what he called “foreign elements” could not be introduced into tank battles. Although we started searching for a technological solution to the Sagger missile threat about 10 days after the outbreak of the war the moment the first missiles fell into our hands, we were unable to find a shortcut or a quick solution. As commander of the southern front, Tal now invoked his authority as deputy CGS, and, with the assistance of Colonel Rozen director of the R&D Unit’s Ground Department and Colonel Shmuel Keinan of the Ordnance Corps, he put all his energy into finding a solution to the problem. The solution he selected involved positioning net fences and coiled barbed wire around tank encampments in order to cause early detonation of fired Sagger missiles before they hit the tanks themselves.

  Talks in Washington and a Quick Trip to Scandinavia

  By early January 1974 the time had come to make a trip to the US to conclude and sign the agreement regarding the joint generation of lessons from the war. We finished drawing up a draft agreement at the last moment and brought it with us under “diplomatic escort” (a locked courier case containing an envelope sealed with red wax).

  The visit was planned to begin with a weekend in New York for meetings with Israeli Defense Ministry Delegation Head Shmuel Dror and his people in order to prepare for the talks in Washington. The schedule included a full week of meetings in the capital, followed by a two-day visit to a Scandinavian country for high-level meetings aimed at opening a channel of technological cooperation between Israel and the country in question.

  During the five consecutive days of talks in the US we experienced high points in which we felt we were very persuasive and low points in which we were simply unable to convince our counterparts. In the course of the week I met three times with Parker, chief deputy of the Defense Department’s Director of Defense and Research Engineering (DDR&E), and these meetings reinforced the initial impression he had made on me. He was an intelligent, fair, hard-working, straightforward, with much influence. Parker reviewed copies of every document we prepared during the process of reaching an agreement on the role of R&D in the overall agreement. I also met with Admiral Lake, the navy man who became a friend of Israel, as well as with a number of generals from the US Air Force. The height of the visit, as I describe it in my journal, was an extremely positive one-and-a-half hour meeting with four star General Creighton Abrams, Chief of Staff of the American ground forces. During the meeting I openly and candidly answered the dozens of questions posed by Abrams and his colleagues. Creighton William Abrams was a courageous and creative armored battalion commander during World War II whom the mythological General Patton described as the best tank commander in the United States army. Such a compliment coming from Patton, who justifiably regarded himself as the best armored commander in the US Army, is indicative of Abrams’ unique military skills. In 1972 Abrams was appointed to the post of chief of staff of the United States Army.

  The anxiety I felt leading up to my meeting with this legendary figure dissipated as soon as the meeting began. Abrams was open and attentive, and he spoke in a calm and relaxed manner. It was obvious that the issues we were discussing interested him, and the experience he had accumulated during his many battles were clearly reflected in his comments. We talked about the lessons of the war, which were fresh in my mind. General Abrams not only asked questions but also analyzed situations and displayed a surprising degree of knowledge regarding our battles along the Suez Canal and in the Golan Heights. Abram’s staff officers explained how William Scranton’s Congressional Committee had been goading the Pentagon, and how not everyone in Congress was pleased by Israel’s arms purchase requests, despite the fact that the requests enjoyed the support of the defense department and the military leadership, led by Abrams himself.

  General Abrams died from lung cancer in September 1974, while on active duty as chief of staff of the American ground forces. After his death he was remembered in a fitting manner: the new battle tank of the United States army — central to the power of the country’s ground forces — was called the M1 Abrams.

  In 2007, thirty three years after that visit to Washington, Tel Aviv Stock Exchange Director Shaul Bronfeld approached me with an interesting story. While scouring the Library of Congress in search of sources for his MA thesis on US–Israeli relations during the 1970s he found a letter from General Abrams to General Elazar among the documents that had been released for public viewing. The letter is reproduced on the following page:

  For me, the letter came as a complete surprise, albeit quite a pleasant one. In the midst of the upheavals then pervading the Israeli General Staff and Defense Ministry and the pressure on Elazar’s assistants at the time, they appear to have simply filed the letter away and forgot to send me a copy.

  Lt. Gen. Orwin Clark Talbott, with whom we cooperated closely and whom Abrams also mentioned in his letter, arrived in Israel at the head of a team of senior American officers when the battles were still raging, after the crossing of the Canal in the south and before we had reached a ceasefire in the north. General Talbott founded TRADOC, the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, and served as its first commander. This tall, athletic man radiated serenity and authority and was a soldier through and through. Talbott served as an infantry division commander during the Vietnam War. During the early 1970s the US army decided to consolidate its doctrine and training activities under one command, and General Talbott, who had previously served as commander of the prestigious infantry base at Fort Benning, was appointed as deputy commander of the new command. The quick visit to Israel by Talbott and his men also included a courtesy call to the main offices of the R&D Unit, scheduled to last half an hour. After finishing my brief words of welcome and learning that the team had met only with administrative officers of the IDF, I offered the general my opinion of this arrangement. “We fought an exceptional war in the air, on the sea, and on the land,” I told him. “On land, it was the largest armored battle ever fought, with thousands of tanks that pitted Soviet doctrines against Western doctrines. The infantry battles during the war also provided exceptional trials of confrontation between Eastern and Western conceptions and of dealing with Soviet weaponry on an extremely large scale. How do you intend to develop doctrines and build new training programs for the ground army without meeting the commanders of the combat units of the IDF?“ For this reason, I explained, it was important for them to meet with commanders of the armored forces (Tal, Peled, and Ben-Gal), the infantry, and the paratroops.

  Our guests immediately cancelled all their meetings for the rest of the day, and their half-hour courtesy call turned into a lively and thorough discussion that lasted four hours. We talked about the experience that the R&D teams had gained during the war and our initial data, and made assessments regarding the effectiveness of the weapons systems then in use by the enemy. At the end of the discussion I recommended that Talbott return for a longer visit with a suitable team to meet with the combat unit commanders. It was the beginning of a relationship between our ground forces and TRADOC that lasted many years. The relatively new Training and Doctrine Command needed to develop a fresh way of thinking and General Talbott decided to return with larger teams in order to learn the lessons of the Yom Kippur war. Our collection of data on the battles and the weapons systems used by both sides and the comparison we had undertaken between the two proved to be a temptation that the Americans were unable to resist. General Talbott was impressed by the candidness and directness of the Israelis with whom he met and the fact that he was provided with a spectrum of opinions on the lessons of the war. In his letter to Elazar, General Abrams emphasized his appreciation of the openness an
d honesty with which we presented the lessons of the war to TRADOC officers.

  One notable trait of the Americans is their ability to make radical changes within both military and other government agencies. Every few years they would choose a certain area, shake it up, and reorganize it in ways that were often revolutionary. This not only enables them to periodically rethink issues with the help of people who are free to choose different courses of action, but actually requires them to do so. In some cases the Americans developed new concepts with catchy acronyms. The RMA, or the Revolution in Military Affairs, is a good example of a new concept that developed in the 1980s and was regarded as the basis for success during the wars in Iraq in 1991 and 2003. The new doctrine combined technological innovation including information technology, the concept of UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) and highly accurate remotely operated standoff weapons.

  When military analysts praised the RMA after the second Gulf War they frequently mentioned Israel and the US in the same breath. Recently, nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology have been incorporated into RMA. There is also a plan to link all the combat forces on the battlefield within a framework of network-centric warfare. A sober assessment of the subject must, however, distinguish between marketing ideas and innovations that can truly improve capabilities. The momentum of the effort and the transformation of the acronym RMA into a buzz word pushed the issue into broader public consciousness.