by Uzi Eilam
The Budget Wars
While we worked on the comprehensive research and development policy document, we also had to guarantee our activity by ensuring a sufficient budget for the 1975 working year. Like the director of R&D, Yitzhak Elron, the CGS’s financial advisor also wore two hats. His position in the defense ministry was called director of the Budgets Branch. Since Tzur’s days in the office Elron had tried to thwart Tzur’s budget policies but did not gain support from either the CGS or the defense minister. But the situation was different now. There was a new defense minister, a new CGS, and a new Operations Branch chief, and this presented the officials of the Budgets Branch with a prime opportunity to renew their opposition. Lacking Tzvi’s strong support, I began to look for ways to safeguard the R&D budget. Past experience had taught me that every September the Budget Branch issued a document entitled “The Budgetary Framework for the Working Year.” I noticed that once the document had been issued, discussions and appeals tended to yield only minor modifications. So I decided to produce an R&D budget before the Budgets Branch issued theirs. During the period leading up to September 1974, after advanced coordination with the director-general and after informing the CGS and the Operations Branch chief of my plan, R&D issued its own budget document. The financial advisor was furious: “How dare they?!” he roared. “Who authorized this framework? Only the Budget Branch is authorized to present budgets!”
During a meeting with the director-general of the defense ministry budget officials from the Budget Branch chose to minimize the areas of confrontation and to attack only the budget designated specifically for the R&D Unit. It was a transparent attempt to confuse the meeting participants — the director-general among them — by employing terms such as “budgetary program” and “financing program” and by completely ignoring the effects of inflation. Only later did I realize that these were the usual tricks used by the budget officials, and that similar tactics were employed in the struggles between the defense ministry and finance ministry which I participated in the years to come. In response, I chose to present the issue from a broader perspective, pointing out that the R&D Unit was responsible for handling all development projects, including those of the services of the IDF. In any event, the director-general was not taken in by the budgetary hocus-pocus. Itzhak Ironi may not have been a smooth talking charismatic leader, but he was a smart, experienced, and stable man. He understood that the right thing to do was to maintain his decision that the Budgets Branch mark the R&D budgets designated for the various different services of the IDF and transfer the administration of these budgets to the R&D Unit. Ironi also accepted the argument that the budgets of the services might be cut in 1975 and that it was therefore necessary to safeguard a larger primary budget for R&D. The discussion then turned from petty bickering but I knew that my success in the meeting was only one victory in what would be a very long campaign.
Crystallization of Defense R&D Policy
One of the main components of the multi-year plan was the situation assessment regarding the overall state of military technology. Five years after the Six Day War, and after a significant increase in activity both in the development institutions and the defense industries, we were still lagging well behind the large superpowers, particularly the US. Prof. Moshe Arens, who would later serve as Israel’s defense minister, resigned from his position as director of the Engineering Division of Israel Aerospace Industries and established a small consulting firm called Cybernetics. Arens proposed to us that he carry out a survey of military technologies and assess our ability to engage in each one. I trusted Arens and his small staff of Israel Aerospace Industries graduates whom I knew, and I was certain that their work would contribute to our efforts. The most important task was to assess the Americans’ work in different areas of military technological development. The best way to acquire data on this issue was the relatively simple method of carefully reading the published professional literature and collecting relevant material. One impressive aspect of America’s policy on public exposure of technological capabilities and weapons systems was the level of freedom they afforded themselves. Initially the way material was made public seemed almost outrageous but once we looked into the matter deeper, we started to understand the powerful logic underlying the way the Americans exposed their secrets. They simply knew how to carefully preserve the secrecy of areas that were truly sensitive and important. In addition to their capacity for distinguishing between sensitive information and information that could be exposed, the American system was also characterized by order, organization, and discipline. As a result, whatever needed to be classified remained classified, and declassified information did not have the potential to threaten security.
In contrast, our security restrictions were always very rigid, mainly because we were incapable of the same level of strict enforcement and did not possess the same culture of order and discipline. Our information security personnel, knowing Israelis all too well, also knew that the moment material regarding one area of a specific military technological subject was declassified full exposure was likely to follow. What followed was a regime of “all or nothing”. We were subsequently forced to consider these limitations when we deliberated over authorizations for defense-related exports. In many cases it was difficult to authorize the export of a weapons system, even with reduced performance, in order to prevent foreigners from discovering the exact state of the technologies at our disposal. Even when we went to great lengths to downgrade the technology in sensitive areas exported systems would nonetheless provide the entire technological ‘herd’ with a window into technological developments that we wanted to keep secret. In contrast, the Americans had no problem providing advanced weapons systems such as fighter planes, which were technologically downgraded to a degree determined by the defense relationship between the US and the county in question. The highest country on the ladder as far as the Americans were concerned was Great Britain, and Israel was one rung down. And even when they did supply advanced systems like F-15 and F-16 fighter planes, they came with systems in locked boxes, which we were not allowed to open. Our problems adapting advanced air-to-air missiles to be launched from American planes (such missiles require electronic links into a plane’s aviation system) intensified as the technological level of the weapons systems developed by the Israeli defense industries improved.
Prof. Moshe Arens and Cybernetics submitted a thick, black-bound, two-volume report on the state of military technology, which came to be known as the “black books”. This assessment became an important part of the foundation for the research and development policy we were then developing. Arens still takes great pride in the contribution made by the pioneering work of Cybernetics to the strategic/technological thinking that developed in Israel in the mid-1970s.
During the process of developing our research and development policy, we had to undergo procedures that we would later come to regard as essential. These were processes of dialogue with the ground forces, particularly the armored corps, and the other services of the IDF, with an emphasis on the air force, the leading service. To this end I initiated a meeting with the new commander of the tank forces, Major General Moshe Peled. The meeting began with a long, private session between just the two of us, during which we agreed on the participation of R&D personnel in the armored corps brigade commanders’ conference and the swapping of branch directors between R&D and the armored corps. We also spent a significant amount of time clarifying the main directions of development for the armored forces. After that, we invited the deputies and staff officers of the corps and the R&D Unit to join the meeting.
Overall, Peled displayed great interest in the Hughes fire-control systems and the distance gauge for tanks, an issue which a few years earlier had sparked a dispute between the IDF and the defense ministry and which was now the subject of intense interest in the armored corps. After fighting the largest tank battles in history during the Yom Kippur War, our need for advanced
tank fire-control systems intensified. Such systems would mean a substantial technological leap and a significant future advantage on the battlefield. Moshe Dayan’s refusal to settle the debate over whether to purchase American systems for the IDF or to have Israel’s defense industries develop them had resulted in the creation of the R&D Unit back in August 1971.
However, it also left the issue of how the IDF would arm itself unresolved. I was pleased that the corps commander made his position so clear, and I saw no problem with making this issue a high priority for the R&D Unit. I could not, however, share with Peled my misgivings regarding the way we would actually acquire the fire-control systems for his tanks. My experience as the director of R&D had somewhat changed my perspective on the Israeli defense industries and enabled me to understand the importance of developing technologies in Israel. I told Peled that I thought we could evaluate two or three models produced by Hughes that were already at the end of the development process, but that we were also obliged to consider development and production in Israel. Overall, I regarded it as an important meeting in which we reached understandings with the major corps in the Israeli ground forces, which would prove important for our relationship and our future cooperation.
We now started to work on the big picture we had started to sketch out with the air force before the war with insights gained from the fighting both from the perspective of the Air Force Control Center and other air force related lessons from the war. Air Force commander Benny Peled made an important contribution to these additions, and our close personal connection encouraged him to be open and candid with me. I also came to appreciate another aspect of the issue while visiting Amos Lapidot, who had been the commander of the Hatzor Air Force base during the war. I first met Lieutenant Colonel Lapidot when he was director of the Weapons Development Department at the Air Force general staff between 1970 and 1972. We had had many discussions and quite a few arguments, but we developed a warm personal relationship which continues today. One of the most important and sensitive issues was the air force’s battle against surface-to-air missiles during the War of Attrition along the Suez Canal. Despite the new acquisition of Phantom aircraft and the beginnings of new electronic warfare devices that came from the American lessons from the Vietnam War, the Israeli Air Force lost planes during this campaign. In the Operations Branch Weapons Development Department, we carried out a large study with the help of the sharp minds in our department and our reserve officers. The idea we came up with was a combined attack from the air with the innovative and smart use of long-range artillery.
The air force was not willing to discuss support from the ground, and, during a number of discussions we had on the subject Lapidot argued passionately that the air force was capable of handling the threats on its own. We never achieved the capacity to integrate artillery into the effort to defeat the Egyptian SA-2 and SA-3 missile batteries, and there is no way of knowing how many air force losses could have been prevented with such an integrated model.
Lapidot and I had a long candid discussion on the R&D Unit, Israel’s ground forces, and the war’s implications for the air force. One important insight was about the attitude of the air force towards air support for ground warfare. On the one hand, I knew Major General Benny Peled well, and I knew how he could be decisive and heavy handed. On the other hand, I saw that Lapidot or the squadron commanders I met in the conference after the war were not the sort of people who could be dissuaded from expressing their opinions when disagreements arose. Lapidot continued to climb the ranks of the air force and was later appointed as the tenth commander of the corps. He introduced me to Eitan Ben-Eliyahu, a young squadron commander who received command of his squadron during the war. Ben-Eliyahu, a 30-year-old Phantom pilot impressed me as an intelligent, energetic, affable, and charming young man. These characteristics remained a prominent part of his personality in every position he held in the air force until he himself assumed command of the corps. The meeting was also joined by two veteran navigators, who looked like grown-up children to me. I learned a great deal about the feelings of pilots and their sense of insecurity about the possibility of failed attacks against targets on the ground. I also gained a basic understanding of electronic warfare-based self-defense, and I learned that the pilots were not happy with this issue. The navigators lucidly explained how complicated it was to work with the precise American weapons systems during the war, calling it “in-flight office work”. As a result of our discussion I came to truly understand the importance of developing standoff weapons, in which we invested immense efforts in subsequent years, even enjoying a degree of success.
The trauma of the war put the acquisition of long-range precise surface-to-surface missiles on the agenda. Such missiles were beyond the capabilities of the Lance missiles that the artillery corps wanted to buy. The Pershing missile were on top of our second “Treasure” list, although I understood that there was very little chance of us actually getting them under the American policy in place at the time. Nonetheless, the acquisition of precise surface-to-surface missiles remained on the agenda. In an effort to address the issue through an orderly process, I called a meeting to clarify the operational need for such a missile. The response was surprisingly high powered and the meeting was attended by Air Force Brigadier General David Ivry, Brigadier General Yehoshua Sagi, the Intelligence Branch’s deputy director for research; Weapons Development Department Director Yosef Maayan of the Air Force’s Equipment Squadron; Colonel Simcha Maoz, representing General Avraham Tamir; and the entire senior staff of the R&D Unit. To me, the discussion seemed somewhat superficial. Nonetheless, the issue was dealt with fairly and logically, and everyone felt that we had clarified the somewhat unconvincing need for the missile and how important it was to start developing it. The R&D officials felt that the discussion had contributed not only to a better understanding of the issue, but to the positioning of the R&D Unit within the IDF and the defense ministry.
Another perspective we gained during the process of policy development had to do with scientific research. During the war, I entrusted responsibility for coordination with research institutions to Yedidia Shamir.
There was immense pressure from the researchers from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Weizmann Institute to join the war effort. We were extremely sorry that we were ultimately unable to appropriately accommodate the scientists’ desire to volunteer. At the time there was no workable framework for defense research within Israeli research institutions, and it was hard to get the scientists focused on issues of current and critical importance. It seemed to me that Yedidia’s gentle personality, and his hesitance to address military issues with which he did not feel comfortable, were detrimental to the effort. Before the end of the war we visited the Weizmann Institute with the goal of finding ways to integrate the research community into defense-related R&D. The difficult war we had just gone through was still fresh in our minds, and all this motivated the researchers to join in the defense effort. Prof. Israel Dostrovsky became the President of the Weizmann Institute in 1971, after serving as the director-general of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission in the Prime Minister’s Office for five years. The visit, planned as a three-hour discussion, evolved into a six-hour visit including a presentation of the Institute’s defense-related research and development capacities. Prof. Shmuel Strickman was the Institute’s star in the field of security. The professor...ormer Palmah fighter who always wore short pants – had long before won me over with his anecdotes and his naïve directness. Strickman was a genius in physical mathematics who also knew how to create things in the laboratory. He worked with us for many years after the Yom Kippur War and always received the budgets he requested, indicating how important his work was. We could not visit the Weizmann Institute without visiting the large computer known as the “Golem”, the pride of the Institute. Today, a handheld computer can provide many times the computing output of the Golem, which then occupied an entire building. The visit co
ncluded with lunch with the Institute’s leading researchers at the home of the Institute’s president, magnificent villa in a quiet green area. I was pleased to hear from Dostrovsky that the Institute had decided to encourage their scientists to take one-to three-year sabbaticals in order to work not only with the IDF but also with Israel’s defense industries. This decision, made in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, gradually petered out.
One year after the outbreak of the war, during the Jewish holiday of Succot, we were scheduled to meet in the office of the CGS to discuss R&D policy. As I introduced the subject to the forum that had been assembled by the CGS, I held a copy of the most recently updated document on the subject. The defense minister’s office had also received a copy, but I had not met with Peres on the subject because I first wanted to finish the meeting with the CGS. After I described the main points of the document to Gur, he took a quick glance at it, looked at me with his brown smiling eyes, and told me with great practical wisdom: “Uzi, as long as the document remains on the level of principle, you won’t have a real argument with anyone. But, the moment you incorporate budgets and priorities, they’ll be all over you.”
Many years later, after I was already directing MAFAT after three years of work on a broad policy paper including budgets and priorities for the different issues and needs, I realized just how right Gur had been.
The preparations for presenting the policy paper to the CGS included reviewing the material with my deputies one last time and giving a final polish to the issues that needed to be emphasized. Another aspect of the preparations which seemed important to me at the time involved mapping the officials attending the meeting and assessing the level of support or opposition of each participant to the proposed policy. I was concerned that Operations Branch Chief Herzl Shafir, whom we had not consulted while preparing the document, would be antagonistic even though I knew that he was not aggressive in nature. I assumed that Planning Branch Chief Major General Avraham Tamir would be positive and supportive, as the preparatory work had been based largely on premises taken from documents that he himself had written, and because he took part in the discussions that had been led by Major General (Ret.) Motti Hod, the advisor to the defense minister, in preparation for the meeting with the defense minister on the policy paper. Based on past experience I presumed that the director of the Budgets Branch would examine everything through the prism of money. It is a known truism that, from time immemorial, budget officials believe that they should be responsible for setting policy, instead of those actually responsible for carrying out the work itself. As for Air Force Commander Benny Peled, I was certain that he would come to the meeting prepared. However, with him it was difficult to predict whether he would support our platform or propose his own brilliant, but completely different thesis, and present it in a manner that was so persuasive that it would genuinely threaten the CGS’s ability to approve my proposal. I spoke with Intelligence Branch Chief Shlomo Gazit the day before the meeting, and after a brief explanation he promised to look over the proposed discussion. I expected neither Michael Barkai, deputy commander of the Navy who was replacing Binyamin Telem while he was abroad, nor Quartermaster’s Branch Chief Nehemiah Kain, who was about to be replaced, to express an opinion that could influence the outcome. I hoped that this would allow Gur to approve the proposal and allow us to continue incorporating content to serve as the basis for building the annual plans.