by Uzi Eilam
I spent three days in the company of this slender, energetic, unpretentious, soft spoken and extremely intelligent man. Abrahamson was a typical example of an exceptional kind of American military officer whose background combined broad academic education with operational and combat experience, service in senior command positions, and positions in management and administration. For four years Abrahamson had directed the international program to develop the F-16 fighter plane, which Israel was one of the first countries to purchase. In 1981, Abrahamson was appointed as deputy director of NASA’s space shuttle program, and subsequently became its director.
The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was launched by President Ronald Reagan in a speech delivered on March 23, 1983. Its aim at the time was to defend against Soviet ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads. The program was unique compared to others because its defensive array included bases not only on land but in space. The aim of the new Strategic Defense Initiative was ambitious and for many people in the United States and around the world sounded like pure science fiction.
The idea, first conceived by the researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, called for producing x-ray length laser radiation by means of a nuclear explosion. It was Professor Teller who told President Reagan about the discovery at Lawrence Livermore. In addition to being an accomplished physicist and a Nobel Prize winner, Teller was also an actor from birth who possessed incomparable skills of oration and persuasion. Reagan’s unbridled enthusiasm about the idea prompted him to make the following appeal to American scientists during his 1983 speech: “I call upon the scientific community in our country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”
Lawrence Livermore Laboratories and the high-powered laser program piqued my curiosity. During one of my trips to the US as the director of MAFAT I visited their facilities for a presentation on their high-powered lasers. For the occasion, the classification restrictions on the research program were lifted according to instructions issued from the Missile Defense Agency in Washington. On the first day of the visit we met in the laser team’s meeting room, and the laboratory director began with an introduction and overview of the research. An hour after the presentation began the door opened and a tall man walked in. He wore a brown overcoat that looked like a shepherd’s cloak and carried a cane that was about as tall as he was. It was Professor Edward Teller, whom I’d met before and was delighted to see again. The room went silent as Teller, who for me immediately brought to mind images of Moses, calmly walked to the seat that had been reserved for him at the head of the table, right next to me. He knew about my visit and had insisted on accompanying me for the first half-day of the visit. The presentations continued, and I soon heard Teller snoring peacefully. I glanced to my left and was certain that the elderly man was fast asleep. However, the moment the speaker finished his presentation Teller opened his eyes, made two insightful comments, and asked a question that made it abundantly clear that he had heard every word. This ritual repeated itself over and over again throughout the presentations: Teller would fall asleep and snore, wake up at the end of each presentation, and, in a thundering voice with a heavy Hungarian accent, ask the terrified scientist an extremely intelligent question.
President Reagan had a warm place in his heart for Professor Teller. When Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative, he was opposed by a large group of prominent American scientists for a variety of reasons. Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist Hans Bethe, who also played a role in the Manhattan Project, studied the idea of x-ray lasers created by a nuclear explosion and was not convinced that this was the right solution. Other scientists had political reasons for opposing the program, stemming from the fact that American achievement of full immunity to nuclear missiles would tip the global balance of power that was at the time based on the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction. Edward Teller provided scientific and political backing for Reagan’s initiative, and the doors of the administration were open before him.
SDIO, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, was established in 1984, and General James Alan Abrahamson was its founder and first director. Israel followed the development of SDIO, and in 1986, after Abrahamson’s visit to Israel, we began to look for ways to play a role in the initiative. The idea was not kept secret and resulted in a vigorous debate between supporters and opponents. Opponents argued that joining the Americans in such a purely strategic and clearly anti-Soviet project might cause the already anti-Israel Soviets to toughen their stance on Israel and halt all permits for Soviet Jews wishing to immigrate to Israel.
As the public debate in the Israeli media gained momentum, I was asked by the defense minister’s office to appear on a television program to discuss the issue. I drove to the studio in Jerusalem, and found that it was to be a debate moderated by Menashe Raz and that Shlomo Avineri, former director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and a world renowned professor of political science, would be making the case against Israeli participation in the program. I took a deep breath and focused on the technological aspect of cooperation and the benefit that such work would bring to the Israeli defense establishment and defense industries, and argued passionately that Israel was neither interested in nor capable of joining an American strategic plan for developing defense systems against Soviet nuclear missiles. We could, however, begin working in this new area of technology and develop, as a by-product, our own defense system against missiles used by the enemy countries surrounding us. As a result of Raz’s graceful and intelligent moderation and Shlomo Avineri’s cultured demeanor, the debate remained decisively civilized in tone. Without thinking twice, I answered the interviewer’s somewhat provocative question regarding the funding that Israel expected to receive from the Americans for the project, and said that I expected it to total approximately one hundred million dollars per year. The next day, I was bombarded with questions from people who wanted to know where I had gotten such a surreal figure. My colleagues were also concerned that it would be detrimental to future support of our work. However, subsequent developments proved that my estimate was well based and over the years — after we began full-scale development, including a series of tests and production — the funds dedicated to the program actually exceeded one hundred million dollars per year. The US played a major role in funding the Israeli program from the outset, and continues to do so today.
It was clear that we would not be permitted to take part in the classified components of the program. The Americans refrained from involving foreign countries, even allies, in the sensitive area of nuclear missile defense. We therefore made efforts to begin working with SDIO on basic research in less sensitive areas, and to this end we issued calls for research proposals to relevant institutions throughout Israel. Abrahamson suggested that we try our luck with a number of general subjects, including realms of technology necessary for the remote sensing of ballistic missiles and the construction of missile classification systems that would be central to the destruction of enemy missiles. In response to our appeal, we received a significant number of research proposals which we passed on to SDIO but heard nothing back for months. Later, we were disappointed to learn that our proposals were sent on to the American research institutions, to advise SDIO of their value. The proposals had been of such great interest to them that they decided to carry them out on their own.
Abrahamson was aware of what had happened, but he was unable to fight his own people and all of American academia. However, he was still interested in the prospect of cooperation, and he actively sought ways to integrate Israel into the missile defense initiative without getting us involved in sensitive fields. The idea he would eventually propose was brilliant: “Why don’t you develop a missile defense system that addresses the threats you face?” he suggested. “This will get you significantly involved and make i
t easier for us to convince the Pentagon that the work is legitimate. It will also make it easier for the administration and Congress to approve a defense system for you.” Abrahamson did not adopt this approach by chance. It stemmed from the conclusion he and his colleagues reached after almost three years of work on the project that defense based solely on spacebases would be quite expensive and would require extensive development. In order to keep their feet planted firmly on the ground (both literally and figuratively), US officials resolved that the first phase of the defense program would rely on a land-based sensing system and a land-based missile interception system. Abrahamson had good reason for contending that the development and production of a system addressing the threats facing Israel would contribute to the overall concept and the engineering of solutions. In this integrated, riveting context, Israel began working on what ultimately evolved into the Arrow intercepting missile and the Homa (the Hebrew acronym for hetz v’ma‘arekhet hatra‘a, or “Arrow and Warning System”) missile defense system, the world’s first ballistic missile defense system to go operational.
Abrahamson and his colleagues asked us to help them by reviewing and categorizing the proposals for an intercepting missile that would address the long-range missile threats against Israel. The task was presented before Israel’s defense industries, and three industries accepted the challenge: IAI, Rafael, and IMI-General Engineering. We decided to administer the contractor selection process as a tender, in accordance with general practice on development issues within the defense establishment.
The Developer Selection Committee was an established institution within MAFAT. In addition to professional personnel from MAFAT, it consisted of representatives of the IDF and defense ministry officials specializing in the fields of economics, finance, law and security. To begin the process we convened a full committee meeting in June 1988 attended all the by senior representatives.
The first candidate, IMI–General Engineering, was a unique unit within Israel Military Industries that engaged not in development and production, like the other units within IMI, but in systems analysis and planning. General Engineering’s presentation included an overview of its conception of an anti-missile defense system, and nothing else.
The Rafael representatives decided to present their idea which they called the AB-10. While they were in the process of making their presentation, which consisted of a collection of sketched and handwritten slides, Dov Raviv and his associates from IAI waited patiently to state their piece. I had no doubt that Rafael’s missile experts were experienced and that it would take an immense amount of work for IAI personnel to acquire the missile knowledge and scientific expertise that the Rafael teams already possessed based on previous projects and years of operating as a national R&D laboratory. At the same time, however, Rafael had developed a technological arrogance, a sense that “we know better”. Later, when Rafael began its work in defense exports, this haughtiness remained a prominent characteristic of the company and impeded its ability to succeed.
Rafael’s missile experts based their presentation of the AB-10, a quick-responding missile it had developed for the Israeli navy, as a significant step-up from the Gabriel missile defense system. The presentation itself appeared to have been prepared hastily and without much effort, and the system Rafael proposed was limited in its ability to intercept missiles to altitudes of below 20 kilometers, but the Rafael missile experts nevertheless argued with great conviction that this was sufficient.
Dov Raviv and his associates were the last to present their proposal before the committee. Their presentation did not consist of handwritten slides. Rather, they offered an eloquent and comprehensive presentation of a new high-powered intercepting missile with dreamlike maneuverability and an interception altitude of dozens of kilometers (the higher the interception altitude, the slimmer the chance of enemy missile penetration). Although the committee was convinced that IAI’s proposal was the best, we chose not to expedite the process by choosing one successful competitor but rather to allow the missile defense experts in the US to review both proposals without concealing our preference. As a result, both Rafael and IAI sent groups to the Redstone Arsenal development base in the United States to make presentations. The Americans were also convinced by Dov Raviv’s proposal, and the founding father of the Arrow missile began his work on this bold innovative ballistic missile interception system.
From the outset, this project clearly differed from all other projects we had worked on in the past. In theory, the work was done for the US Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, which completely funded development costs for the initial years of the project. In practice, however, the customer was the state of Israel — not the IDF, and not even the air force. The reasons for this strange situation were internal struggles within the Israeli military. The IDF felt its sense of dignity was at stake because the project had not emerged from within the Israeli military but was imposed from the outside and from above. Another concern was that the project would start to eat into the overall IDF budget. The unavoidable outcome was that MAFAT served as a virtual consumer. While creating the program administration that had not yet been officially established, MAFAT now had to compose a statement of operational need and a description of the system that Israel Aerospace Industries was about to begin developing.
Under these circumstances we found it prudent to create another locus of thinking and systemic planning to serve as the planning conscience of the system under development and as the trustee of SDIO. This body would also be responsible for compiling regular reports on project progress for SDIO. The critical tender was won by Brigadier General (Res.) Micha Cohen, who had established a small but efficient consulting firm called Wales. Cohen was a former squadron commander in the Israeli air force and an experienced aeronautical engineer with a broad systemic view. Cohen came a long way after immigrating to Israel from Bulgaria as a boy, rising through the ranks of the air force’s enormous maintenance system and emerging as one of its top officials. He was modest and soft-spoken, and his fluent Hebrew still betrayed traces of a Bulgarian accent. We knew we could rely on the work of Cohen’s firm, and the Americans also quickly came to appreciate the reliability of the expert opinions issued by Wales. Micha Cohen joined SDIO, IAI, and MAFAT as the fourth locus of the program.
In the absence of a military customer Cohen’s logic and wide-ranging analytical skills boosted our confidence in our ability to actualize Dov Raviv’s vision, which at times seemed surreal, if not hallucinatory. Beginning with Yitzhak Rabin, and later with Moshe Arens as minister and David Ivry as director-general, the defense ministry provided firm support that counterbalanced the opposition from the IDF and allowed the program to move ahead. Nonetheless, questions still remained regarding the actual feasibility of using a high-speed missile to intercept a ballistic missile penetrating the atmosphere at a speed of Mach 6, especially since the weapon had to be exceptionally maneuverable at those speeds.
The two first launchings of the initial model of the Arrow missile were aimed at testing its flight capability and maneuverability, and the missile failed in both departments. Defense Minister Moshe Arens decided to observe the launching on site, and his attendance did little to improve the state of mind of the test directors and engineers seated in front of their tracking screens. The missile’s failure was the result of planning. We considered how to go about analyzing the stream of data transmitted from the testing system telemetry, and we had no hesitations about swallowing our pride and asking the Americans to appoint a blue-ribbon team to assist us, which they typically did whenever in-depth technical investigations were required. A number of veteran missile developers from the US army examined our model and discovered that the small openings on its body were large enough to allow scorching heat (which envelops all bodies moving at 6-8 times the speed of sound) to penetrate the missile and to cause a malfunction in the steering mechanism. This realization proved particularly useful to our development
teams, whose future plans were flawless in this respect.
When the Arrow missile development reached the stage of testing against an actual target, we used an Arrow I missile as a target. The Israeli navy also participated in the test using a boat from which a target missile would be fired directly upward. Much later we began developing a different target which we referred to as “Black Sparrow”, which bore a closer resemblance to a quickly approaching ballistic missile that had already passed the zenith of its trajectory. For this purpose Rafael proposed developing a missile based on the experience and expertise it acquired while developing air-to-surface cruise missiles. The target missile was supposed to be launched from a plane and then ascend to a higher altitude before turning downwards and simulating an almost perfect ballistic trajectory.
The more progress we made the clearer it became that the project needed to be run by a program administration within the defense ministry. Uzi Rubin was already running the satellite launcher program for which IAI (Malam), headed by Dov Raviv, was the primary contractor. Rubin was worried about management problems with the operation of two separate administrations — one for satellite launchers and one for the Arrow missile project — with Dov Raviv maneuvering between the two. Rubin had volunteered to direct the Arrow program in addition to the satellite launcher program, and I could see the benefits and savings in salaries that would result from effective coordination between the two programs. After a long series of meetings with Rubin, I was convinced that he could do both jobs simultaneously. We brought the proposal to director-general Ivry who did not like the idea but had no choice but approve it. We now needed to establish military and civilian norms for staffing the Arrow program. Despite our assurances that the entire budget would be provided from the US we still had a long road to travel within the IDF and the defense ministry. Rubin quickly learned the secrets of negotiating and persuading the authorities, and provided me with invaluable support as I constructed the program administration.