3. Arms Industry.
Israel received Vorster warmly, with a red carpet running to the door of his plane. At the other end Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin headed the pack of dignitaries waiting to greet him. Vorster met with Foreign Minister Allon, with President Ephraim Katzir, and numerous other Israeli leaders. Half the cabinet turned out to a farewell banquet for Vorster hosted by Rabin, this despite a formal communication from the Netherlands warning that the visit would make it more difficult for "Israel's friends abroad to persuade the world that there is no connection between Zionism and racism."
Vorster, who had been jailed for 20 months during World War II by the British for his pro-Nazi activities and had never repudiated his Nazism, had last been made welcome in Paraguay. At the state banquet Prime Minister Rabin turned to his South African counterpart and said, "We here follow with sympathy your own historic efforts to achieve detente on your continent, to build bridges for a secure and better future, to create coexistence that will guarantee a prosperous atmosphere of cooperation for all the African peoples, without outside interference and threat."
When the head of the apartheid regime was not being received or visiting religious sites or climbing to the Masada fortress where Jewish rebels made a last stand against the Romans in the first century, or, incongruously, laying a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Vorster spent his four days in Israel touring military installations, including the state-owned Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI).
These visits gave rise to reports that the South Africans were shopping for Israeli arms. Both Israeli and South African officials denied that this was the case. Yet obviously, at least from the Israeli standpoint, there was more to receiving Vorster than a provocative and defiant political statement. It is generally accepted that among the comprehensive set of bilateral agreements announced as having been concluded during Vorster's trip to Israel covering commercial, trade, fiscal, and "cooperative" arrangements - were secret pacts covering arms sales and nuclear cooperation.
All of the agreements, the departing Vorster told reporters, would be overseen by a joint cabinet-level committee which would meet annually to review and promote Israeli-South African economic relations. Vorster also spoke of a "steering group" to coordinate the exchange of infor mation and encourage the "development of trade, scientific and industrial cooperation and joint projects using South African raw material and Israeli manpower."
What Israel and South Africa had accomplished was a strategic meshing of strengths and weaknesses: South African capital and raw materials to Israel, counterpoised against the transfer of Israeli weapons and advanced technology to South Africa. The 1976 agreements have been periodically renewed. As the years progressed the strength generated by Israeli-South African cooperation would be turned outward to sanctions busting, allowing South Africa to fend off internal and external pressure for reform.
Israel has also reaped benefits from the relationship -in the tangible sense for the development of its arms industry, and in a not altogether ephemeral sense, politically: as long as South Africa remains the focal point of international outrage, Israel escapes the brunt of that attention; moreover, as long as it can be shown that sanctions are ineffective against South Africa, there is less chance they will be imposed on Israel
There are few areas where the respective needs and advantages of Israel and South Africa dovetailed so perfectly as in the field of nuclear cooperation.
"The most powerful reason for Israeli willingness to bear the undesirable consequences of expanded and more open trade with South Africa may be her desire to acquire material necessary to manufacture nuclear weapons," wrote a military analyst in 1980. To that must be added Israel's great desire to test the nuclear weapons it already had, and the attractions of South Africa's vast territory and proximity to even vaster uninhabited spaces - the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.
Then at the point in its nuclear development where it was fashioning sophisticated bombs (devices which use less nuclear material but have infinitely greater explosive force than the "primitive" bomb dropped by the U.S. on Hiroshima), Israel would find it particularly helpful to observe the performance, explosive force and fallout of a detonated weapon.
Since 1984, Israel had been operating a plutonium extraction plant in a secret underground bunker at Dimona in the Negev Desert. Built by the French in the late 1950s, the Dimona plant also included facilities for manufacturing atomic bomb components. At the time of the 1976 accords, Israel was preparing to build an adjoining plant for the extraction of lithium 6, tritium and deuterium, materials required for sophisticated thermonuclear weapons.
Israel's reasons for devoting what had to have been a significant portion of its scant resources to such an ambitious nuclear weapons program - nuclear experts have recently ranked it as the world's sixth nuclear power, after the U.S., the USSR, Britain, France and China - have been variously offered as the desire to develop a credible deterrent to attack by its neighbors and the desire to substitute that deterrent for at least part of the costly conventional arsenal that Israel, with one of the world's most powerful military forces, maintains, and also (with much less frequency) as an "umbrella" over a partial withdrawal from the occupied territories.
However, these are by way of superficial rationales. The decision to develop nuclear weapons was taken in the earliest days of the state and has been doggedly pursued for over a quarter of a century. Israel's determination suggests that it has always been directed toward establishing, perhaps expanding, its borders by force and has always believed that its existence can only be guaranteed by maintaining the entire Middle Eastern region in a state of fearsome disequilibrium.
There is no consolation to be found in a search for an element of responsibility in the Israeli nuclear program. The Middle East as tinderbox has become a cliché, while Israel's own track record of flagrant aggression - since 1981 Israel has bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor, invaded Lebanon, bombed Tunisia, and tried to persuade India to conduct a joint raid on Pakistan's nuclear research facility - does not recommend Tel Aviv as a mature guardian of the ultimate weapon. Moreover, it is quite possible that Israel has accumulated an estimated 100-200 warheads for political purposes.
Dr. Francis Perrin, the head of the French nuclear program from 1951-1970, during which time France collaborated with Israel on building an atom bomb and built the Dimona reactor/plutonium plant, recently explained: We thought the Israeli bomb was aimed against the Americans, not to launch it against America but to say "if you don't want to help us in a critical situation we will require you to help us, otherwise we will use our nuclear bombs."
South Africa is not thought to have been as highly motivated as Israel to acquire nuclear weapons capability. Given its reasonable expectation of a domestic uprising perhaps aided from neighboring states, South Africa's first priorities were Israeli weapons and Israeli technological input for its conventional weapons industry. Yet South Africa is magnificently endowed with uranium and during the 1970s was striving to manufacture enriched uranium for export. To the South Africans a nuclear bomb was something of a bonus.
They are thought to have achieved the requisite techniques in 1980 and since then have incorporated nuclear weaponry into their bluster, and perhaps into their military doctrine. In 1977, Information Minister Connie Mulder said, "If we are attacked, no rules apply at all if it comes to a question of our existence. We will use all means at our disposal whatever they may be. In 1979, Prime Minister P.W. Botha said, "we have military weapons they do not know about. In 1985, the South Africans let it be known that they were capable of building two bombs a year.
South Africa's nuclear position roughly parallels Israel's. There is the deterrent factor against a threat from the outside, which has become somewhat more credible than Israel's with talk among members of the OAU of establishing a pan-African force to aid the liberation struggle in South Africa, this is a somewhat sad turn of events for an organization which made its first demand that Africa be a nuclear weapons-free zone in 1963.
There is the notion of regional dominance, to which Nigeria has already begun to react by broaching for consideration the idea that it, or Africa, must develop a nuclear counter deterrent. There is South Africa's history of brazen attacks on its neighbors. There is the possibility that "by threatening use of the bomb, Pretoria could effectively block international efforts to impose sanctions on it for its racist policies.
There is also the distinct possibility that the white minority government has developed detailed plans to use neutron-type bombs (low-yield devices that kill people without widespread devastation of property) on the domestic black majority. A set of maps in the possession of the African National Congress (ANC) appears to show population concentrations and fallout radii.
In conjunction with its nuclear weapon "option," the Pretoria regime Is apparently aiming to enrich uranium for export at its Pelindaba plant, due to start operation in 1987. Although the South Africans have refused to put the plant under international safeguards, it might well be that they cherish hopes of establishing lines of communication with potential Western customers through sales of uranium for nuclear power plants.
During the 1950s, when "peaceful" atomic energy was in vogue, Israel and South Africa had both participated in U.S. atomic energy programs. South Africa has had help from Britain, West Germany and France, as well as the U.S. Over the years, though, it has become more and more difficult for both Pretoria and Tel Aviv to obtain nuclear technology because both refuse to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and each has refused to open all its nuclear facilities to inspection.
In 1965, after South Africa brought its Safari I safeguarded reactor on line, Israeli scientists began advising South Africa on their Safari 2 research reactor. In 1968, Prof. Ernst Bergmann, the "father" of Israel's nuclear program, went to South Africa and spoke strongly in favor of bilateral cooperation on the development of nuclear technology.
According to the authors of a novelized treatment of Israel's nuclear program-barred from publication by the Israeli censor-as early as 1966, South Africa had invited Israel to use its land or ocean space for a nuclear weapons test. Led at that time by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol. Israel declined the invitation. However, according to the Israeli authors, whose sources included Shimon Peres, an enthusiastic intimate of the Israeli nuclear program, and Knesset Member Eliyah Speizer, during his April 1976 visit to Israel Premier Vorster again extended the invitation to Israel to conduct a nuclear test.
It is commonly held that Israel wanted a test venue far from the Middle East in order to uphold its longtime position that it would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the region. This "position," hinging on some arcane reading of the word "introduce," Is as meaningless as the endlessly heard term "peace process."
The following year, a Soviet satellite picked up unmistakable signs of preparation for a nuclear test in the Kalahari Desert. Fearing that such a test "might trigger an ominous escalation of the nuclear arms race," the U.S., Britain, France and West Germany joined the USSR in pressuring South Africa to abort the test. As to the bomb that was to be tested, " 'I know some intelligence people who are convinced with damn near certainty that it was an Israeli nuclear device,' said a high-ranking Washington official."
At three o'clock in the morning on September 22, 1979, Israel and South Africa conducted a nuclear weapons test where the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans merge.
A newly recalibrated U.S. Vela intelligence satellite recorded the characteristic double flash of light. It was a small blast, designed to leave very little evidence. The CIA told the National Security Council that a two - or three-kiloton bomb had been exploded in "a joint South African Israeli test." A Navy official revealed that U.S. spy planes over the test area had been waved away by South African Navy ships and forced to land secretly in Australia. The CIA knew (and later told Congress) that South African ships were conducting secret maneuvers at the exact site of the test. The South African military attaché in Washington made the first ever request to the U.S. National Technical Information Service for a computer search on detection of nuclear explosions and orbits of the Vela satellite.
Almost immediately the Carter Administration convened a special panel to conduct an investigation of the incident. The panel heard reports from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the CIA; and representatives of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Department of Energy and the State Department presented evidence to the panel supporting the occurrence of a nuclear explosion. Their findings were summarily dismissed by the Carter White House, which after a delay of seven months declared: Although we cannot rule out the possibility that this [Vela] signal was of nuclear origin, the panel considers it more likely that the signal was one of the zoo events [reception of signals of unknown origin under anomalous circumstances], possibly a consequence of the impact of a small meteroid on the satellite.
Moreover, as new information became available, it was simply ignored. In one critical instance, evidence of radiation observed in the thyroid glands of Australian sheep was discounted. The initial lack of this "smoking gun," traces of radiation, suggested to a Los Alamos scientist that the low-yield weapon tested had been a neutron bomb. However, the Carter panel had used the absence of radiation as a prime excuse In Its cover-up.
Many who had been involved with the investigation were aghast and wondered why the Carter White House was "equivocating." Some within the government said that the Carter Administration was hiding behind the "zoo" theory to avoid dealing with the political headaches that would accompany acknowledgment of the test. An affirmative report might have affected the ongoing negotiations over the creation of Zimbabwe in which South African cooperation was needed and upset the lust negotiated Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt. Carter also had reason to fear "complications in garnering Jewish votes during the upcoming Democratic Party primary campaign against Sen. Edward Kennedy."
But beyond that, as a State Department official explained, coming clean on the test "would be a major turning point in our relations with South Africa and Israel if we determined conclusively that either had tested a nuclear bomb. It makes me terribly nervous just to think about it." Of course by deciding to ignore reality the Carter administration-and following in its footsteps, the Reagan Administration, which went on record May 21, 1985 as upholding the Carter "verdict" -destroyed the already tattered credibility of the nonproliferation posture of the U.S.
There was no challenge forthcoming from Congress. Quite the contrary: in 1981 Representatives Stephen Solarz and Jonathan Bingham withdrew legislation they had introduced calling for a cutoff of U.S. aid to nations manufacturing nuclear weapons after they learned from the State Department "that such a requirement might well trigger a finding by the Administration that Israel has manufactured a bomb. The U.S. government turned its back on the potential victims of Israeli and South African nuclear aggression, and stuck its head in the sand like an ostrich.
Five years later, the Washington Office on Africa Educational Fund in cooperation with Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the World Campaign Against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa issued a report on the 1979 nuclear weapons test. Based on documents obtained from the government under the Freedom of Information Act, the report detailed scientific evidence not taken into account by the Carter panel. It demonstrated conclusively that a cover-up had been perpetrated by the Carter Administration. Written by Howard University Professor Ronald Waiters, the report warned that the cover-up, "coupled with the Reagan Administration's subsequent allowance of an increase in nuclear aid to South Africa has serious implications for international peace and security."
The sponsors of the report urged that the investigation be reopened under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineers, and also called for a Congressional investigation and "the release to the public of all pertinent information."
Although it came at a time of heightened anti-apartheid activity, the report was largely ignored. Small, dutiful articles about a Conyers press conference appeared but generated none of the official (or activist) response that might have kept the issue alive.
In July 1985, during debate on the 1986-87 Foreign Aid Authorization bill, Rep. Conyers offered an amendment stipulating that "United States foreign assistance may not be provided to any country having a nuclear relationship with South Africa." Howard Wolpe, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa persuaded Conyers to withdraw the amendment, promising instead that upcoming hearings on nuclear proliferation would consider the implications of South Africa's nuclear capability. As 1985 wore into 1986, and while Congress spent itself in a literal orgy of anti-apartheid legislation, the promised hearing was never scheduled.
Congress may succeed in shelving the problem of the 1979 test for another few years, but despite the refusal of the U.S. political monkeys to see, nuclear collaboration between Tel Aviv and Pretoria continues. A second test in December 1980 was reported in the same area, with another CIA sighting of South African ships nearby. A British authority on nuclear weapons, Dr. David Baker, said that the weapon fired in this test was probably a 155 mm nuclear shell fired from a special howitzer which the Israelis had helped the South Africans acquire (see below).
In 1981 , it was reported that South Africa had hired Israeli consultants "to advise on the safety aspects of its first two commercial reactors." As those reactors were being built by the French company Framatome, some thought it odd that Israeli, rather than French, scientists would be hired. The Israeli advice, which according to intelligence officials "could assist the Government there to acquire the technological expertise to build nuclear weapons," came in exchange for uranium. Although South Africa has its Koeberg commercial reactor under international safeguards, these are lax, "making diversion of materials for nuclear weapons possible if a government so chooses."
In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, a technician who had worked nine years at the Dimona installation, told reporters that South African scientists and metallurgists had regularly worked at Dimona.
In 1985, the BBC reported that Israel and South Africa had tested an Israeli-made Jericho II (nuclear-capable) missile in South Africa.
Late in 1986 South African scientists working on remote Marion Island, halfway between Antarctica and the southern coast of South Africa, disregarded Pretoria's orders to remain silent and reported that Israeli and South African military officers had been visiting the island.
Experts said that the two nations were undoubtedly in the process of developing a nuclear missile-testing range in conjunction with a $6 million mile-long airstrip South Africa was planning to build on the island and that this "important military asset" could also be used as a base for anti-submarine warfare. The scientists said they had gone public out of fear that their meteorological station would be used to cover such activities. They discounted South African excuses that the airstrip would be useful for resupply, medical evacuation and rescue activities. The scientists said there was little shipping, fishing or aviation in the area.
The environmental organization Greenpeace, at the time setting up a research station to monitor the large Antarctic wildlife population, issued a statement opposing the airstrip. A Greenpeace spokeswoman at the organization's Washington office said the organization was also opposed to use of the island for military purposes by Israel and South Africa. (The Greenpeace statement notes that Marion Island is near the site of their 1 979 nuclear test). If work was begun on the runway, she said, "it will definitely engender a response".
3.3) Collaboration on Weapons.
Although the 1976 Vorster agreements marked the beginning of a large and systematic commerce in arms, it by no means launched the sanctions-busting commerce in weapons between Tel Aviv and Pretoria. Israel had already sold South Africa an assortment of military gear, and, by one account, had imported Chieftain-type tanks from South Africa.
By 1971, South Africa was building the Uzi submachine gun under license. In fact, shortly before the signing of those agreements, the Israelis, acting in concert with "retired" CIA agents and cooperative European companies, played an important role in an elaborate deception that resulted in the delivery of one of the most sophisticated weapons ever to reach South Africa. This was the Space Research Corporation (SRC) 155 mm howitzer, acknowledged at the time to be the most advanced long-range artillery piece in the world. Originally developed by Canadian-American Gerald Bull to launch satellites, the SRC howitzer is also capable of firing miniaturized nuclear shells.
After failing to secure production rights to Bull's invention for themselves (and for resale to South Africa), Israel served as the official "end user" on U.S. papers accompanying conventional 155mm shells through their production process in the U.S. and Canada. According to Britain's Independent Television, the Israeli Cabinet discussed the deal.
In a welter of phony addresses and illicit shipments, the conspirators also accomplished the transfer to South Africa of the SRC howitzer blueprints and the machine tools necessary for its production. South Africa now produces and markets the howitzer as the G5 and G6; it is this artillery piece with its 250 mile range that was apparently used in the 1980 nuclear test mentioned above.
As in the SRC case, as Western nations came under pressure to abide by the UN arms embargo of 1963 - and the subsequent United Nations Mandatory Arms Embargo of 1977 - Israel began to act as a funnel for shipments from other Western countries. One notorious case involved the shipment of 11 U.S.- made Bell helicopters from Haifa to South Africa (and thence to Rhodesia) using Singapore as a phony destination. Another concerned the shipment from Italy of Oto Melara naval cannon through Israel to South Africa. South Africa installed the guns on Reshef patrol boats, which by then it was making under Israeli license (see below).
In 1983, authorities in Copenhagen stopped a shipment of 400 pistols for South Africa. The pistols were then taken to Vienna, Austrian law permits export to South Africa of "sports and civilian weapons"and from there were to "be dispatched to South Africa via Israel."
Although it is difficult to pinpoint precisely the date of sale of Israeli weapons to South Africa, following the Vorster agreements Israeli military sales to South Africa increased dramatically. Israeli equipment deployed in South Africa includes mortars, electronic surveillance equipment, radar stations, anti-guerrilla alarm systems and night vision devices," high technology equipment for a squadron of South African helicopters," "a large number of Soviet-made artillery pieces and eight Reshef long-range missile boats, two of which were supplied with helicopter decks and sophisticated electronic gear. South African navy personnel, about 50 by one account, were brought to Israel to train on the boats.
South Africa also bought six Dabur patrol boats (for $300,000 each) and equipped them (and its own German-built corvettes) with Gabriel surface-to-surface missiles for the Israeli craft. South Africa is also thought to have bought Israeli Shafrir (heat-seeking) missiles some time around 1978.
It is equally difficult to try to pinpoint the amount of money involved in these transactions. A 1976 assessment by the London International Institute for Strategic Studies said that Israel and France were South Africa's "primary suppliers." A 1977 report said Israel had received $100 million worth of orders from South Africa that year. More recent reports have varied between $50 million and $800 million annually.
Nonetheless, with the official curtailment of British and French weapons transfers to the white government, Israel became a lifeline for the apartheid regime-and apartheid became a gold mine for Israel. In its 1981 Yearbook, the respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) lists South Africa as the major customer for Israeli arms, taking 35 percent of the total prior to 1980.
After the well documented sales of the 1970s, and especially with the imposition of the UN's 1977 mandatory arms embargo, secrecy on arms shipments remained nearly absolute until 1986-87 when a great deal became known (see below). Although the statistics suggest the sale of numerous weapons systems in great quantity, very little is known about what has actually changed hands. This is because of the overarching secrecy observed by all facets of the Israeli arms industry and the obvious need of the South Africans to avoid revealing the source of their imported arms-every so often they can't resist a gleeful reference to "friendly countries"- and thus drying it up.
Despite this decade of secrecy, a few sales have become known. The South Africans have been steady purchasers of Israeli electronic "security" fencing. This is the early warning barrier Israel has strung around its own borders. Microwave devices and infra-red devices alert soldiers to those intruders who are not snared by the anti-personnel mines which are part of the package. The South Africans call the system a "ring of steel'' and have said that other border areas near Mozambique and Angola are "riddled with anti-personnel mines manufactured in Israel".
Although the Israelis have variously insisted that they scrupulously respect the 1977 UN embargo, or that their arms sales to South Africa do not include weaponry that could be used for internal repression, a 1986 report on National Public Radio proves them wrong on both counts. Listeners to 'Morning Edition" on January 13 heard a tape of Israeli military industries salesmen making a sales pitch to two delegations of South African "security men." Tear gas and smoke gas grenades were being demonstrated. During its almost perpetual state of emergency, South Africa has used a great deal of tear gas.
During the broadcast an Israeli professor told "Morning Edition" that none of South Africa's other trading partners "is quite as intimately involved in security matters, in the preservation of apartheid through force," as Israel is.
Israel has sold South Africa one or more "drones" (remotely piloted spy planes). In 1983, one of these camera- laden aircraft shot down over Maputo, Mozambique still bore its IAI factory markings.
3.4) Indications of Magnitude.
Two news leaks about arms shipments In 1986 (three, counting the Cheetah- see Introduction and below) might well be indicative of what has been passing between Israel and South Africa on a regular basis. One arms shipment included 50 Gazelle helicopters, armored cars, cannons, mortars, 20,000 automatic rifles and 12,000 machine guns purchased from Egypt on Israel's behalf by Adnan Khasogghi, the infamous international arms dealer, after Egypt rebuffed a direct Israeli attempt to purchase them. They were shipped to Israel and from there immediately sent to South Africa. (Another ten helicopters from Zaire were also included in this shiprnent.) While the South Africans are probably eager for the helicopters it is likely that the small arms will be passed along to one of the mercenary forces, Unita, or the "Mozambican National Resistance," attacking the Frontline states.
Late in the year, converted Boeing 707 aircraft appeared in South Africa. There were four to six in all, and Israel had outfitted them as dual in-flight refueling platforms and flying electronic warfare stations. Far beyond anything available to any other African government, these aircraft gave South Africa command of the entire continent.
There is no way of gauging the frequency and magnitude of similar sales which escape detection. The transfer of ready-to-use weaponry, however, is overshadowed by other aspects of Israeli military collaboration with South Africa which have been instrumental in South Africa's achieving a high degree of immunity from the effects of international sanctions, in part through an extensive weapons industry of its own.
The South African publication Interconair stated, "thanks to the friendship which binds us to Israel...we have succeeded in creating a nucleus of modern ships based on fast-attack and missile craft derived from the Israeli Reshef." This appreciation was not merely for Israeli willingness to sell missile boats; nor was it simply to buy and sell weapons outright that Israel and South Africa hammered out their 1976 agreements. Instead, the agreements centered on South Africa's willingness to finance some of Israel's costlier military projects. Israel was to reciprocate by supplying weapon systems and training... Israel was asked to fill [South Africa's] needs for naval, armored, electronic and counterinsurgency equipment.
In the case of the Reshef patrol boats, after selling the first three outright and training South African officers, the Israelis licensed the South Africans to produce nine. The South Africans call their Reshef the Minister, or Minister of Defense (MOD). Israel also licensed South Africa to produce the 65-foot Dabur patrol boat.
In addition to the famous Uzi submachine gun, the apartheid government produces the Israeli Galil assault rifle under license as the R-4. Both the Dabur and the Reshef carry Gabriel missiles, the Israeli-made equivalent of the French Exocet. South Africa now produces these under license, calling them the Scorpion. It was with a Scorpion that the South Africans sank a Cuban food ship during a June 1986 attack on the Angolan port of Namibe. These licensing agreements include the future transfer of any Israeli modifications of the systems.
There have been persistent reports of other licensing arrangements between Tel Aviv and Pretoria, including submarines and a new Israeli guided missile patrol boat, but none have been definitively confirmed. Reports of collaboration on the missile boat go back to 1977, when it was described as "a miniature aircraft carrier." James Adams calls this the Q9 corvette." A more recent report says South Africa is "considering buying several new corvettes from Israel."
A four-way deal to construct submarines seems in the making. South Africa is planning to build submarines at its own yards in cooperation with Chile. Meanwhile, Israel has been negotiating with Washington over a submarine to be built jointly by Israel and West Germany while a West German state-owned shipyard has sold blueprints for submarines to South Africa (resulting in a fairly severe scandal in Bonn, when it was determined that Chancellor Kohl and other top officials discussed the sale).
If there is any substance to the reports of an Israeli-South African submarine project, then in all probability the ship will be a three-way project including Israel, South Africa and Chile. (Israel is performing the same Mirage update for Chile that resulted in the South African Cheetah.) Israel's submarine project is being financed by its U.S. military aid. South Africa could be a direct recipient of the benefits of U.S. military assistance to Israel. It is a pattern that marks other purported licensing deals as well.
There have been frequent reports that South Africa is a silent partner in the next generation Israeli fighter, the Lavi. The Israelis embarked on this ambitious project in 1977, hoping to advance their own technological base a giant step with copious helpings of the latest U.S. technology. Israel also wanted to produce an aircraft without any U.S. parts, which would make the export of the Lavi not subject to a veto by Washington.
As the evolving design incorporated features of a vastly more sophisticated aircraft, Israeli leaders sought and won U.S. financing for rising costs of the Lavi' s development. By the end of 1986, Congress had earmarked $1.3 billion of Israel's U.S. military assistance for the Lavi. Furthermore, Congress allocated $700 million of that sum to be spent in Israel on the Lavi's development.
As early as 1977, it was reported that Israel was helping South Africa develop a fighter plane within the framework established in 1976: South African financing and Israeli technological input. A top secret trip by Israeli Defense Minister Ezer Weizman to South Africa in March 1980 is thought to have been "to discuss, among other things, the joint Lavi fighter project." Weizmann definitely reached agreement with the South Africans over financing the development of the avionics the computerized flight systems for the Kfir aircraft, which the South Africans later obtained for their Cheetah.
An IAI marketing document in the early years of this decade spoke of an outright sale of the Lavi to South Africa. It projected selling 407 Lavi aircraft to South Africa, Chile, Taiwan and Argentina. In 1984 it was reported that "South Africa is known to be prepared to invest in the...Lavi."
An objective analysis of the Lavi's current status would appear to rule out the possibility that South Africa still hopes to be cut in on the deal. As the project and the Israeli economy ran into trouble in the mid-1980s, Israel was forced to contract an increasing amount of the work on the Lavi to U.S. firms, and thus the amount of leverage the U.S. has over any potential export deals has risen. The Lavi's avionics have been developed by Israel, and hence are not subject to a U.S. export veto. At one point, the Israelis sought a U.S. partner for the Lavi. The Bet Shemesh engine plant, which was to co-produce the first batch of Pratt and Whitney engines for the Lavi, went into receivership, presumably eliminating the possibility that Israel could pass along the engine for the Lavi to South Africa. Yet the situation surrounding the transfer of Kfir technology to South Africa to produce the Cheetah (see Introduction) may be instructive.
It had long been suspected that Israel was about to let South Africa build the Kfir under license (or sell the aircraft outright to the white regime). Israel eventually passed along pieces of Kfir technology and also gave South Africa assistance in producing the engine. It is not out of the question that South Africa would receive plans for building the Lavi power plant; nor is it out of the question that another country might be drawn into the scheme, increasing the opportunities for legerdemain.
Minister Without Portfolio Moshe Arens-as Defense Minister, head of IAI, and Ambassador to the U.S., Arens made the Lavi his personal "obsession"-recently went to Japan and proposed that Israel share its Lavi technology with Tokyo, which is contemplating co-producing a fighter plane with the U.S. Arens has called the Lavi "the most potent new jet fighter in the Western World."
While these scenarios of the Lavi's future are speculative, they are nonetheless germane. For all the $1-plus billion it has designated for the Lavi with such alacrity that it initially provided $150 million more than Israel could spend". Congress has ignored a number of problems associated with the plane, as well as the reports of South African collaboration. It has not dealt with the prospects of the Lavi as an export, even though it had been pointed out repeatedly that the I,Lavi would compete with the U.S.-built Northrop F-20 Tigershark. The F-20, which had no federal funds for its development, was abandoned in novernber 1986 after falling to find U.S. or foreign buyers.
The Israelis have assured Washington "categorically" that they were not developing the Lavi for export, but some U.S. officials remain skeptical. Pentagon efforts to persuade Israel to scrap the Lavi project because its rising costs would impair other Israeli military programs - the Pentagon said the finished aircraft would cost $22 million per plane, the Israelis claimed it would be $15 mlllion - were ignored by Congress. Instead, eight U.S. Represen tatives wrote a letter to the Departments of State and Defense and to the White House urging that the next install ment of $70 million for the Lavi be released."
In an editorial calling into question the fiscal soundness of the Lavi project, the Oakland Tribune also suggested: "...If Congress does extend further aid, it should insist on guarantees that none of the technology will leak out to South Africa."
In the face of general knowledge on the hill of Israeli-South African military cooperation, shouldn't Congress' lack of interest in possible South African access to the Lavi be interpreted by Israel as "a wink and a nod"?
In 1979, the U.S. allowed Israel to use $107 million of its military aid to develop its main battle tank, the Chariot, or Merkava, in Israel. (This precedent, spending foreign aid outside the U.S., would later be used to justify the far larger sums the U.S. permitted Israel to convert to its local currency for the Lavi.)
Meanwhile, South Africa's help was enlisted in the production of the armor plating for the tank. Israel obtained rare steel alloys from South Africa, and also in a rare turnaround-South Africa's advanced steel manufacturing technology. In return Israel supplied the formula for fabricating the plating and refitted all of South Africa's tanks and armoured vehicles. The armor is said to be the hardest in the world. The production was handled by Iskoor, a jointly owned steel company located in Israel.