What happened this time?
"What happened was that there had never been a single aircraft in the Western world that was going to get all the business from everyone for 40 years. Up until now, they divided models and types of planes used by the various branches of the US armed forces between the companies. In this case, for the first time, they didn't divide the work among many companies. The question was whether Boeing or Lockheed Martin would take the plan. Incidentally, the fact that we got the plan surprised us all. We didn't believe that we'd get a giant $400 billion project; we assumed that they'd eventually go for some kind of combined solution that would satisfy both Boeing and Lockheed Martin. As soon as one Western company won the whole pot, all the others were totally opposed. How do you express opposition? You leak fabrications to the media."
What fabrications? Last March, US Department of Defense director of operation test and evaluation Dr. Michael Gilmore appeared before the US Congress and listed more than 930 failures in the plane. He asserted that the F-35's fighting ability was limited, and that the weapon system was not ready.
"So what?," Shani says dismissively. "Most of these failures were corrected long before he presented them to Congress. One of the failures he listed was that the plane could only fly three missions a day. Today, it can fly eight missions a day. There are always problems in this difficult process, and we always solve them. The fact is that 200 of these planes are already flying now, 180 of them in the US, and they have completed over 80,000 flying hours. You have to take things in proportion. A senior general in the Israeli air force once told me that the more Congressional reports were issued about problems in the plane, the more calm and confident he was, because it meant that the faults were being discovered and corrected. What's bad about that? It means that there is an entire system of strong and responsible control. Today, you have 10 Western powers continuing their cooperation with this plan. Like you, everyone reads those reports brought to Congress, and they still believe in the plane. Are they all stupid?"
The wave of criticism about the stealth fighter's supposedly limited capabilities and its un-readiness to perform the promised missions, combined with its astronomical price, NIS 500 million for one plane, is far from naive. Shani says, "In Israel, they made an awful noise about those reports, completely out of proportion to other countries. In this case, I can point my finger at the place from which the poison came, and I do mean poison."
Did someone spread this "poison," as you call it, in an attempt to thwart the procurement of the stealth fighters and so that another plane made by another firm would be chosen?
"That's a nice possibility, and if not to buy another airplane, then to use this money for other things. With this money, you can buy a lot of other things, such as new refueling planes, maybe 20,000 APCs, helicopters, and many other things. It's legitimate to want this money, but they shouldn't lie, and there were many lies here, but I think it's over now. I'm already immune to criticism like this. I was more sensitive at first."
The criticism did not even omit the F-35's definitive feature - the stealth capability that enables it to attack targets without being detected.
"Yes, it's amazingly stealthy. Simply amazing," Shani responds to the criticisms. "I was in the US, and I met with several senior Israel Air Force pilots who went there for special training in flying the aircraft. We met half an hour after they finished an operational training mission with the F-35 on a simulator. They told me that it's impossible, there is no such plane, and believe me, these guys know planes. They fly F-15s and F-16s, and they're experienced. Their eyes sparkled. One of them told me something I can't get out of my head: 'This plane isn't fair to the enemy. It doesn't give him a chance.' That's so right. It's so stealthy, so sophisticated, and so easy to operate. Such an aircraft really is impossible, but it exists. The US built it, and they're giving us the money to buy it from them. Our Air Force wants it, because it can replace the outmoded planes and improve capabilities, because the Air Force will have the world's best aircraft. What more do you want? To go to the Russians and buy MIG-29s?"