Israel asking to `buy` F-22 . again.

www.flightglobal.com...

Israel may renew its request for the acquisition of Lockheed Martin's F-22 Raptor air superiority fighter from the incoming US administration.

"I anticipate that the Pentagon will release $140 million to let the next administration more easily extend production of the F-22," said Lockheed chief executive Robert Stevens during a 9 November press conference in Tel Aviv.

this being the country that sold everything related to Lavi to China - the same Lavi which had a metric ton of cutting edge US tech in it.....

[edit on 10/11/08 by Harlequin]

Forget about the tech transfer for a moment.


Much more important may be the political ramifications of letting Israel have access to the latest and greatest.


How would the Iranians feel?

Would it only serve to justify (to themselves) the importance of obtaining their own nuclear weapons to retain a defensive capability vis-a-vis Israel?


Allowing Israel to purchase the F-22 would go a long way to further destabilising the region I think - and of course, the technology would no doubt end up in the hands of certain 3rd parties.

Last time Israel looked into getting the F-22 it was to recieve 25. Bearing in mind the price would have gone up hugely from then, i dont see the value of buying such a small number of high maintaince aircraft.
Also IAI has always designed avionics for newly acquired hardware, I doubt that there would be any chance of doing so for this.

Jensy

reply to post by jensy


Israel is not receiving any Raptors, neither is any other country, currently the Raptor is non export. This can change with a new administration, but military leaders and DOD civilians won't have it

NO NO NO NO NO NO....

We may as just save ourselves the hassle and export it to the communists Chinese government. Isreal has quite a track record of turning over the tech we give them (yep I said give) to the Chinese.

If anybody is going to get the Raptor it would be Japan, the UK or Australia and that is unlikely.

The IAF has complete and total air superiority, there would really be no need for a Raptor type airframe in thier inventory. They can wait for the JSF like everybody else.

@ Westpoint

I realise that, I was merely talking of when they last requested it.

Personally I dont think the 22 is such a good aircraft for them, despite dubious claims all the Iranians are going to be fielding for the next quater of a century are reworked f-5s.
A good plane for them would be the Rafale, it offers reasonable range and stealth at a far better price than the over engineered under achieving F-35.

Jensy

reply to post by FredT


except that israel are allready trying , quite hard , to jump the queue - they are expecting them around 2014

It is indeed unwise to give Israel the F-22.

It could buy the SU-35BM and has tech that is already available in China. So it wouldnt realy hurt.

And dont immedialy discard such proposal because it would only enhance air superiority and give the Israeli's a great multiroler.

And it is not a nice gesture off Israel to jump the que lines off the F-35 production lines!!!

@kilcoo316

How would the Iranians *feel*?? I'd imagine they'd feel pretty crappy, but I didn't realize this was a schoolyard and everyone was supposed to not hurt each other's feelings.

Either way, what the Israelis have now (planes and pilots) outclasses what Iran has by a mile.

Originally posted by HatTrick
@kilcoo316

Laugh away.


You'd only have yourself to blame when the next 9/11 comes around though.

Honestly there is absolutely no point in Israel getting any f-22s, they would make nothing more than targets of opportunity for other airforces, in the same way that the F-14s were targeted in the Iran/Iraq war.
If they were to benefit from any stealth types at all it would need to be either highly capable or optimised for strike. Incidently this is something the F-35 is claimed to be capable of.
For the moment the only countries they are likely to engage in the air are low tech 3.5 gen fighters which could probably have been defeated with the now retired IAI Kfir.
Lastly the fact that they are getting Lightning aircraft early is more to do with the fact that they have settled for the A model rather than the B or C, which were under consideration, but will take longer.

Jensy