What Israel Lost When It Stopped Making Its Own Fighter Jets

In the first decades of its existence, Israel imported most of its sophisticated arms—fighter jets, tanks, missile boats—from France and Britain. But in the weeks surrounding the Six-Day War, both countries imposed an embargo on the Jewish state. In subsequent years, once the U.S. became Israel’s main supplier of arms, it, too, would use them as leverage. Jerusalem thus decided in the 1970s to produce its own weapons systems, many of which—such as the Merkavah tank—are still in use. Israeli engineers also began developing an advanced line of fighter-bomber jets in 1980, known as the Lavi, but it was canceled and finally killed for good in 1987 amidst a budget crisis. John W. Golan argues that it was not independence alone that Israel thereby sacrificed: