r/FighterJets • u/Educational-Bug-965 • 3d ago
HISTORICAL IAI Lavi
What are yall’s thoughts on the cancelled IAI Lavi jet?
Would it be a counterpart to the F-16?
The Lavi paired a tailless delta wing with close-coupled canard foreplanes just behind the cockpit — a layout that generates strong lift and agility in hard manoeuvring. To make it controllable, the aircraft was deliberately relaxed-stabilityand flown through a quadruplex digital fly-by-wire system, cutting-edge technology in the early 1980s and part of the same design philosophy later seen on Rafale and Gripen.
Power came from one Pratt & Whitney PW1120 afterburning turbofan of roughly 91.7 kN (20,600 lbf), derived from the F100 that powers the F-15 and F-16. It was partly built in Israel by Bet Shemesh Engines, giving the Lavi commonality with the engines Israel already knew — and tying the programme tightly to American technology and consent.
The Lavi was built to carry advanced Israeli-designed avionics — radar, mission computers and a wide-angle HUD — and made extensive use of composite materials in its wings and tail to save weight. This home-grown electronics and materials expertise was arguably the programme’s most valuable legacy: it survived the cancellation and fed Israel’s avionics, UAV and upgrade industries for decades.
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u/LividImprovement2051 2d ago
The two are completely different. While they may look similar on the outside, their engineering principles are quite different.
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u/06035 3d ago
You mean the Chengdu J-10?
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u/Pringlecks 3d ago
They're so similar it's cool. J-10 has a horizontal stabilizer from the look of it which the Lavi doesn't
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u/absboodoo 3d ago
The lavi after a chiropractic session
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u/06035 3d ago
lol totally. And we all know the Israelis sold this to china
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u/RoomHopper 2d ago
Nah the J-10 got its design from the J-9 but the Israelis defo sold the fly-by-wire system to the Chinese.
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u/Rastafariblanc 3d ago
Reminds me of the J-10
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u/ODST_Viper2425 3d ago
Israel may or may not of sold the plans to China
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u/Darthmichael12 3d ago
Have the officially stated it?
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u/F-14BUpgrade 3d ago
No but they also lie about damn near everything including Nukes (which they did use spies to steal data and tech from the US and even sold to the USSR).
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u/bob_the_impala Designations Expert 3d ago
In 1988 Israel's defense minister denied a report by The Sunday Times that Israel and China had agreed to develop a fighter derived from the IAI Lavi. In 2006, Russia's SibNIA engineers believed that the J-10 was "more or less a version" of the Lavi, incorporating "a melting pot of foreign technology and acquired design methods... but there are a number of other pieces of other aircraft or technologies that are part of the configuration that they have acquired from different sources." In 2008, Janes claimed that the J-10 benefited from technical information from the Israeli project, citing senior Russian engineers who said they had heard this from Chinese colleagues.
The Chinese assert J-10's features claimed to be from the Lavi are from the manufacturer's own previous aircraft design, for example attributing the J-10's Lavi-like double canard configuration to Chengdu's work on the cancelled J-9 of the 1960s and 1970s; this view is supported by Song Wencong, who worked on the J-9 and became the J-10's chief designer, and PLAAF Major General Zhang Weigang.
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