National Experiences - British Commission for Military History

tH e iaf a n d t H e uav er a 177
expectations, even with guidance technology which was extremely crude by modern
standards. Our search lead us to Teledyne-Ryan Aeronautical in San Diego, Ca and
a contract for 25 “birds” was signed to be delivered in a few months. The platform
was based on the Teledyne SC/SD versions with some modifications: airframe, and
operating that we needed as a response to our operational requirements. The “bird”
was designated 124I and in Hebrew: MABAT, which has two meanings: it’s the
initials of A Plane without A Pilot and the word A Look or Observation. The major
significant changes involved with our program were the ground launch assisted by a
RATO booster and a Mid-Air Recovery System (MARS) by Helicopter.
The first phase of the project that started in early 1971 by sending a small team of
technicians, software experts and a couple of pilots – none with any experience with
Unmanned vehicles to the company’s facility in San Diego – to learn and qualify in
the system without flying it. The contract dictated that there won’t be any real flights
in the US and that all 5 acceptance and test flights will be performed in Israel and
will begin in late Aug.1971 so that the system’s development phase (engineering),
organizational preparations in picking the people to be the technical and operational
nucleus, training them overseas, preparations in Israel of the infrastructure to absorb
the system and performing the acceptance flights: all was planned to be done in
about 10 months.
With our very little knowledge of unmanned flying systems we were quite worried
of having to operate them from our AF Base in the center of the country and at
the center of the populated area and having a very dense aerial traffic military and
civil, so the first decision was to carry the operation, on a temporary basis to a very
remote place: one of the forward airbases that we used in the Sinai Desert.
Due to hard work and super enthusiastic attitude from both our Israeli group and
the Teledyne Ryan people, across all levels, we met the target date!
I have to make clear that we could advance in our program and solve whatever
problems because we were considered as a project that does not interfere with the
Air Force daily operations, and being self contained and not having anybody in the
HQ who knew better than us, we did not even demand HQ colonels attention. On
the other hand, we couldn’t do so well with the moral support and backing of Gen.
Benny Peled who was a real partisan of the concept.
All 5 test-acceptance flights, in which we examined different profiles, were successful
and gave us the confidence in our ability to plan and control the missions, to
maintain the equipment and, in fact, to feel assured enough in order to convince our
commanders that the concept of UAV as part of our Air Force is viable.
As for the organizational structure we suggested that the operating unit will be just
like a “flying” squadron, and that we’ll have experienced ground crews with electronics
background, and ground material-ammunition background for the launcher.
The optical equipment will be looked after at the base level, and as aircrew we decided
to use experienced aircrews. Either active or grounded for medical reasons.
This decision was very important – the alternative suggested by the HQ was to find
some of the model aircraft fans and recruit them. I insisted that as long as we fly real