Unraveling the Israeli Ballistic Missile Program

Jeffrey Lewis 0:02

Get me all fired up about Vela. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:25

And I'm Aaron Stein, director of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in a sunny Philadelphia.

Jeffrey 0:32

I thought it was always sunny in Philadelphia, Aaron.

Aaron 0:35

You know, one wishes it was always sunny in Philadelphia, but it's usually gray and obviously dark at around four o'clock, sort of fitting the mood of the country.

Jeffrey 0:44

Oh, it has been a tough, tough, tough week. I started writing an article that I wrote half of it before all that nonsense. And it was great and I was loving it. And I was going to write another half. And a week later, I have now turned in the first half almost immediately. Completely unchanged. Reducing our expectations for my workload and our democracy.

Aaron 1:09

It's been a tough week. I mean, I could lie and say, oh, it's no big deal, it's a bunch of LARPers, but it's been a... It's been bad. But I refuse to give in to cynicism, as you know from our off-podcast discussions. And so I do remain optimistic about the future and refuse to just say, oh, woe is me.

So I'll leave it at that.

Jeffrey 1:36

Yeah, well, I think one thing that I have found to be a great comfort is work. Not always, by the way, because someone on Twitter the other day said something that really struck me, which is it's not that history repeats itself. It's that historians have to keep repeating themselves because people don't f***ing listen.

Aaron 2:00

Right. OK.

Jeffrey 2:02

So sometimes historical case studies can be a little bit of a bummer. But if I can really get like in the zone and just be focused on a missile or a series of missiles, it can help me kind of blot out how shitty things really are.

Aaron 2:19

No, I'm similar. If I can get into the zone on the project I'm working on, I put on... I listen to loud rock and roll music when I write. I don't know about you. Some people are different. I know some people like white noise, classical music, no noise at all. For some reason, the booming sound helps me.

Yeah, I've been listening to a lot of idols.

Jeffrey 2:41

You know, I just, I don't know.

Aaron 2:43

I don't know. But I don't think our listeners want to have us dwell on the bad thing that happened at the Capitol. And certainly the potentiality for more shenanigans as we move forward. We are keeping up our pledge to reboot the podcast in a consistent way. And so we're going on down that list. I think this week we decided to talk about the Israelis, huh?

Jeffrey 3:05

We did. I got a grant from Plowshares to look at missile proliferation in the Middle East. And one of the things that I really wanted to do is to look at Israel's missile programs, in part because, you know, the reality is that we tend to understudy friendly missiles.

Aaron 3:28

Yeah, it's a theme of the podcast.

Jeffrey 3:30

You know, we spend a lot of time on Iran's missiles, which, you know, fair enough. They're interesting and they are a challenge for regional stability. But for whatever reason friendly missiles don't make the cut. And, and I will say, I also understand the reluctance. I mean, we approached it pretty carefully because I have a phrase in the document I'm writing which I've sort of been working on, which is that, you know Some analysis of Israel's missile program appears to be motivated by feelings that are not related to nonproliferation.

Aaron 4:05

Got it. Those feelings are actually pretty palatable and were on display last Wednesday as well.

Jeffrey 4:12

Yes. So, you know, I like me some pointy missiles. I want to see nuclear weapons abolished. So I don't, I can't say that I particularly love Israel's nuclear arsenal or its collection of ballistic missiles. But they're just freaking missiles. Yeah, I gotcha. Some people take this like a little, they go to some creepy freaking places with it.

Aaron 4:40

But it's an interesting story. Yeah, I was about to say, I think the interesting part about anything to do with Israel, its nuclear missile program, is the opacity that surrounds it and the open source sleuthing it takes to get to the bottom of outstanding questions about their missiles, because they don't really show them off all that much.

Jeffrey 5:00

No, not at all. And that was sort of the conceit of the project, which is... Israel doesn't really show them off, but the two primary missiles, the Jericho 1 and the Jericho 2, both of those have a significant foreign connection. And so we leveraged that foreign information plus our modeling capabilities to really try to take apart what those missiles were in order to learn about where they were technologically and in order to try to understand where they might be today.

So that's been really fun, actually.

Aaron 5:41

It's that period of history where we weren't in lockstep, let's put it that way. The ironclad security commitment was not so ironclad, and so the Israelis went looking elsewhere for foreign assistance. So perhaps the story starts there.

Jeffrey 5:56

Yeah, so I guess what people don't necessarily realize is that the Jericho 1, the first ballistic missile that Israel developed in the late 1960s, early 1970s, is French. The state of Israel went to the government of France when relations were still pretty positive. And said, we'd like you to build us a solid propellant ballistic missile. And the French state didn't want to be directly implicated in it, but they basically arranged for Dassault, the aviation company, to take an existing French solid propellant motor that had been developed in a different context and to execute a missile known as the MD-620 for Israel, which Dassault developed.

Tested some large number of times, I think 16 times, and then basically turned over to the Israelis. So we actually know quite a lot about the Jericho 1 through the time that Dassault developed it up to the time that they turned it over to the Israelis.

Aaron 7:12

It's just an incredible moment in history, too, to just think about that whole process. Do you know what I mean? Where you have a foreign company, that place being Dassault, basically building in the open or relatively in the open and transferring over a missile to a third party. It's just, you know, we now look in the shadows.

The North Koreans do that now, you know, but like this is a different type of proliferation.

Jeffrey 7:34

Yeah, I mean, there's actually a lot of archival imagery and one video that we are still trying to hunt down showing launches. And so it was not a particularly secretive thing. I should say, by the way, that it's one of those kind of fun little aspects of proliferation. Eventually... Particularly after Suez, there was this gradual shift in French policy where the French were sort of increasingly deciding that instead of being allied with the Israelis, they would much rather have good relations with Israel's Arab neighbors.

And so they imposed a series of restraints and ultimately an arms embargo. And Dassault could see the writing on the wall and basically renegotiated the contract with the Israelis to turn over to Israel. Some of the remaining missiles plus the production capabilities so that Israel could make domestic production of the Jericho missile.

Aaron 8:41

Right. And so maybe you should just describe what the first Jericho looks like, what its capabilities were, and then how that provided the, I guess, sort of the nucleus for the Jericho 2 and Jericho 3, and the space launcher, I assume.

Jeffrey 8:57

Yes. So the Jericho one can take about a 1,000-kilogram payload to about 500 kilometers. And it's an interesting missile. It's solid propellant. It's based on the... VE-111L. What's that? I don't even know what that is. That's a rocket engine. That's a solid propellant motor developed by France. Okay. It's called the Topaz. It was used in the Diamante.

If you know, like, 60s French rockets, you'll be like, oh, I know that. But, you know, the kind of short version is, like, it was previously developed by the French state. And then the design information was transferred over to Dassault so they could execute this for the Israelis. It's interesting because the first and the second stages are pretty much identical.

Aaron 9:49

Oh, that is interesting. And I have 60s French chairs, not rocket engines in my house.

Jeffrey 9:56

These are also kind of classy. The big difference are the nozzles. The first stage has four nozzles. The upper stage just has one big nozzle. And, you know, it's interesting. One question we had was how faithfully did Israel execute the Jericho one? You know, was it is it really just a copy of the MD 620 or did they make a bunch of changes?

But happily for us, in the 1970s, they were trying to sell the Jericho to the South Africans. Right, yep, yep, yep. And they invited two South African defense officials to witness the... I believe it was the 12th test of the Jericho in 1979. And in the course of that, they gave all the parameters to the South African defense officials who dutifully wrote it up.

And then that information was... Declassified after apartheid, so we can actually, I, I have in the document I'm writing, I have a 1969 CIA assessment of the MD620, which is clearly all from the French, right? They have all the parameters provided by the French. Which, by the way, we put into a model, and not surprisingly, the model is the model, right?

You get the CIA's range and payload estimate from the CIA's parameters, which is good, because if you didn't get that, somebody would have messed up. But I've got the 69 CIA parameters from the French side by side with the parameters that the Israelis gave the South Africans, and although the Israelis rounded things, it's the same missile.

Aaron 11:47

Right. God, that's a book to be written, too, about the Israeli-South African connection.

Jeffrey 11:52

Well, there is a book. It's called The Unspoken Alliance, Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, Sasha Polakaw-Saransky. He is the one who found the document that I am citing, so credit where it is due.

Aaron 12:09

I'm actually buying the book right now, but okay, keep going. I didn't realize this existed. Okay.

Jeffrey 12:17

And I will say, here it was kind of fun because what we would do is we took the parameters in these documents, both the French parameters. And if you ever work with primary sources to model missiles, the primary sources are either they're often wrong or they are unclear what they're talking about. So for example, you'll see a term for thrust.

And people won't tell you, is that average thrust? Is that maximum thrust? And it makes a big difference when you're modeling. They won't tell you if the thrust is in a vacuum or at sea level. And so often when you start one of these research projects, you have Six different numbers for one parameter, and all the sources are sort of authentic and reliable, and like, you, you know, you eventually figure out that like, oh, okay, well, this one's in a vacuum and this one's at sea level, and this is maximum thrust and this is average thrust, and you know, like.

The advantage of making computer models, and we have the really nice software from... Yeah, you have the fancy stuff. Yeah. Although we also use Jeff Forden's unclassified program. I mean, not that other programs... Both programs are unclassified. Let me rephrase that. We have the AGI export-controlled program.

Aaron 13:44

That's right.

Jeffrey 13:45

And Jeff Forden's program, which is not export-controlled. Okay.

Aaron 13:51

You can download that if I remember correctly.

Jeffrey 13:53

Yeah, Jeff has gotten a little concerned about letting people download it, because he did a really nice job. But yeah, it's around. There are other versions, too. Farin's Dalnaki Veris is making his own, and he's a foreigner. But the bottom line is, when you have the computer programs, and it's good to have several, you can validate the different parameters and sort of understand what people are getting at.

So in the end, Jericho 1, it's not really that complicated, but it is a kind of lovely proof of principle that even though the Israelis have been fairly careful, even with the South Africans where they just provided rounded numbers, that you can come up with pretty detailed models of the missile using the information from the people who initially designed it, plus validating that with modeling and simulation.

Aaron 14:49

Right, right. So then how does that lead you to the Jericho 2?

Other voice 14:53

Well, I'm going to pause here because there's a little bit of a mystery we've stumbled upon. Okay.

Aaron 15:00

Lay it on me.

Jeffrey 15:02

Well, so in one declassified U.S. document, the Jericho 1 and the Jericho 2 are listed as the YA1 and YA3. And YA stands for Yavni, which is Yavni Sands, which is what the U.S. intelligence community called the, I think I'm going to mispronounce it, Palmachem.

Aaron 15:28

I didn't go to Hebrew school, so I can't help you with any of this stuff.

Jeffrey 15:33

What good are you, Aaron? Never went down that path. Anyway, the place that starts with a P that Israel uses today for space launches and missile tests was used from the get-go. But of course, the US didn't know the name, and so they called it Yavni. So if the Jericho 1 is the Yavni 1, and the Jericho 2 is the Yavni 3...

Other voice 15:58

The hell's the Avenue 2?

Jeffrey 16:00

Yeah, what's the 2? Don't know is the short answer. But we have a little bit of a suspicion, which listeners who listen to our Green Bee episode may remember. I wasn't on the Green Bee episode, I don't believe. So we know that the Yavni, if the Avenue two is a real missile and you know, they may have just gotten designations wrong, right?

Maybe they, maybe Israel tested a Jericho one and they thought it was a new missile and they made it the Yavni two and then later decided there was no Yavni two and just went on to the Avenue three. Right. That's possible. But we know, thanks to a glorious declassified document, so in 1975, the U.S. sold Lance missiles to Israel, and in the late 1970s, Israel was marketing its missiles to Iran under the Shah.

Aaron 16:58

Correct. I do remember this, because I did listen to that podcast episode. I keep going.

Jeffrey 17:03

Yeah, and so the Israelis had to talk to US officials about what they were going to sell And they provided a list of the things they planned to sell the Iranians. And one of them was what they called a poor man's lance, which was a solid propellant missile, which is weird because the lance is liquid propellant. But it was a scaled down version of the Jericho configured to be a short range ballistic missile.

And what I'm guessing is that when Israel imported the lance, you know, those things came pre-fueled. They only had a 10-year lifespan, which, you know, you could stretch a little. I suspect they probably wanted to develop their own domestic replacement for it. And so they made something the same size and capability but with solid propellant because that's the infrastructure they had built for Jericho.

And then they were going to turn around and they were going to sell it to Iran. But they had to tell the U.S. about it because if that thing had showed up in a parade, it would have looked like Israel had retransferred Lance, which would have been a big problem. As it turns out, they didn't get a chance to sell that to the Shah.

The Shah was toppled. But Taiwan in 1981 showed off a missile called the Green Bee, which looked like a lance and everybody thought was a lance, but which we now know was solid propellant. So if you ask me, where did Taiwan get a solid propellant lance? Well, at that time, Israel was selling missiles to Taiwan, particularly the Gabriel, which was an anti-ship missile.

So I suspect Yavni-2. I can't prove it. But my suspicion is that Yavni-2 might be this thing that the Israelis called the poor man's lance, which was a little single-stage Jericho derivative. Right. Which could carry an undefined payload to like, I think they said something like 120 kilometers, basically replicated the capability of the Lance. Right. Which is enough.

Yeah, sure.

Aaron 19:06

Yeah. And so the Jericho 2, though, is where they extend the range of the Jericho 1, that initial 500 kilometer range with 1,000 kilogram payload solid fuel French missile.

Jeffrey 19:20

Yeah. So working with this was interesting. We have kind of two sources of information about it. One source is that Jericho 2 is the Chivit space launcher.

Other voice 19:35

Right.

Jeffrey 19:36

And I mean, it's funny. There are actually a bunch of technical details for the Chivit floating around, and none of them are sourced.

Other voice 19:46

Yes.

Jeffrey 19:49

But in a way, that's okay, because as I say, we have computer models and simulations. And so, you know, we can kind of check, are the numbers like what you would expect, right? And then the other thing is, and this is kind of a fun digression, we know the payload capability of the Chevy, both because it's been announced, but also because they have put satellites in orbit.

And Steve Fetter figured out in the 90s, and he actually helped me. I mean, by helped me, I mean he mostly did it himself, but I did a little work. We build a worksheet that allows you to put in the mass of a satellite, the orbit the satellite has been put into, some basic parameters about the booster, like how many stages it has, and it'll kick out for you the range of that thing if it were used as a missile.

Aaron 20:45

How many in this Jericho 2 is two stages, right? Or is it three?

Jeffrey 20:48

Yes. So we know the Jericho 2 is two stages because, although the Israelis never give us any details when they test, when they did one test of the Jericho 3, I think, they admitted it was a two-stage missile. So my sense is that all the, you know, the Space Launcher has a third stage because it wants to put stuff in orbit, and you have to account for that when you're doing the modeling, but I think all the missiles are two-stage missiles.

Aaron 21:15

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Jeffrey 21:17

So what did it spit out? Well, so we actually have the declassified U.S. assessment of the Jericho 2, and I mean, our numbers are pretty consistent with it, which is that the range the U.S. gives us 1,500 kilometers, but without 1,800 kilogram payload.

Aaron 21:37

Right. So that's big.

Jeffrey 21:39

Yeah, because if you went ahead and just assumed that you were going to put a much smaller warhead, then you're up to 3,000, 4,000 kilometers. That'll get it done. Yeah. And this is sort of interesting because, I mean, one of these unsourced descriptions of the Shavit says that there are two flavors of it, an original version and an improved version.

And basically the Jericho 2 corresponds to the original version of the Shavit.

Aaron 22:17

Which leads you to, is the Jericho 3 the improved version?

Jeffrey 22:20

Yeah, probably. I should say, we also, I mean, the other way we can tell that is because South Africa was building its own three-stage space launcher, which is the same thing as the Jericho 2, a.k.a. Chavit. There's one sitting in a museum outside of Pretoria. The museum was closed for the pandemic, but it's open again. And I'm trying to get somebody to go there with like a tape measure.

Aaron 22:44

I remember we were somewhere in a thread, either an email thread or maybe somewhere, is that somebody had actually volunteered to go. This was before the pandemic. Am I making this up? Or you were trying to find volunteers to go?

Jeffrey 22:58

I have a volunteer, but I had to wait for the museum to open again. So, yeah, I mean, it's on display. I mean, it's not, you know, it's not a secret. And we actually have one of the brochures of the South Africans because the South Africans bought the Jericho too and were making their own variant of it.

And after the apartheid regime gave up its nuclear program, it tried to preserve the space. The missile program is a space launch program. And they even made like a brochure where they were like, Come to South Africa, launch a satellite. Eventually the U.S. was like, no, and made them destroy those facilities.

Aaron 23:36

I just, I mean, for how secretive the Israelis are, it's always struck me that they were trying to sell these things around. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, I guess every program needs money in some respects to subsidize itself. But the Israelis as a source of proliferation on this aspect has just always been one of those things that's just like, Like it's sort of incongruent with how secretive they are about trying to keep the missile, you know, how secretive they are about their own missiles.

If that makes sense.

Jeffrey 24:07

Yeah. I mean, the reporting at the time was pretty, pretty straightforward is that these programs for them were extremely expensive.

Other voice 24:15

Yeah.

Jeffrey 24:16

And they really needed to defray the cost. And so South Africa was a source of funds, but also Technical assistance, I think, would be a little insulting because the Israelis were the ones doing the selling to the South Africans. But I think that they saw the South Africans as a long-term co-development partner. Whereas I think Iran, they were just expecting money.

And I suspect from Taiwan, they just got money.

Aaron 24:50

And you know, of course, with the South Africans, you have to include that there is the allegations of possible nuclear collaboration between the two countries. Nuclear weapons collaborations, I should say.

Jeffrey 25:02

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think at this point, we're pretty sure there was some work in that regard. I think the context for people who are younger who won't remember is that Israel, apartheid South Africa, and Taiwan were all considered or were colloquially called pariah states because most countries in the world didn't recognize them.

Aaron 25:27

Right.

Jeffrey 25:28

Right. Right. I mean, most countries in the world recognize China as the as the government of China, not not the, you know, the People's Republic of China, not the Republic of China. So Taiwan has, you know, without the US, Taiwan's really kind of lost. Right. Israel was surrounded by neighbors that didn't recognize its right to exist. And, you know, apartheid South Africa was not seen as a legitimate government.

So there was a lot of cooperation among those states, plus sometimes Chile under Pinochet, because they were sort of, you know, they were seen as being, well, they were just governments that countries didn't recognize. And so they really only had each other.

Aaron 26:10

That's right. And, you know, and again, for maybe aren't the casual listener is that there is the allegation is that there was a joint nuclear weapons test between the South Africans and the Israelis, which is still a dispute.

Jeffrey 26:22

I know, I know. Don't get me worked up on the...

Aaron 26:25

I'm not getting you worked up. Have we had a podcast about that?

Jeffrey 26:27

Get me all fired up. Get me all fired up about Vela.

Aaron 26:30

Yeah. Fired up. We may have done a podcast about that and I'm forgetting, but I think we have. But you can go back and find it. If not, maybe we'll have an up or down vote on the Slack channel. We should go do it.

Jeffrey 26:42

I am extremely rigid in my view that we don't know.

Aaron 26:46

I know that. I think we've talked about this. I swear we've done a podcast on this. I just can't remember. We probably have. I'm just giving context here because it is important because of the synergies with the South Africans. But I cut you off. So you had basically the South Africans tried to keep around the space launch program, and that's where you can get better information about the Jericho 2, and then obviously there's the Jericho 3.

Jeffrey 27:10

Yeah, I mean, in a weird way, there's a kind of Rosetta Stone, which is there is this unsourced set of parameters for the Chivit series, which has different rocket motors, which is, you know, basically that has... There are these unsourced parameters for the Chivit series that suggests that the new Chivit is slightly larger. Than the old Chivit, and is considerably more powerful.

But again, it's totally unsourced. But from looking at the South African information and the performance of the Chivit over time, it really looks to me like the Jericho II is probably the old Chivit, which is allegedly 1.3 meters in diameter, and that the New Chevy, which is like 1.35 meters in diameter, again, according to this thing that I can't source, but does look good with the models, that would be the Jericho 3.

Other voice 28:16

Which is

Jeffrey 28:19

Bigger and better and goes further, but probably isn't an ICBM unless you put a little tiny payload on it. And sometimes I hear people say it's an ICBM, and I think like, if you put a third stage on it and a smaller payload, like, sure, it could be but just looking at the parameters, I'm skeptical the Jericho 3 is used in an ICBM role.

Aaron 28:41

And especially for a program that we know, I mean, Israel now is a relatively wealthy state. But if you go back, you know, Israel was definitely middle income. It still is. You have no need to take that extra step to pull more range out of it. Their threat parameters are far different.

Jeffrey 29:03

Yeah, there were people who said, and I mean, this may have been true in the 1980s, that at some point they wanted the ability to hit Moscow. But Moscow's not that far away.

Aaron 29:17

No, no, it's not. I meant to say that, is that Moscow, in that scenario, in the Cold War scenario, isn't as far as people think.

Jeffrey 29:24

Yeah, no, no, it's not. It's only like 3,000 kilometers, I think.

Aaron 29:28

Yeah, it's not that far.

Jeffrey 29:29

So, you know, I mean, I don't know. Maybe they're extending deterrence to apartheid South Africa. I don't know. I do think that there's a point at which, you know, obviously more payload is a great thing because we don't know how small their nuclear weapons are, particularly if they want to put more than one on. Basically, it's more throw weight to the same range, I suspect, rather than building an ICBM.

Aaron 29:56

But, you know, I don't know. They don't like to talk about it. Do we have any idea how they're based and where they're based?

Jeffrey 30:02

Yeah. So, I mean, this is kind of one of the fun aspects is there's a 1976 document that lists all the facilities. And it's interesting because we knew some of them, but I think others hadn't been reported. So I went through and I, you know, they just give you the, like the name, like the location. And I went through and found the latitude and longitude of the corresponding factory.

Which was fun because it meant one facility that popped up I don't think it had been previously identified near Ramla but there is a base which is not mentioned in that 76 document Where there is a static a static engine test facility, so there's at least one missile base which again, I can't, can't do the Hebrew Sadat Micha. It's it actually also got compromised in a, in his social media postings, I guess. Some of the, some of the, the military personnel there had a Facebook group.

But you can see the static engine test stand.

Aaron 31:16

We assume that these are siloed, right?

Jeffrey 31:20

No, not necessarily. They do the launches off a trailer for space launches. That's right. I mean, you could silo them, but you could also put them on a trailer and just pull them out. They're actually pretty careful to always blur the trailer that's used in the launch. So that's an area where they've been really careful.

Aaron 31:50

Because who makes the trailer?

Jeffrey 31:53

Yeah, some reporting indicated that it was a South African trailer. Obviously the French had their own trailer at the beginning and I'm sure they transferred some of those but I mean partly it might be who makes it but I suspect also it's just partly about operational security if you don't know what the trailer looks like you don't know what to look for in a satellite image right I gotcha because they're pretty careful about keeping an environmental shelter over the over the launcher when it's getting ready and you know they're fairly careful Yeah, you know... Nobody's perfect, but they're pretty good.

Aaron 32:34

Is there anything that we didn't cover that we should have? I know you have a document that you're kind of scrolling down because I've seen it when you've screen-shared. It's kind of like... It's like the master doc.

Jeffrey 32:43

It is the master doc. I mean... You know, I don't know what the Yavni-2 was. Like I say, Lance aged out sometime in the late 80s. If they had a replacement, that's probably aged out. Israel now has a new missile called the Laura.

Aaron 33:03

Yeah, which we'll talk about in the Armenian Azerbaijan podcast.

Jeffrey 33:09

Yeah. Although, you know, that was developed initially for export and then it's seems to have, it's taken a while to get the Israelis to be enthusiastic about buying it for their own military. So I just, it's, it's there, you know, put a pin in it.

Aaron 33:22

Yeah. I think that's one of the ones that had like the disco music, like, like trailer launch or sorry. Yeah. What's the word I'm looking for? Cargo container launch.

Jeffrey 33:33

Yeah. Which they did from a ship. From a ship. That's right. Yeah.

Aaron 33:37

So they were leaning into that. Arms Control Wonk, podcast favorite.

Jeffrey 33:43

Yeah, well, you know, I do think that containerized missiles in hard-to-find containers are the wave of the future.

Aaron 33:52

Oh, absolutely.

Jeffrey 33:53

I mean, it's just kind of interesting to go through and try to pin all the locations where these things are made and deployed and to just understand the technological progress. I mean, I think if I step back from it, you know, it's like... It's a small but technologically capable program that has remained small. It's just not that many different missiles, as best I can tell.

And so some countries, once they make one solid propellant missile, like North Korea, we're on like... I think we're up to, like, five different variants with more planned.

Aaron 34:39

Future podcast, by the way.

Jeffrey 34:40

Yeah, I think the Israelis are, like, at most five, and all of that is really pretty evolutionary. So it's... You know, I think unlike a lot of missile programs, and possibly it's because they were constrained by funds and by circumstance, this seems like a very disciplined program with like discrete goals. Oh, you know what? One little fun thing I haven't been able to put in anywhere, and it doesn't even go in the document, but a podcast, perfect place for it.

Do you know Alan McDonald? Alan McDonald, he's one of the engineers who objected to the launch of the Challenger. He was in charge of the solid propellant boosters. And he was one of the people who had concerns they wouldn't work in the cold. And so he was like the person who, after the accident, blew the whistle that they had known there was a problem and they had been overruled.

He was sort of initially retaliated against by Morton Thiokol, but then Congress stepped in and said, like, no, not only are you not going to... Retaliate against him? Like, you're going to put him in charge of the redesign? He wrote a great book about it. He's like a really big deal in the solid propellant rocket community. He also kind of likes to brag a little bit in his book.

And so in his book, he bragged about two people who were at his retirement party, Alain Devinas, who's this famous French solid propellant rocketry guy who literally wrote the book in France on the topic. And the other he bragged about was this guy, Moshi Gill, whose name I had never heard before.

Aaron 36:12

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Jeffrey 36:15

But I realized that this guy, and I did find the slightest online trail of him, but almost nothing. He seems to have been a really important person in the development of Israel's solid propellant missiles, but has kept a very low profile. And I wouldn't have even noticed it, except for Alan McDonald was so freaking proud that he came to his retirement party.

Aaron 36:40

It's just fun. And I think the last thing to say is that, you know, After our transfer of power, right, and after sort of the dust settles, one of the things that people are talking more and more about is a return to the JCPOA. This is something you talk about all the time, but that we have to deal with the Iranian missile program.

And it's a theme of this podcast. It's a theme of your work. It's a theme of my work. It's a theme of a lot of people's work. It's just that it's not just one missile. One country's missiles, I should say, is that there's a lot of missiles in the Middle East. And so, you know, the easy counter argument to putting pressure on them for their missiles is to call for region wide caps on range.

And so how do you verify? How do you do anything like that? Is that even possible? And so studying all the region's missiles is an important exercise.

Jeffrey 37:31

Like I say, a regional problem needs a regional solution.

Other voice 37:38

Hey, Aaron, you know what we should do? Yeah, what's up? Let's re-vote.

Jeffrey 37:44

We can take out the podcasts we've already done. We can add a few of the ideas that we've had. And we can go back to the Slack channel and have a second round of voting and see what people want us to talk about.

Aaron 37:57

Yeah, I mean, so the things that we have in the works is some more podcasts about the DPRK, particularly their recent announcements about Kim's weapons wish list.

Jeffrey 38:09

Although if the parade is really good, we'll do it in an emergency pod.

Aaron 38:12

Right. And so, look, and this podcast could air after images of the parade come out. But as of now, we're planning to do that podcast as an emergency podcast once we have some images. But if you want to hear that faster, please do let us know on the Slack channel. We do have Armenia, Azerbaijan. The Tigray-sounding rocket doesn't seem to be getting a lot of oomph in the Slack channel, but if that's something you're interested in, we are willing to talk about it.

Jeffrey 38:37

The idea, along with the artillery rocket, landed with a thud.

Aaron 38:40

That's right. And... What else have we been talking about? We've been battling around a whole bunch of ideas.

Jeffrey 38:48

Noodle.

Aaron 38:49

The noodle. The Norwegian sounding rocket. And perhaps some more historical... Maybe we should look at... We've done a podcast on the condor. I mean, is there anything else that we should be doing?

Jeffrey 39:01

We could always do more condor.

Aaron 39:02

We could do more condor. We could do all sorts of fun stuff.

Jeffrey 39:05

Have we really done turkey?

Aaron 39:07

No, we haven't really done turkey. We can go deep into turkey if anybody wants to do that. Do you know any turkey experts, Aaron? Unfortunately, I am one. It's a thankless task. Gobble, gobble. How much online abuse you get. Yeah, so we have all sorts of things to do. So if you want to get involved in this conversation, head on over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast.

$3 if you're a student, $5 if you're a normal person. You can join the conversation. It's not just voting. There is conversations happening all the time. About all sorts of fun stuff. So with that, Jeffrey, it has been real. Have a good rest of your day.