FLEXING MUSCLES WHILE OFFERING A PULLBACKMeeting Hod barely a month after the missiles’ failure, US Air Tactical Command
chief William Momyer felt the IAF commander still “was putting too much confi-
dence in the kill capability of the Shrike.” Hod was certain that “he can handle the
SA-2s and 3s but not the 4s”—probably a misidentification of the SAM-6 systems
that had already been deployed in Eg ypt. He believed that “a concentrated series of
strikes could neutralize the SAM belt.”^22 As late as May 1973, a senior IAF officer,
Rafi Harlev, told Hod in a staff meeting that “we don’t know exactly what the SAM-6
is, but it’s not a problem.”^23
Some in the IDF command gave up entirely on countering the SAMs from the air
(they were proved correct in October 1973). The New York Times reported only in
August 1971 that several months earlier, Washington had declined Israel’s request for
Lance tactical missiles—which would become operational with US forces only in
early 1972.^24 The IDF deputy chief of staff, Yisra’el Tal, testified after the Yom Kippur
War that he had pressed to procure the Lance as the only effective weapon against the
SAMs. When the Americans refused, he urged “with all my might” to develop a
home-made “artillery rocket” with a 70 kilometer range, the Ivry, for this purpose
(the weapon’s name, which means “Hebrew,” stressed its indigenous origin, though it
was based on the heaviest Soviet Katyusha). But Dayan and others were opposed,
funding was held up, and although the weapon was tested successfully, by the out-
break of war only eighteen were ready. Tal estimated that two Lances would suffice
to take out a SAM divizyon. The equivalent number of Ivrys is sanitized, but was
clearly larger, and thus the supply available was insignificant against the SAM belt.
The rockets were posted only on the Syrian front and were never fired.^25 Unlike the
Shrike, which Eg ypt overcame thanks to Soviet technical capability and intelligence
work, this was one of many cases where the Eg yptians had the upper hand thanks to
Israel’s overwhelming numerical inferiority, economic limitations and strategic errors,
as well as US reservations.
In September 1971, the Soviets’ double success had far-reaching implications:
expectations of the “political consequences if a plane were shot down” again by the
SAM’s cross-canal reach led to discontinuation of IAF photoreconnaissance sorties
even over the east bank. Angular photography from flights outside the missile range
would prove inadequate for detecting Eg yptian preparations in the run-up to the
Yom Kippur War.^26 Still, reporting from Tel Aviv in the week of the double fiasco
against Soviet technolog y, Joseph Alsop prophetically noted:
One of the more bewildering features of the present Middle Eastern lull is the plain cocki-
ness of the Israelis. ... The weight of metal the Soviets have given to Israel’s enemies is
downright astonishing. ... If the Israelis did not believe there was no longer any real threat
of active Russian support for the Eg yptians, it would, of course, be very different.But even with Alsop’s usual suspicion of Soviet intentions, he too misread
them: “with the Russians known to be urging the Eg yptians to prolong the cease