To be honest to don't know the complete time line to this but I'll try to explain how I thought it went down. I may be wrong please correct me if I am I can always learn.
1.The project idea and base was Israeli (long at the design)
2.They brought the product to us to look over and get involved. The reason because they couldn't produce the engine and other key parts. They
basically needed US to build this fighter because they couldn't on there own. Production lines, funding remember there surround by enemies and almost always in a state of war, that's costly for a small country.
3. We agreed and a joint project was created with both sides adding to the project and learning from it.
4. This is the grey area for me and by the way I'm not Jewish. It seems the design was as good or maybe better then the current Falcon at the time. The big wigs at Lockheed and other powerful aircraft and other different US companies involved in aircraft and weapons systems industry at the time weren't behind it, and killed it. I'm sure you realized how many people, company CEO's, government, and others have to be
pleased to get something done. Look at the F-20 program look how the big wigs weren't behind that and a perfectly good aircraft was killed off. These same big wigs at Lockheed more or less told the air force support the F-16 and let this F-20 program die off. It's business and politics behind these big decisions they get the right parts of Congress behind them and things get done the way they want them. Lockheed is very powerful even more so then to day. This was an outside project, where all of
there little guys weren't getting a piece. This aircraft if produced would have went up directly against F-16s and maybe the F-15s in certain markets and that just couldn't be allowed to happen. Do you realized how many companies would be cut out of the loop. You don't know we may have learn something from the project too and Lockheed and now Boeing isn't going announce that in public. Judging from the Israeli version of the F-15I and F-16I and the different radar's and systems in them they might have been on to something at that time and knew it.
I just felt it was more of there project and idea to begin with and they needed our money and support to get it done. The end result would have been a much smaller cut for US aircraft makers and shared profits so to me it was killed off for business and politics reasons.
I do agree with a lot of what you said and listed
If I remember correctly we threaten to pull funding part of the that $11 Billion annually and/or hold F-16 deliveries. Then we told them no you can't upgrade Venezuela's Viper fleet, they lost big time money on that one. Then maybe we came down harder on few Kfir sales because of out J-79 engine in them, we mess with there heads a little. The late 80s were a long time ago I didn't follow things then the way I do now its different. Please correct me if I got something wrong or I'm off track on some of the issues.
The spying thing always troubled me