March 27, 2015
A 129-page report prepared in April 1987 by the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA) entitled Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations. The Pentagon released the entire section on Israel, but redacted all sections relating to all NATO nations.
The report is interesting because it provides a very general assessment of the state of the Israeli nuclear weapons capability in the section entitled “SOREQ,” which can be found on pages 20-21 (PDF) of the document. According to the report:
“They [the Israelis] are still hampered in being able to design and produce fusion weapons or other more complicated devices utilizing fusion and fission in the same configuration. As far as nuclear technology is concerned the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. was in the fission weapon field in about 1955 to 1960.”
The other sections of the report on Israeli conventions weaponry, intelligence sensors, and space defense (SDI) technology are also of considerable interest. A very interesting read.
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