Menachem Begin walked into the room to begin the meeting to debrief the defense of Israel.

“First things first, while there are many lessons to be learned, we have won a great victory. In two weeks we eliminated the UAR as a force capable of maneuver warfare. This is no small feat for which must thank Aluf Rabbin for his brilliant plan to encircle the entire Arab army. However, their initial success in Jericho and Eliat is concerning and can never be allowed to happen again.”

Moshe Dayan replied, “Their success in Jericho and Eliat is exactly what caused their downfall. Their concentration on these areas left the rest of the front exposed, allowing our encircling maneuver.”

“To some extent yes, but particularly in the Jordan Valley we had the forces to blunt their advance and encircle their troops but the remained unengaged for too long. How did this happen?”

This time Rabbin replied, “Frankly Mr. Prime Minister, it was an intelligence failure. Military intelligence failed to accurately track the movement of UAR armored formations.”

IAF chief Mordechai Hod added, “We simply were unable to fly reconnaissance flights into the UAR. Their SAM bubble had grown too strong for our outdated recon aircraft. The new Phantom based recon aircraft should help with this, but a more permanent solution, especially for peacetime, must be found.”

“Well, I am all ears.”

Hod did have a few ideas. “For the present we must turn to the United States. They possess satellite capabilities that can track the movements of our enemies. Second, we can try to acquire spy planes from the United States though this may not be successfully. The last, and most permanent option is to develop our own satellite capabilities.”

“I agree. We will reach out to the United States at once to find a short term solution to our military intelligence problem. I also agree that native satellite capabilities are extremely important. Funding for the establishment of our space program will be greatly increased to meet our goals. Now, let us move on to other topics…”