Luz (missile)

The RAFAEL Luz (or Lutz) was the first missile built in Israel. RAFAEL developed the missile using knowledge gained from the French MD-620 missile, built for the Israel Defense Forces by Avions Marcel Dassault-Breguet Aviation. The Luz missile should have had three versions: a surface-to-surface, air-to-ground and anti-ship versions, but technical problems and budget cuts forced Rafael to produce the surface-to-surface and air-to-ground versions alone.

Development
The missile, with a length of about 3.00 meters, had a range of 27 km. It was launched from a ground vehicle carrying two missiles, and guided by an operator using a joystick and an electro-optical guidance system

The anti-ship version was dropped for budgetary and technical reasons, as the electro-optical guidance system and joystick performed poorly in poor lighting conditions. Ori Even-Tov, an engineer at Rafael, had already proposed alternative solutions, but these were rejected. The Anti-ship version would later become the IAI Gabriel.