Working During War; Inside an Israeli Defense Contractor

Israeli armor maker, Plasan Sasa, sits just two miles from the Lebanon border in northeastern Israel. Its people have been working “flat out” since the Hamas attacks.

Three weeks ago, Gilad Ariav, vice president of business development for Plasan Sasa was on a flight to the U.S. to attend the Association of the United States Army’s (AUSA) huge annual trade show and conference in Washington, DC. He made it as far as New York.

While he was airborne, Hamas launched what it calls “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood”, firing approximately 2,500 rockets into southern Israel while attacking and committing atrocities against Israeli citizens across the territory.

“On the flight, I started to read the news from Israel,” Ariav told me during a phone interview early this week. “We landed Saturday night [October 7] and I decided to do a U-turn. I landed back in Israel very early Tuesday morning. By 8 am, I was back in the office.”

Since then, Ariav has been in uniform, on active reserve duty with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in an undisclosed role. When we spoke by phone, he had taken one day’s leave from the Army to return to Plasan Sasa and catch up at his office. He would be back in uniform next day.

A substantial number of other Plasan Sasa employees are doing the same. As they do, business-as-usual, and beyond usual, carries on at the company.

Plastics to Protective Technology

Plasan Sasa is located within Kibbutz Sasa, a community in the Upper Galilee area of northern Israel, right next to the Lebanese border. In 1985, the Kibbutz bought thermoplastic manufacturing technology from an American company called NOW Plastics. It then stood up its own company in Sasa under the name “Plasan Sasa”, a derivation of PLA(stic) SA(sa) N(ow).

The firm began making a line of plastic containers and other plastics but quickly shifted its focus to armor, specifically designing and producing composite body armor for the IDF. The company began applying composite armor solutions to vehicles for the IDF in the 1990s including armor kits for the world’s first up-armored Humvees which it designed and supplied to the Israeli military.

By the early 2000s, Plasan had branched out from manufacturing body armor and vehicle armor kits for the IDF to working directly with armored vehicle manufacturers and other defense primes inside and outside Israel.

Among these were American firms Navistar Defense and Oshkosh Defense with whom Plasan quickly designed and manufactured “Kitted Hull” armor (a design and production process for weld-free assembly armored cabins) for their respective responses to IED threats to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan – the MaxxPro MRAP and MRAP-ATV.

Plasan’s director of design, Nir Kahn, described the company’s growth as a long process of vertical integration – bringing in experts, vehicle and materials engineers and armor designers. “Having all of those people under one roof has always been the key to Plasan’s success.”

Today, the company works as an integrated partner or subcontractor with Israeli firms like Elbit Systems and Raphael in Israel, and Lockheed Martin
LMT
, General Dynamics
GD
Land Systems, Oshkosh Defense, AM General and Raytheon in the U.S.

“We’re, more often than not, a quiet or even silent partner in the background,” Kahn says. Plasan’s own armored vehicles – its large Sandcat multi-purpose 4X4, small Wilder patrol vehicle and self-propelled All Terrain Electric Mission Module (ATeMM) are exceptions to its product line, “as much calling cards for what we do with vehicle manufacturers as they are products in their right,” Kahn adds.

Plasan employs a workforce of about 400 at its headquarters factory in Kibbutz Sasa. Its has a U.S. subsidiary (Plasan North America), and holds other small firms in France and Greece.

As part of a team led by South Korean defense prime Hanwha, which recently won the award for Phase 3 of Australia’s Land 400 infantry fighting vehicle, Plasan will have a working presence Down Under. But for the moment, it has more work than time.

Working Through Crisis

Nir Kahn awoke to a phone call from his father-in-law on the Saturday morning that Hamas attacked.

“We woke up and very quickly realized that this was something different,” he says. “It’s not that uncommon for there to be rounds of fighting in Gaza. But this was something much bigger, much worse – a tragedy.”

While the terrorist attacks were far to the south, Kahn says the immediate fear in Galilee area was that the northern border was going to flare up as well. As he got his home safe-room ready, staff at Plasan Sasa readied safe-rooms and shelters around its factory and offices. Employees came in to work.

“Unfortunately, Israeli [defense firms] are used to such crises,” Gilad Ariav observes. “The industry knows how to work in these cases.”

In the first few days following Hamas’ attacks, the IDF and Hezbollah exchanged rocket and artillery fire along the border in proximity to Sasa. Villages on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon frontier saw residents evacuate. They include a number of Plasan Sasa personnel who have taken their families to temporary accommodation further south.

Those who have relocated continue to travel to Kibbutz Sasa to work and/or telecommute when necessary. Some can walk to work, some come by their personal cars or in company-provided transport. Sometimes roads are blocked by the IDF and Plasan employees have to shelter until given clearance that an incident is under control.

The situation depends on the day. The company is in constant communication with the Defense Ministry and other authorities and its staff have long been briefed on how to conduct themselves in various scenarios. “We make sure that everyone to the last employee knows what to do in his or her space when they come to Plasan,” Ariav says.

It’s a scenario that, with the possible exception of the brief period immediately following 9-11, 2001, firms in the U.S. have not faced since the American Civil War. At Plasan, “We continue to work as usual and more than that,” Ariav told me.

The company has undertaken a number of emergency projects for the Israeli Ministry of Defense, accelerating production of its Sandcat vehicles and re-opening its body armor production line, crafting thousands of ballistic plates. Its factory has seen triple-shifts 24/7 for the last three-plus weeks.

Existing stocks of Sandcat Tigris armored vehicles were provided to the IDF free-of-charge in the opening days of the conflict, delivered directly to IDF units at their operating locations. A Plasan Sasa maintenance team is at the disposal of the IDF, providing vehicle support to units near Gaza and the Lebanese border.

“Our employees are working in not so simple conditions. Some, like me have been called to active duty and the [remaining staff] are making up for their absence,” Ariav says.

Accustomed to crisis (many employees were at work with the company during the Second Lebanon War in 2006) though they might be the company’s people are under stress Ariav acknowledges.

“For sure, the situation is not easy. But we’re proud of supporting our nation in these difficult times… All [Israelis] serve in the Army and their kids serve in the Army. People understand what it means for soldiers to have a protected vehicle or [body armor]. They know why we’re coming to work in this difficult place two miles from the border.”

“It’s a personal mission for us,” Nir Kahn agrees. “It sounds a bit of a cliché but everything we do at Plasan is about saving lives in these situations.”

Plasan cannot discuss many of the details of its operations given the current situation, but it can relate examples of the pressure it and other Israeli firms have been under. In the first fortnight after the conflict began Kahn and others were fielding personal calls from friends as Israel mobilized over 350,000 reservists.

“They were literally saying, ‘Can you get us some body armor? We’ve just been called-up [for duty]. We don’t have enough body armor, can you get us some? Can you get us some vehicles?’ Of course, the answer was that Plasan is doing everything it can with the authorities. There’s no under-the-table supply of this stuff. We’re working flat out with the MoD to get it where needed as fast as possible.”

While it has received calls seeking help, Plasan Sasa has likewise received support from many quarters of the world. Gilad Ariav says those with whom he works have been “touched” by expressions of concern from clients who messaged in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, affirming that the company’s people were in their thoughts and prayers.

Ariav, Kahn and others at Plasan have also gotten many personal messages from business colleagues and friends outside of Israel, supportive sentiments that continue to flow their way. “The news can sometimes paint a different picture,” Nir Kahn explains, “but I often remind people that we have a lot more understanding and support than it might appear.”

Gilad recalls that when he landed in New York and spent the night in a hotel before catching a return flight, he immediately received well-wishes remotely and in-person. “They came from [Customs and Border Protection] officers at the airport, from people at the restaurant I ate in. I felt the support and felt very safe.”

Plasan’s clients have also asked if the company needed anything from them, what they could lend a hand with. Though grateful, Ariav says, “We told them we are committed to what we have signed for, to deliver what we have promised. Despite the situation, we are doing business as usual.”

That includes progressing with product R&D. While we shouldn’t expect any announcements from Plasan Sasa anytime soon, the current conflict its executives acknowledge is accelerating its development.

For example, they tell me the ATeMM, which the U.S. Army has recently evaluated, is in IDF hands and will see action where the fighting is. It will be the first such deployment for an autonomous, self-propelled battlefield electric energy storage system.

One of reasons Plasan grew in early 2000s was its introduction of technologies and systems honed with IDF in south Lebanon in the 1990s.

“I think it’s fair to say that there will be a similar effect in coming years,” Kahn opines. “A lot of the technologies we’ve been working on are suddenly getting fielded. We’re going to get feedback and learn from that.”

In the meantime, Plasan will continue work, war notwithstanding.