Chemi Peres
speaker
118 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Chemi Peres’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
You know, when you're 24, you have a family, you have a son, and you are in the Israeli Air Force, you're maturing very quickly. And you understand the responsibility that you have both as a family member and as an Air Force member. It actually drives you to maturity earlier than maybe should. One should, but definitely it creates another level of responsibility that you have to deal with it.
I think I was premature at the time. I did not really understand what it means to become a father. It took some time to adjust to the idea that that little thing that is screaming there is your responsibility.
So it was a change, but as a matter of fact, you continued somewhat part of what you have done because we worked in an environment that had a lot of pilots and a lot of engineers in the Israeli aerospace industries. So it's moving from the Air Force to a defense company was, I think, a little bit softer than if you had to move to something that has nothing to do with defense.
But I was very busy in making sure that I can provide for my family because my parents were not wealthy. They did not create wealth for themselves. They dedicated their life for the state. And so I had to take care of myself. And what happened is that I noticed that I'm 28 years old. I have to study and work and provide for myself from the very beginning. I had to do everything in parallel.
In 28, I had only the first one.
The second one came a little bit later. So they had like six years in between them. And so I started to work and I started to study and I had to do my reserve duty, which was a once a week duty service where you fly basically night flights. That means that if you fly on Tuesday night, You have to go on Tuesday early to the base, the air base. You need to get some rest. You need to do the briefing.
Then you fly, you come back very late and debriefing, and then you go home. So it was very exhausting. And at the same time, you had to study engineering in Tel Aviv University and work in the Israeli aerospace industries. And as a matter of fact, it was not enough. I had to do some more stuff.
So I also served as a pilot in Carmiel in the north in the cyclone factory, which was actually taking broken helicopters and different stuff and fixing them. And I had to test them.
I was very busy between doing my reserve and studying and working in the Israeli aerospace industries. The Lavi project was fascinating. It was an attempt by the Israeli government or the Israeli aerospace industries to build a jet fighter, which will be supreme, very advanced. And they took all that battlefield experience from the pilots together with engineers. It was fascinating to see what
they have been doing there. And I had two years, I spent there two years. The thing is that the Lavi project at the end of the day was successful engineering wise, but it was not very successful in completing the whole process to manufacturing because first of all, it costs way too much or much more than it was initially thought.
And also it became a conflict because you build something that looks like F-16, And when you go to markets, you actually compete with the American industry, which was not a good idea. And also, the Israeli Air Force was not really welcoming the Lavi as expected. They preferred to buy maybe F-16 or F-15.
And also, the notion was that Israel should not really build a jet plane, but rather focus on the electronics, avionics, on the software, on the sensors. on the weaponry, but not necessarily on the fuselage and the engines and wings. We should actually get that. And then when you get the platform, you can upgrade it by putting a lot of wisdom and knowledge and experience into its systems.
And also the importance of the software versus the hardware. But I think what happened is that at that time, the government, the prime minister was Rabin. My father was minister of foreign affairs. My father actually led the coalition against the Libyan.
No, we didn't talk about it. But, you know, he was the founder of the Israeli aerospace industries. And by nature, he was supposed to be the one who will drive those kind of projects with his vision and optimism. But he was also very realistic and he understood that it's not going to work. It's too costly. It's too expensive. controversial and not embraced.
And he thought that we need to take a hard decision. And so the government voted to stop the project. I think it was the majority of one. And obviously, when it happened, they had to shut down the project. It was devastating. And for the first time and the last time in my life, I experienced what it means to be fired from your job.
I feel sorry for the executives that had to fire thousands of people. They were doing the hard job. But I can tell you from my own experience, when you are fired from a job, it doesn't matter how good you were, how well you were, or how much you were appreciated, or how important your work was, and it's not your fault.
Still, it's a very humiliating event, a situation which I cherished very deeply in my memory to always remember that if I need to fire people, I need to be very, very sensitive. And I knew what they feel. And also I promised myself that I'm not going to be in that position anymore. I will never accept another position or situation like that.
in my life, which means that I'm going to be the decision maker and the one who's responsible for his destiny. And that is a life-changing event. And with that, I moved on.
So first of all, things happened very quickly. I did not have much time to be sorry. I had to rise up and focus on the future. I had other positions that I still kept, like being test pilot. I was also a translator of books from English to Hebrew. I was doing a lot of jobs just to keep up. But the following day of that event, I got a phone call from a CEO of a social company.
that was very close to Israel Aerospace Industries. And the CEO learned about me from the chief marketing officer of the company, which recently passed away. His name was David Orr. I traveled with him to market some of the activities that we've done. in the US, both military government. And I think he was very impressed with the work that we did.
Showing 21–40 of 118 · page 2 of 6
← Previous
Next →