Posted on 07/15/2006 4:21:36 AM PDT by Oeconomicus
Hizballah Brings out Iranian Silkworm to Hit Israel Navy Corvette
DEBKAfile Exclusive Military Analysis
July 15, 2006, 1:37 PM (GMT+02:00)
The disaster that overtook one of the Israeli Navy’s state of the art warships, Ahi-Hanit, was thoroughly planned in advance by an enemy which managed to take Israel’s military commanders by surprise. It has shocked Israel’s military to a degree comparable to the profound effect on US forces of al Qaeda’s 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Aden. The Saar-5 class corvette, with a crew of 61 seamen and a 10-man helicopter crew, was hit Friday, July 17 at 20:15 hours, while shelling Beirut international airport. Four crewmen were reported missing. One was found dead Saturday aboard the crippled ship. Three are still sought by rescue teams.
DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal that the warship was struck from Beirut by an Iran-made C-802 shore-to-sea missile of the Silkworm family. Weighing 715 kilos, with a range of 120km, the missile is armed with a strong anti-jamming capability, which lends it a 98% success rate in escaping interception.
The Israeli ship is armed with an advanced Barak anti-missile system, which may have missed the incoming missile. Israeli military planners must now look at the vulnerability of the navy following the appearance of the first Iranian C-802 missiles The Israeli chief of staff, Lt.Gen. Dan Halutz, started his news conference Friday night just 15 minutes earlier at 20:00. The campaign was then 60 hours old from the moment Hizballah raiders captured two Israel soldiers in an ambush inside Israel. He was poised, assured and clear, until a reporter asked if the military goals of the Lebanese offensive matched the objectives set out in government decisions. His answer was: “Don’t start looking for cracks.”
But Hizballah found the cracks 15 minutes later. Its secretary general Hassan Nasrallah put in a telephone appearance on Al Manar TV straight after General Halutz to inform his listeners across the Middle East that one of Israel’s warships was ablaze at that very moment. He said the ship had been crippled while it was bombing Beirut and was sinking. Hizballah, he added, had prepared a number of surprises for Israel and its armed forces Despite several Israeli air raids, the station is still broadcasting.
In Israel, the Hizballah chief’s words were taken at first as an implausible threat for the future – until the order of events began to unfold. DEBKAfile’s military sources reveal:
Shortly before 20:00 hours Friday, Hizballah launched a pair of land-to-sea C-802 missiles against the Israeli ship from the coast of Beirut. The trajectory of the first was adjusted to a landing amidships from above. It missed and exploded in the water. The second was rigged to skim the water like a cruise missile. It achieved a direct hit of the Ahi Hanit’s helicopter deck, starting a fire. The ship began to sink, as Nasrallah said, and would have been lost were it not for the speed and bravery of crewmen who jumped into the flames and doused them before the ship exploded and sank.
It is not known whether the men dead and missing paid with their lives for saving the ship.
This was the second time in 48 hours that the Israeli high command was taken by unawares.
July 12, the day that Hizballah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, was also the deadline for Iran to deliver its answer to the six-power package of incentives for giving up its nuclear enrichment program. Tehran let the day go by without an answer. Someone should have kept an eye on Iran’s Lebanese surrogate and made the connection with a fresh virulent threat against Israel from Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. However, the high alert declared earlier this month for Israeli units on the Lebanese border was not restored.
The Hizballah guerrillas took advantage of this lack of vigilance to infiltrate Israel near Zarit, penetrate to a distance of 200 meters, fire RPGs and roadside bombs at two Israeli Hammer jeeps on patrol, and make off with Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. Eight Israeli soldiers lost their lives as a result of this attack.
The IDF ground pursuit for the two men was cut short when an Israeli tank was blown up by a massive 300-kilo bomb in south Lebanon, killing the four-man crew and a fifth soldier who tried to rescue his comrades. The attack on the Ahi-Hanit was the third surprise.
When General Halutz was asked if Israel does not fear Syrian and Iranian intervention in the hostilities, he replied firmly in the negative. But Iran has been involved from the very first moment.
This localized perception of the Just Reward campaign in Lebanon is hampering its effectiveness. The war embarked on Wednesday night, July 12, is no local conflict. It is therefore not enough to limit the operation to a duel with Nasrallah, when his strings are pulled by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Ahmadinejad from Tehran and the Syrian president Bashar Assad, who opened up Damascus military airport for the delivery of Iranian missiles to his militia.
Saturday morning, Hizballah TV broadcast a videotape showed a blurred object looking like a small unmanned aircraft purportedly packed with explosives exploding in the water. This was an attempt to muddy the trail leading to Tehran and present the fatal attack as an extraordinary feat of arms by Hizballah. It was also another move in and intense psychological war to undermine Israeli morale. The inference they are trying to get across is that if the Shiite terrorists have a weapon that can hit a moving target at sea, the will not find it hard to reach any part of Israel including Tel Aviv.
Go to post #83 -- it links to a video of the missile strike.
I forsee the much same. Although I'm thinking more likely an Iranian launch...
Related:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3275923,00.html
Excerpt:
The ship is currently being towed back to Israeli territorial waters.
A senior IDF officer said the ship was struck by an Iranian-made C802 missile, but he refused to say whether or not Iranian activists were behind the launching itself.
The army said two C802 missiles were fired at the vessel; the first missed the ship and struck an Egyptian boat some 60 kilometers (37 miles) off the Lebanon coast.
The stern of the ship was hit shortly after 8:30 p.m. Friday night and a conflagration ignited on the helicopter landing pad. The hit also damaged the ship’s internal operating systems.
Video clip of the Missile that hit ship Iranian-made at link
I will bet dollars to doughnuts that they were active...but if the missile came in from the stern, low to the water and fast, and was using passive homing, they didn't have time once the threat came over their event horizon...this would emply that the vessel either was not data-linked to other assets (AEW/AWACS, and other vessels), which would also be surprising, or that those assets also missed the threat.
What I object to is the opinion that China will secretly be on our side, because they so value the "world economy".
They may or may not value it, but I firmly believe that if they could bring about our demise by trashing the world economy, they would not think twice.
One FR poster said this silkworm is comparable to Exocet warhead. But that the Chinese have a more modern silkworm with 500kg warhead. This older edition has about 175kg warhead. Also is said the NKors upgraded the (guidance probably) Iranians older silkworms ... the C802. Older as in bought circa 1991
There are only 4 ships on the planet that can force the Straits of Hormuz.
Too bad they are either decommissioned or in mothballs.
Nothing ever changes.
Either way, this is clearly Chinese Technology, bought and deployed by the Iranians and is a clear indication of their involvement in the fight IMHO.
If this thing gets going and we get heavily engaged and occupied...I would not be surprised to see them try something, first through their surrogates the N. Koreans, and then, depending on how that went, they themselves. I just would have thought such a scenario would develop sometime after the Olympics though.
Thanks for the info. Do you think the USA is capable of taking out Iranian c802 if they are deployed on the Iranian coast. Aimed at the Straits of Hormuz to disrupt oil shipping. If and when we try to take out Iran's nuclear facilities
there isn't much for a precision weapon to strike on the Lebanon coast. Likely these C802s are fired from a temporary position, then the crew and launcher scoot.
Either the Israelis cobble together a fix for the Barak
system or cede the control of the sea there. They don't
have the manpower to land enough troops to prevent these
missile firings.
I believe our systems are capable of engaging the threat, particularly against our vessels. Whether they could adequately defend many oil tankes is the question...and to do that, we have to avoid multiple launchers attacking one or two ships at once.
It's a dicey thing.
(I still support our role in Iraq)
Bob Baer --->>> http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/140004684X/ref=pd_sim_b_1/104-4314252-4325566?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155
Travis McGee used to say the Iranian shoreline was barren, little ground cover. Thus easier to seek and destroy silkworm batteries. That's one plus for the good guys
In all of this, as dire as the threat from Iran and Syria might be, we also have to be aware of and prepared for the Chinese manuevering, which is forging alliances and understandings around the world against our best interests, from Venezuela and South America, to the Carrabian, to Africa, in the Mid-East and throughout Asia.
I believe the administraition is aware of it, but feel sometime they lean to far to the globalist philosophy of empowering China with money and manufacturing in the hopes that they become too dependent on it and their people will not let them risk it.
I do not believe the ChiComms are beset by any such notions. We are their target and they will bleed us until they think they can take us down IMHO, while building their own position up to a point to try and replace us.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.