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.
I give up trying to post pix.
Yea, not sure of the configuration of the Israeli corvettes.
These missiles have to be transported from their storage areas to their firing points. Even if they are moved at night, Israel should be able to detect them with her air assets and FLIR technology. The thing to do is track them back to the source and eradicate the "nest".
I've heard nothing about any anti-air capability the terrorists might have; I'd have expected a few Israeli warplanes to have had some (at least) near misses from SAM launches.
Any traffic larger than an auto moving at night should be a legitimate target for the IAF.
Yes, that is one of several lessons.
1 Never underestimate your foe
2 Never Overestimate your own force
3 Battleships would be nice to have around (anything short of a nuke would bounce off)
4 Iran may have some missiles that jam our radar
5 DEBKA was more correct than not on this story, but some (not talking about you) will overlook it.
Several commentators, including Bernard Lewis, have stated that the aura of 1938 is in the air. A FR post recently compared the present war to the Spanish civil war.
I think your comment above leads one to concur with the latter.
Iran is doing a test run of weapons and strategies for what they think is coming. They are war-gaming for The Big One.
I expect the last Captains of the Prince of Wales, the Repulse and the Yamato, would beg to disagree.
Doubtful. They might however have a home on jam mode that homes in on ship based jammers trying to jam it's radar.
More like the Harpoon, since the Exocet is powered by a solid rocket motor, while the Harpoon and C-802 use a turbine engine (as does the most recent version of the Exocet). All have about the same speed and warhead weight.
Well, not quite that bad, more like a the F-16 is in the F-102 family.
The Red Chinese take a long view of history and have shown the willingness to sacrifice the comfort of millions of its people to achieve a goal.
It hit the vessel, or had a near miss. It did not sink it, and killed 4 sailors out a crew of 60 or so. The hit was on the helicopter deck and the fire was likely the jet fuel for the bird. Some internal ship systems damaged as well.
That a great idea! we should steal their missiles and blow up their mosques with them!(yeah right.)
Well, if the guidance system fails, no way to tell where it might end up.
It would be hard to tell the difference between a C-802 hit and a Harpoon or SLAM hit though (SLAM is land attack variant of the Harpoon).
Doubtless (yet another) courtesy of the Russian Pucker, Futin.
...and it had to leave the AO, being towed, or very slowly making its own way back to port for repairs, thus mission killed.
<p.
But it will fight another day, and will probably have a bit in its mouth when it comes out of the yards.
Because it tends to shoot things you don't want shot. That nearby Egyptian vessel for example.
Even an Iowa class battleship is vulnerable to 500 kg warheads or even lighter ones that utilize a "terminal pop up and dive" maneuver. Ask the Prince Of Wales, Repulse or Yamato captains, no different than an aircraft attack, except the guided missiles are more like a much faster kamikaze carrying a large bomb.
OTOH, a couple /three carrier battle groups can stand off outside of missile range and pound the snot out of the missile launch sites, the command and control facilities, and logistics routes. Or they could have some help from a few BUFFs, Bones, or Stealth fighters. Oh, and a few P-3s to sweep up the Iranian Subs, (those alone, if they could make them work, could easily sink one of the Iowas, assuming they could get close enough, which is highly unlikely.
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.