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.
"Fairly small gunboats" don't have helicopter decks. They also don't survive a Silkworm strike.
Eilat (Saar V) class large missile corvettes
Displacement: 1,275 tons full load
Dimensions: 86.4 x 11.9 x 3.2 meters (283.5 x 39 x 10.5 feet)
Propulsion: 2 shafts; 2 cruise diesels, 6,600 bhp, 20 knots; 1 LM2500
boost gas turbine, 23,000 shp, 33 knots
Crew: 74
Aviation: aft helicopter deck and hangar; 1 Dauphin helicopter
Radar: TPS-44 3-D air search
Sonar: Type 796 hull, towed array
Fire Control: 2 M-2221
EW: NS 9003 intercept/jammer, 4 SRBOC, SLQ-25 Nixie
Armament: 8 Harpoon SSM, 64 VL Barak SAM, 1 20 mm
Phalanx CIWS, 2 20 mm AA, 2 triple 12.75 inch torpedo tubes
Heavily armed multirole corvettes, built in USA.
Combat systems fitted in Israel after delivery. Some
planned weapons were not installed due to topweight problems.
Can serve as 'leaders' for smaller FACs.
Number Name Year FLT Homeport Notes
501 Eilat 1994 MED Haifa
502 Lahav 1994 MED Haifa
503 Hanit 1995 MED Haifa
If this was a Silkworm strike, I've got to think the CIWS wasn't activated, and that the Israelis didn't foresee this threat.
That is what I was thinking- if it weren't a DIRECT hit..
FOX reporting that there are about 100 Iranians on the ground assisting Hizbollah...so the know how and expertise is there.
(Go Israel, Go! Slap Down Em Hezbullies!)
" will use silkworms against oil tankers"
Exactly. Another Tanker war.
bttt
"Does these mean all out war???"
This means that Iran has been planning this scenario to egg Israel into this fight. Before this is over, Israel will have to attack Iran directly using nukes.
No reflagging this time. Time for Praying Mantis II.
Fear not...The US Navy has been preparing for this over the past couple of decades. Those sites will be smoking holes within minutes.
Well said. Certainly Israel will develop counter-measures, but Hezbollah has certainly earned Israels respect at least militarily.
By its own admission, Hezbollah claimed to have planned the kidnapping raid five months in advance. The Arabs' problem with warfare really hasn't been so much with the planning and even the execution of a plan (assuming rehersals), it's been with what happens after the plan or when a variable throws a kink into the plan that's been the problem-junior Arabs leaders don't take the initiative and aren't taught to act for themselves.
That said, if Hezbollah's been trained by the Iranians, maybe they got that problem worked out.
Look at the 1973 war with Israel, particularly with the Egyptians. Their invasion of Sinai went so well that it took them by surprise. But what to do after that? Eventually, they again went of the offensive because the Syrians asked them to, but now Israel was prepared, and Ariel Sharon and co. trapped them in the desert (at least that's the way I understand it).
Tlb, I would've thought a silkworm would have caused more damage as well. Do you know if the missile has to be armed or something. Using the Falklands example, I know there were numerous British ships which were struck by inert ordnance because of the way the Argentines had to deliver their payloads. I'm thinking either the missile was a dud, the Hezbollah folk using it failed to arm the missile, it wasn't a missile, but a drone as first reported, or the silkworm's weaker than it's cracked up to be.
>>Wonder if Israel has the equivalent of Ohio Class submarines? Or even Los Angeles class?
Nothing even close. But there is some talk of them managing to mod their Harpoons into a nuclear-tipped land-attack version, to give them a rudimentary second-strike capability.
Submarines
Dolphin class (Type 800) coastal submarines
Displacement: 1,720 tons submerged
Dimensions: 57 x 6.8 x 6.2 meters (187 x 22.5 x 20.5 feet)
Propulsion: Diesel-electric, 3 diesels, 1 shaft, 4,243 shp, 20 knots
Crew: 35
Sonar: ???
Armament: 6 21 inch torpedo tubes (16 torpedoes & Harpoon SSM)
German-built.
Number Name Year FLT Homeport Notes
-- Dolphin 1999 MED Haifa
-- Leviathan 1999 MED Haifa
-- Tekuma 2000 MED Haifa
Do you have a news link on the leaflet drops? I'd like to have that to show some others.
Never mind, I just read in another post that the missile hit the stern. Maybe that's why the damage was not as bad as it could've been.
Either s***, or get off the pot.
BUMP
What's a Harpoon? Cruise missile?
Israel warns Beirut civilians [Leaflets warned them away from Hezbollah targets.]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1666134/posts
Why would they have had to smuggle it?
They could have flown it right in.
Thanks.
That's about one of the drops. There were others.
A caller to Michael Savage said the missile that hit the Israeli warship was not guided but simply fired, like an artillery shell. That way the sophisticated missile defenses couldn't deal with it.
It way be that the caller had the wrong missile, though, if this report is true. This report says it skimmed the water like a cruise missile. That doesn't sound like a fired projectile.
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