Posted on 07/15/2006 8:15:40 AM PDT by george76
A missile fired by Hezbollah, not an unmanned drone laden with explosives, damaged an Israeli warship off Lebanon, the army said Saturday.
Elite Iranian troops helped fire the missile...
One sailor was killed and three were missing.
The intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, said about 100 Iranian soldiers are in Lebanon and helped fire the Iranian-made, radar-guided C-102 at the ship late Friday.
The official added that the troops involved in firing the missile are from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an elite corps of more than 200,000 fighters that is independent of the regular armed forces and controlled directly by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Initial information indicated the guerrillas had used a drone for the first time to attack Israeli forces.
But the army's investigation showed that Hezbollah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.
"We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hezbollah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hezbollah,"...
(Excerpt) Read more at story.news.ask.com ...
I am reading article after article pointing to Iraq for various ills now. The ship attack, the Hesballa support, the hostages being sent there, etc.
Then I hear Bush saying Iraq and Syria are behind this.
Folks, IMHO, the world is being emotionally "propagandized" for a hot war with Iran, very, VERY soon. Lock and load.
There are a couple of things about your analysis that I'm still mulling over.
- Unless the IDF had specific knowledge of munitions caches in that area, I don't know why they'd waste their time with shore bombardment at these early stages. Especially when air assets would have much more effective.
- Why waste an important AAW asset that to counter a threat that doesn't exist? For missile defese, you'd want your AAW down the threat vector of the asset you're trying to protect, not outside it.
My guess: The shelling was a diversion for SOF insertion. Hope they made it in.
The thing is, if Iraq or Jordan allowed the flyovers, that would enrage their populace.
I don't know if those countries are willing to take that risk, regardless of how Bush talks to them.
He can maybe bend Iraq, but not Jordan.
I mean, even if the leaders supported Israel here, by saying so, they would be committing political suicide.
The Lebanese Tourism Ministry’s Research Center announced an amazing statistic in early July: in the first six months of the year, 60,888 Iranian tourists visited Lebanon...
Revolutionary Guards Corps? Or were Hezbollah operations people?
...was one of them the world’s most wanted man, Imad Mughniyah, the operations chieftain of Hizbollah, the world’s most lethal terrorist organization ?
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDE4MDA3NDUyYjA0ZGY1MzQ4NjM5NjM1MWY4NDVkZGM=
I don't know. That sentence jumped right out at me. Our EW gear was turned on before we left the dock, and wasn't turned off until we were tied up at the pier. That was in peacetime. I can't understand why they would be in a war footing with that gear turned off. It's your first line of defense! If it was broken down instead of turned off (the article is not clear on this), they should have never been that close to shore.
Had they had their passive gear operational, they would have at least picked up the acquisition radar! Bad command decisions, lousy operational awareness, and pathetically overconfident combat/tactical operations appear to have ruled the day. Something is not right here.
***************
This vessel cannot bombard the shore...it was there precisely to protect the ships that were bombarding the shore from this very threat.
Which is why I worded my reply "sending a high value naval squadron to shell land targets..."
One of the Israeli Navy's most high value assets was put at high risk in order to have gunboats lob 76 mm shells at land targets that could easily be targeted by the IAF at very little risk.
The entire squadron was in the wrong place, performing the wrong mission in a threat environment that the Saar 5 was ill-equipped to handle. As a result, the benefit to risk ratio was heavily lopsided against Israel.
The one CIWS is similar to our FFGs, which also only have one.
Our FFG's, however, are not called upon to provide the role of sole air defense against land based threats that U.S. Navy battle doctrine even keeps carrier battle groups well away from when at all possible.
The idea is for the missiles to engage first and give time for the vessel to position itself to use the CIWS.
However, if you are close enough to shore to be lobbing 76 mm spitballs and hitting your land targets, you are way too close to the land-based missile threat to expect such a maneuver to be effective.
If the missile is fired form too close...or if it comes in too low without adequate warning from other assets (AEW, AWACS, other vessels, etc.) then they do not have time to do either. That looks to be what happened here.
It certainly does.
Given the short range of the IDF gunboats batteries, the vessel had to be fairly close in to protect them...it appears it was too close. This is a huge naval event with far reaching ramifications. Both sides will be studying and learning from it.
The lessons were learned long ago when the HMS Prince of Wales and the HMS Repulse became artificial reefs in 1941 courtesy of Japanese land based air power and during the Okinawa invasion in 1945 when the U.S. fleet suffered thirty-six ships lost and 368 ships damaged to Japanese land-based air power.
The lesson is that you do not put high value surface warfare assets within the range of land based air power or land based missile offensive capabilities unless you have no other choice and are willing to suffer significant damage.
Forcing the Straights of Hormuz or defending an invasion beachhead are valid reasons for putting your high value surface warfare assets at such risk.
Lobbing 76mm spitballs at ground targets that could easily be pulverized by a few IAF sorties is not a valid reason for putting your high value surface warfare assets at such risk.
I was an EW as well. I can say one thing for certain: You aren't going to detect anything if your EW gear is turned off. From the article:
"The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information, said the missile detection and deflection system was not operating, apparently because the sailors did not anticipate such an attack."
That was the problem, in a nutshell: Their EW gear was cold. It was a really, really stupid command decision.
Meanwhile, fortunately the experts and the grownups are in charge, and Israel is methodically doing exactly what it needs to do to accomplish its objectives.
I do not think so. The Jordanians have a strong home army as they proved when the slaughtered 10,000s of Palestinians. The Iraqies know that Iran wants to rule over them once again.
It is in everyone's interest.
Will be interested game playing. What to strike first, second and third in iran? I sort of like the "cut it off and kill it" approach. Hit the airports, bridges, ports, gasoline refineries, power plants, water purification plants, food storage, railroads, primary military and political buildings including mosque-forts. Then seize the oil infrastructure if it's still standing.
Too close to short to react in time - was protecting close-shore boats, according to one freeper.
Stupid? How often does Israel commit such an unbelievable blunder? Something doesn't make sense, unless the Israeli military has been infiltrated or dumbed down.
If the gear was off, that means both the US and the Israelis did not know this technology was in the area, which is even more disconcerting. The silver lining may be now we know what they're up against, but I wonder what else we don't know.
If their EW gear was cold in a war zone during a war, they are ...?
I can not think of the word.
Even in peace time, they should have the EW working ( turned on ) 24/7 unless they are tied up to the dock.
If they went out to sea with it broken, and could not fix it ...
Again, I am at loss for the correct word.
Agreed.
There is no reason to turn it off, unless the ship is safe in port. EW gear is one of those things that you just don't turn off, and it doesn't matter whether you think that there is a threat in the area or not. When I read that it was off in a combat zone, my blood ran cold. I can't think of a situation where an order to turn the gear off in combat would even be obeyed, at least not on a US ship.
Do you have access to a photo of the damage? I haven't seen one yet.
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