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 ...
From the data they acquired while tracking and attempting to defend against it. It's like a signature.
Since the C-802 has not been fielded in the Med I doubt the Israeli countermeasures and EW guys were trained nor prepared for the threat.
Our Navy has been well aware of the C-802 threat in the Persian Gulf and has had nearly a decade to prepare for it. The Iranian Missile crews will be dead within minutes of the Strike authorization.
I still doubt this report. Importing and setting up such a system undetected is hard to believe. What proof do the Israeli's have? Have they attacked and destroyed the site yet? It just seems fishy...
Are you former Navy?
some small anti Iranian Kurdish group in Iraq firing a couple of Tomahawks Land Attack missiles into Tehran and the US saying we weren't involved. Hey now there is an idea :)
The Islamic wackjobs in Iran hates us as much or more than Israel. Liberals and RINO's better realize that we're next on his hit list. While condemning Israel, the world waits idly by while the small state of Israel does the world's dirty work.
Like those "elite" Republican Guard troops of Saddam's that surrendered so quickly??
You put it in a nutshell. This is a VERY serious development. They knocked out one of Israel's key ships. Obviously Israel had a serious intelligence failure, was drawn in and sucker-punched, and did not expect anything like this. Now they had better get back to the drawing board and put together a careful response.
Obviously the first step is to locate and destroy any other such Iranian missiles within range.
We still have guys like Olmert in charge, and an IDF leadership that until recently was more anxious to go after Settlers than Terrorists. The Israeli military and intelligence professionals are good, but it doesn't help to have weak leadership that is only fighting because they were forced to in order to cover up their weakness and earlier failures.
A nuke would be fine by me.
Look at the photo at the top of the post. If the missile truly was a C-802, it's not hard to see why the ship was hit. They're so close to the beach they have about 2 seconds reaction time.
"Maybe we can just "lend-lease" some equipment to Israel...equiupment that just happens to be in Iraq."
I was thinking along the lines of a squadrons of F22s, F117s, B52s, B1Bs...and Air to Air Tankers and Airborne Jammers.
I doubt that would be enough, and difficult as well. Amajihad or whatever would be pretty easy to kill, he flies around a lot, and his plane could "crash". But his cult is more then just him, it pervades most the newer Iranian leadership. Plus assassinating targets inside Iran would not be easy, and I am sure they have heavy security. Israeli SF and intel is good, but cannot preform miracles. We cannot put off responsibility on Israel. The USN and USAF are the solutions, we could saturate Iran with cruise missiles and bombs. Plus we could assassinate as well, possibly in conjunction with the Israelis. We can infiltrate from Iraq, Afghanistan, or the sea, we have far greater capability to deploy SF than Israel. Israel does not control the surrounding area, and we have submarines and ships to deploy forces as well. Israeli forces may have more experience or skill for this, but we have far greater or better numbers, logistics, support, transportation/insertion methods, equipment and numbers and resources than they do.
Yep, it was....
http://exposingtheleft.blogspot.com/2006/07/idf-missile-that-hit-ship-was-iranian.html
otherwise, the only other realistic Israeli hit on iran would be nuking-and that's still unPC, i guess....
My thoughts also. I'm not saying it's impossible, just hard to believe.
Probably picked up its emitter on passive gear. Everything has its own signature. According to the article they had their EW gear turned off, however. It is still possible for a non-targeted vessel to have seen it.
This looks like they need to pull back from shore aways, if radar picked this thing up and the onboard defense systems didn't kill it. Looks like it got on them pretty fast. A lesson learned.
They've cut off Hezbollah's supply lines and escape routes by bombing the Beirut airport runways and all the roads leading out of Lebanon, they've KO'd all communications within Lebanon, they've KO'd Hezbollah's HQ, and they're aggressively bombing Hez's positions all over the country. ....a successful three days work, and far from PC. Your postings on the subject are becoming monotonous.
Precisely. We need to use our surrogates just like Iran and Syria do; no one beyond a 3rd grade intelligence will actually believe it--but it is just part of the PR war with the media (who may just lack a 3rd grade intelligence).
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