First pictures of stricken IDF Navy, Saar 5 vessel, hit by Iranian missile

photobucket.com ^ | July 15, 2006 | Jeff Head

[Jeff Head]

Here are the first pictures I am aware of of the damaghed IDF Naval vessel, the Saar 5. Fron these pictures, it is clear that the ship was hit at an angle that would have allowed the CIWS to engage if it was active. I am now leaning towards the systems not being engaged at the time of attack.

IMHO, if true, as some reports have indicated today (buit that I did not want to believe), it would be a fatal and inexcusable mistake in the environment the vessel found itself in...defending other IDF gunboats against air attack during shore bombardment.

Please see the following FR thread for much more discussion and assessment:

Initial assessment of C-802 missile engagment against IDF Saar 5

[JasonC]

They had power.

I don't doubt that modern electrified ships are more vulnerable to major damage, still below the truly ship threatening level. But this is mostly a consequence of poor design and inattention to the issue.

We know how to make networks redundant and therefore survivable. The internet was designed to withstand a nuclear war. If similar principles were applied to shipboard integrated systems, keeping critical functions up despite loss of subcomponents is perfectly feasible. We do the same thing with error correcting codes in practical computing - a portion of capacity dedicated to checks is enough to damp occasional failures instead of amplifying them, as the number of interrelated components rises.

What complexity researchers call "the science of networks" is all that would be needed, along with a willingness to bring in such considerations at the design phase. There will still be levels of damage at which key functions are lost. But there is no generic necessity for lots of complicated systems intertwinned with each other, to be "touchier" rather than more robust.

People haven't seriously done this yet for shipboard integrated systems. But it is perfectly doable, if the priority given to damage control at the design stage is upped somewhat.

[Robert A Cook PE]

Concur.

Just a short distance from an enemy coast, on a flat plain, in plain site (and plane sight!) while the enemy is shooting missile/rockets into your homeland from further distances away...

but NOT being at full alert (or at least battle conditions steaming) and with all anti-missile/anti-plane/anti-ship systems up?


Foolish. The CO's actions are inexcusable. If his systems were down (for some reason) he had no business being there until they were up. Brit's proved today's (80's vintage!) systems run just fine if operated continuously under wartime conditions.

[Robert A Cook PE]

I agree - it will NOT be done (though the few new destroyers are better than all previous classes) those few do NOT make up for the systemic poor redundancy and poor response of support systems under battle damage.

Face it.

The USN has NOT been under battle conditions (air and Seal being the two exceptions!) since WWII.

Korea? We controlled the sea, sea approaches, and the air. No ship attacked, no ship damage of any note. No mine warfare - except Inchon defenses. No aggressive mining against us. Against our ports.

Vietnam? We controlled the sea, sea approaches, and the air. No convoys needed, no merchant or supply shipping attacked. No warship attacked, no ship damage of any note other than frag damage. Minor mine warfare against ships afloat in the rivers, but no at-sea attacks. (Gulf of Tonkin incident noted.)

Med (mid-50's till now) and Lebanon and Libya? Israeli Wars We controlled the sea, sea approaches, harbors and the air. No warship attacked, no ship damage of any note. No merchant shipping, convoys, or resupply ships attacked. No aggressive mining of sea approaches or homeports. Liberty attacked and badly damaged, but she was an unarmed WWII Liberty ship. Can't be compared to a post-WWII destroyer or cruiser.

MidEast (Iran-Iraq War, Gulf War I, No-Fly-Zone war, Gulf War II, ? No ship-ship, air-ship combat. When we did attack, we attacked successfully and strongly, BUT these attacks do NOT show the effect of battle damage against our ships. They only confirm the effectiveness of our weapons when WE control the battle planning, battle air zones, and type of fight. What DID occur in the MidEast? Isolated single ship actions that consistently (every time!) took out the destroyer-sized US warship: from dud missiles, command-detontated mines, armed missiles, and explosive-laden boats. Every attack was successfl and DID disable the ship against a second weapon. But these were single ships destroyed (at will) at isolated times. Follow-on attacks did NOT occur. So the ship survived, and instead of being used to demonstrate the problem, each "survival" of an attack and "prevention of sinking" earned praise for the captain, but NOT condemnation of the fundamental design.

The Navy hasn't learned yet. The Brit's almost lost 1/3 their fleet in a just few weeks stationed near land (but many hundreds miles from the Argentinian air bases).

[Southack]

"Israel: Iran Aided Hezbollah Ship Attack"

Haifa-hit rockets were Syrian made--20 Israelis killed, 377 wounded since fighting began

[canoe drummer]

- I'd say it looks to be in pretty good condition considering what its been though.
- There doesn't seem to be much damage.

The C-802 penetrates into the ship first (from its direct force) and only explodes inside the ship. Most of the damage is probably in the interior. The Israeli ship did have to be towed back home, afterall.

[JasonC]

Sure it will be done, it is just a matter of the contractors presenting it as a new enhancement to win out over the other guy.

The naval stuff in the gulf during the Iran-Iraq war was as real as you please.

Brit losses in the Falklands came mostly from A-4s delivering dumb bombs in low level passes. Many of which failed to explode. Many ships survived multiple hits, a few did not.

Damage control matters, and hit equals sunk is false and has been false for a long time. We can do better at it than we are doing, certainly. But you are peddling a notion that isn't literally true.

This latest Israeli ship is just another example. It took at C-802 and it is still afloat and in service. It needs repair - that is the normal consequence of any naval combat hit.

[Jeff Head]

I am convinced that thoe pics on this thread are not damage pics. I will BUMP/PING you to another thread that has more recent information.

[thinkthenpost]

I agree about the Spruance class. I don't have a high opinion of the sonar on the FFGs and how often does anyone string the tail? The DDG and CG platform have to tie up space in their VLS with Tomahawks which with no credible air threat maybe fine, but on a Spruance the 61 cells were ready to go 60 T-LAMs and 1 T-ASM. I could understand decomming the non VLS ships, but I question the wisdom of not only decommissioning the Spruance class, but they have sunk 15 or 16 already and scrapped one, (my old ship the Hewitt). The last time I checked 3 were going to be sold, loaned, given, transferred to Turkey and Pakistan, and there were 7 or 8 depending on where you look that were going to remain mothballed, with a couple of those pending for museum donations, one more to be sold for scrap and at least one more waiting to be sunk. The bottom line is, this, the Spruance class is gone from the active fleet, 19 have been or will be sunk or cut up, 3 are going to other navies, and 2 are being used for testing and work on the DDX that's 24 of of 31 that are not available for anything, parts to activate another or a return to active duty, or anything. I wouldn't be surprised it they don't decide to send a couple more to the bottom. Sad times for DD sailors.

[Doohickey]

I'm not a tin-can sailor (I was a submarine sailor, actually), but I did have the priviledge of spending a couple of weeks aboard Hayler (DD-998) with DESRON 32. What a great ship with a great crew.

I bring that up because the flagship of the squadron was at the time USS Ramage (DDG-61)(ironically named after a submarine skipper). The DESRON couldn't embark on Ramage, nor could she support mixed-gender crews, because...

...there wasn't enough room onboard. There wasn't enough room for a helo hangar either, but that was corrected later at the expense of what, I don't know.

[thinkthenpost]

I believe they lengthened them by about 15 ft for the hanger. I had heard that the Arleigh Burkes were very tight, I was told by an EW, who have their own space on both the DD (USS Hewitt DD-966) and FFG (USS Ingraham FFG-61) I was aboard for their SLQ-32 and whatever else EW's used. Well, the SLQ-32 was shoehorned in between a couple of other pieces of equipment in an FC space on the DDG, of course on an Aegis ship what doesn't belong to the FCs?

Have a good weekend.

[csvset]

I saw this and thought you'd be interested.

Navy ship redeploys following attack

The Israeli naval vessel Hanit which was struck by an Iranian C-802 missile off the coast of Beirut three weeks ago, killing four soldiers, returned to sea on Sunday morning. Navy crews worked around-the-clock to repair the damage and the ship reassumed its combat role in Lebanon.

According to a senior Military Intelligence officer, the C-802 missiles were made in China but upgraded by Iran, which had made improvements to the radar-guided system and delivered it to Hizbullah. Senior naval officers admitted at the time that they were taken by surprise, claiming that they did not know that Hizbullah possessed such advanced capabilities. The missile has a 100-kilometer range.

Officials also confirmed that the anti-missile detection systems were not operating at the time of the attack.

Rear Admiral Noam Feig, head of Naval Operations, said that the missile had hit the rear of the vessel and had exploded in an area that contained fuel supplies, which started a fire on-board. All crew members worked hard to extinguish the fire before carrying out a head count of sailors. The count then showed that four soldiers were missing. Shortly thereafter, all four bodies were recovered.

The soliders killed were identified as: Third Petty Officer Tal Amgar, 21, from Ashdod; L.-Rtg. Shai Atias, 19, from Rishon Lezion; Fourth Petty Officer Yaniv Hershkovitz, 21, from Haifa; and First Petty Officer Dov Shtierenshos, 37, from Karmiel.