The missile that struck the Spear as it cruised off the Lebanese coast was a C-802, an Iranian version of a Chinese surface-to-sea missile. Hezbollah guerrillas fired the missile at 8:42 P.M. on July 14, the third day of the fighting in Lebanon. The missile hit a crane in the rear of the ship and caused the deaths of four soldiers.
The main failure identified by the investigation was the navy's lack of appreciation of the possibility that such a missile could target the ship, despite Military Intelligence warnings.
Two months ago, Haaretz reported that the missile threat had been raised informally in a lecture delivered by Colonel K. of MI to navy officers in April 2003. According to the lecture, the possibility existed that Iran had delivered such missiles to Hezbollah.
Colonel K. also sent a letter to that effect to the head of naval intelligence.
Ben-Basat acknowledged that the navy did not reach any conclusions on the matter and consequently did not prepare for such an eventuality.
"From our point of view, the possibility that such a missile was in the Hezbollah [arsenal] was considered imaginary and exaggerated," the navy commander admitted. "This is a missile 6.4 meters long that weighs 715 kilograms and is launched from a truck. It's a monster. We did not think that a terror organization would have such a thing. At that stage, that is how we viewed Hezbollah. We had not yet come to regard it as a forward Iranian division, the way we now see it in the IDF."
The investigation has also revealed serious problems on the ship itself, particularly the fact that three of its four defense systems were not functioning. The ship's captain was not aware that the defense systems were down.
An electronics officer with the rank of captain had placed both the electronic countermeasures system and the Barak anti-missile system on two-minute standby mode, arguing that he wanted to avoid their "fatigue," as he knew that the Spear was on a mission of long duration. The same officer had identified a problem with the ship's radar, which was functioning at only 50 percent capacity.
In both cases, he failed to inform the ship's captain of the problems.
I don't know. But a picture of the damage would be appreciated
