Israeli Military Says Missile Struck Warship Instead of Drone

isthvan · Jul 15, 2006

Well circumstances of this attack are still unclear…Some Israeli sources claim that there were two missiles fired and that one of them missed… Also since ship was quite near to coast they had only few seconds to react… And it is unclear did ship bare Phalanx or 76mm gun…

bd popeye · Jul 15, 2006

This is what the Israeli press is saying about the attack

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You guys should read some of the forums on the bottom of that page. Makes some of the stuff we mods delete look like kindergarten postings..

Any one seen any pics of the damaged ship? If so please post! I've been looking but have found zero..

Last update - 19:08 15/07/2006

Ship had been stationed 16 kilometers off coast of Lebanon

Soldier killed, 3 missing after Navy vessel hit off Beirut coast

By Haaretz Staff and News Agencies

The body of one of the four missing Israel Defense Forces soldiers on a warship that was attacked by Hezbollah off the coast of Lebanon was found Saturday aboard the damaged vessel, military officials said. He was identified as Staff Sergeant Tal Amgar, 21, from Ashdod.

The three MIA soldiers have been named as Sergeant Yoni Hershkovitz, 21, from Haifa; Corporal Shai Atias, 19, from Rishon Letzion and First Staff Sergeant Dov Shteinshos, 37, from Carmiel.

The ship was severely damaged as the Israel Navy blockaded Lebanon as part of its military offensive against the guerrillas.

The warship was returning to Haifa on Saturday when the remains of the soldier were found in the wrecked part of the ship, the military officials said on condition of anonymity since they were not authorized to speak to the press.

Four Israel Navy sailors were reported missing after an Iran-manufactured C-802 missile hit the ship. Initially, the army was not certain whether a missile or explosives-laden drone hit the vessel on Friday night.

The blast caused a fire on board the ship, which had been stationed 16 kilometers off of the coast of Lebanon. After the fire was extinguished, it became clear that four soldiers were missing. Their families were notified soon thereafter.

IDF teams, with the help of planes, helicopters and additional vessels, were searching for the missing troops at the site of the blast. The ship was towed back to Israel.

The incident occurred at around 8:30 P.M., causing a fire close to the helicopter landing pad onboard. The ship's steering mechanism also sustained some damage.

Several hours after the vessel was hit, an IDF spokeswoman said the damage was worse than originally thought. There were some 80 soldiers on board the ship when it was hit.

An army spokeswoman said later that Hezbollah continued to target Israeli vessels with a barrage of rockets after the hit, but missed and struck a civilian ship.

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said earlier Friday that the militant organization had sunk an Israel Navy ship off the Lebanese coast.

"Now in the middle of the sea, facing Beirut, the Israeli warship that has attacked the infrastructure, people's homes and civilians - look at it burning," Nasrallah said in remarks broadcast live shortly after an Israel Air Force strike on Hezbollah's Beirut headquarters.

Hezbollah has never before used a remote-controlled unmanned aircraft to attack Israel. But in a signal of its growing capabilities, the guerrilla group has managed to fly spy drones over northern Israel twice in recent years, both times evading Israel's air defenses.

Jeff Head · Jul 15, 2006

isthvan said:
Well circumstances of this attack are still unclear…Some Israeli sources claim that there were two missiles fired and that one of them missed… Also since ship was quite near to coast they had only few seconds to react… And it is unclear did ship bare Phalanx or 76mm gun…

It was a Saar 5, and they carry Barak and Phalanx and no 76 mmm gun to my knowledge.

I believe the ship was the, Saar 5, the Spear, seen here of the Lebannon coast.

MIDEAST_LEBANON_ISRAEL.sff_BEI123_20060714081741.jpg

Gollevainen · Jul 15, 2006

well not to sound penny-minded, but i couldn't help noticing Jeff saying: best Crovette size craft at this in the world. of the Saar 5 class....

So perhaps little general presentation should be on place. Those ships are far from beeing best....they are almoust school-book example of ship that looks good on paper and looks impressive, almoust like if our forum's kids could have get change to desing warship....In the end you just cannot put anything on your arsenal on hull so small....the result is completely over top weigth layout that has poor sea keeping. And as the orginal concept called for something bit more seaworhtyer than basic Combatantte -type missile FAC, those ships are completely useless to their given task. But it has been quite common that Israelis show suprisingly little attention to ships top weigth issues and quite childishly trys to overload their tiny missile boats whit as much weapons that the deck space allows. The results have been rather worse and classes like Saar 4 that otherwise have impressive seakeeping have become cranged and cumbersome platforms. This incident migth give the long waited excuse for Israel navy to whitdrawn them or strip them down and act as coast guard cutters.

Also, I have heard that the ships cannot even field the 76mm if on normal SSM load, thats why the Phalanx carried as substitute...

Also, Israel naval 'clewerness' is otherwise relevant. They have absolutely no means to cope on whit even WWII era sea mining conducted in normal scope. All of their existence it has lacked any sort of intrest to create even a nucleus for modern MCM force. Rather weird when all of its former oponents were soviet supplyed and trained, and we all know the importance that Soviets continue to give to this unspoken hero of modern naval warfare.

I have therefore anticipated that If Iran or Syria is to involve the crisis even deeper, they migth use civilian vessels to lay mines to ceseade all Israel naval activity and surround the Saar boats into their docks. Foreing help migth be tigth for Israel to swipe these mines or in otherhand, it migth give good couse for western intervention in order to secure the vital sea lines.

Jeff Head · Jul 15, 2006

Gollevainen said:
well not to sound penny-minded, but i couldn't help noticing Jeff saying: best Crovette size craft at this in the world. of the Saar 5 class....

So perhaps little general presentation should be on place. Those ships are far from beeing best....they are almoust school-book example of ship that looks good on paper and looks impressive, almoust like if our forum's kids could have get change to desing warship....In the end you just cannot put anything on your arsenal on hull so small....the result is completely over top weigth layout that has poor sea keeping. And as the orginal concept called for something bit more seaworhtyer than basic Combatantte -type missile FAC, those ships are completely useless to their given task. QUOTE]In raw capablilty, I stand by it being the best for that sized vessel. Clearly, their ability to detect, track, and engage close-in, advanced SSM threats is not strong, particulalry if acting alone.

In actual combat, if not so close to shore, I believe they would be much better at what they do, particularly if data linked to AWCS and other vessels sensors.

My assesment remains this:

The IDF had their high value AAW, Saar 5, vessel there to protect its gun boats which were shelling the Lebannon shore. Those gun boat's main batteries have a short range which means the Saar 5 had to be close in to shore to protect them. That allowed it to be targeted in an evironment which minimized it's own defenses and maximized the C-802 capability.

They were too close to respond effectively or in enough time. At ten miles (16 km) off-shore, they had perhaps sixty seconds total to defend themselves, but really only the time between detection and impact. Since the C-802 comes in low, and since it would be hard to detect by airborne AWACS, if they were even watching over this part of the battlefield and if they were data linked to the Saar 5, the threat came upon them quickly and they probably had only their own radar event horizon to respond in. This means they had maybe seconds. Either they were not adequately prepared (which is hard to imagine for the IDF), or they were simply too close and did not have enough time.

In this environment, the Israelis needs longer ranged shore bombarment capability to avoid putting it's modern, sophisticated AAW vessels at such risk, and to give them more time to resspond to a modern SSM threat.

Just my own opinion.

Gollevainen · Jul 15, 2006

well i dont undermind the tactical aplication of the Saar V class....All small navyes have sougth something bigger than FAC in order to provide AAW for themself. However SAAR 5 class shouldnt be missintentify as AAW ship as such, its armament suffices only for selfdefence against ongoming air attack....and As far as we can now see, not particullary well....

And the fact remains, these ships are poor sea boats and that is the number one issue on anything that goes offshore, the equipment comes secondary.

And where did the C-802 came along? last time I checked, it was Iranian made UAV, packed whit explosives, not SSM as such.

Jeff Head · Jul 15, 2006

bd popeye said:
Jeff, after reading the title of this thread before reading it I was going to move it to the Israel in Gaza thread. But after reading this development I think this subject bears it's own merit..

Thanks. I believe too, that it is a major development, especially regarding sea warfare on a world-wide basis.

bd popeye said:
I'm am not surprised that the Chinese technology of this missile actually worked. It did exactly what it was designed to do.

Me iether, though the Saar 5 was designed to defend against kust this sort of thing. My guess is simply that they were in too close because the gun-boats they were defending had to be in close...and they simply did not have time to respond. Big mistake, and underestimating or not counting on this level of threat.

bd popeye said:
Question is did Hezbollah actually recieve this missile from Iran? My guess is yes. Did Iranians fire the missiles for Hezbollah? That's the big question. Really big.

Agreed. And I believe that Hezbollah at the very least had on the ground technical assistance from Iran...and perhaps others. Who knows?

bd popeye said:
Another question is, as Jeff asked, is how well would this missile faired against the Aegis system? Well I don't know. But if the Ageis system was doing what it was designed to do it would have shot down the missile.

Again, agreed. BUt the USN will definiatley have to avoid the mistakes of this engagement, and in the Hormuz Strait I see no way of doing that completely unless they have completely, or nearly completely supressed the land-based launch sites before they transit those straits. Until that is done, the world's oil out of the Gulf will be held up if the balloons go up.

bd popeye · Jul 15, 2006

Golly the Israeli military is saying it was indeed a C-802 missile that struck the ship.

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Excerpt from the story;
""An IDF investigation into the attack showed that Hizbullah had fired an Iranian-made C-802 missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig.-Gen. Ido Nehushtan. The IDF responded by destroying all Lebanese radar stations along the coast.

A senior IDF intelligence official says that Iran has approximately 100 soldiers in Lebanon and that they helped Hizbullah hit an Israel Navy ship with an anti-ship missile.

"We can confirm that it was hit by an Iranian-made missile launched by Hizbullah. We see this as very profound fingerprint of Iranian involvement in Hizbullah," Nehushtan said in an interview with The Associated Press.""

Jeff Head · Jul 15, 2006

Gollevainen said:
And where did the C-802 came along? last time I checked, it was Iranian made UAV, packed whit explosives, not SSM as such.

C-802 has always been a SSM. Built by China and supplied to Iran and others. N. Korea also helping evolve the design. Possibly license built in Iran now. Do a google on "C-802 Missile".

bd popeye said:
Golly the Israeli military is saying it was indeed a C-802 missile that struck the ship.

More confirmation...and all the more punctuation on how big an event this was. Huge escalation. Huge coup for Hezbollah, Iran and China. Serious ramification for sea warfare around the world, on both sides of the issue. You can bet there's lots of scrambling going on by intelligence, analysts, admirals, captains, commanders, fire control folks, all over the world.

bd popeye · Jul 15, 2006

Jeff Head said:
More confirmation...and all the more punctuation on how big an event this was. Huge escalation. Huge coup for Hezbollah, Iran and China. Serious ramification for sea warfare around the world, on both sides of the issue. You can bet there's lots of scrambling going on by intelligence, analysts, admirals, captains, commanders, fire control folks, all over the world.

Jeff..you are so correct. I just called someone I know on active duty in San Diego(not my son) to get his take on the situation...his wife says his command was recalled into work today...

This is big news in Naval Warfare. Big news!

Israeli Military Says Missile Struck Warship Instead of Drone

isthvan

Tailgunner

bd popeye

The Last Jedi

Jeff Head

General

Gollevainen

Colonel

Jeff Head

General

Gollevainen

Colonel

Jeff Head

General

bd popeye

The Last Jedi

Jeff Head

General

bd popeye

The Last Jedi