Israeli Military Says Missile Struck Warship Instead of Drone

tphuang said:

their ship which was in offshore Beirut in the Lebanese international waters was fired at, set ablaze by an Israeli barge that was firing at random in all directions.

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If they got caught in the cross fire and the CIWS did go off to try and track and hit the missile coming in (I do not know if it did or not, and the Israelis are saying it was off), this is exactly what it would look like to the Egyptians at night...and ISraeli ship firing wildly in all directions as the CIWS tracked the incoming missile.

But I do not think a passing strafe by the CIWS would sink the ship...if it even hit it.

crazyinsane105 said:

Israelis are never going to turn off their system: the Egyptians turned off their radars and that resulted in the destruction of their air force. The Israelis would NEVER make that same mistake. .

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Never say never. hehehe. With politcal considerations and leaders worried too much about world opinion, there is not telling what types of constraints may be put on military forces. The VIetnam war with the American ground troops is a perfect example, as are many others in the last 50 years.

After looking at all the reports, hearing the statements of both sides, I believe that the Saar 5 anti-missile systems may well have not been active at the time of the attack. To me, it is inexcusable and derelect, but I do believe, that in this conflict, they will not make that same mistake twice.

Jeff Head said:

If they got caught in the cross fire and the CIWS did go off to try and track and hit the missile coming in (I do not know if it did or not, and the Israelis are saying it was off), this is exactly what it would look like to the Egyptians at night...and ISraeli ship firing wildly in all directions as the CIWS tracked the incoming missile.

But I do not think a passing strafe by the CIWS would sink the ship...if it even hit it.

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If the freighter is really 60 km off shore as stated in the report, then none of the current explanations make a lot of sense.

we know that it would be definitely out of the visual range of the launching party and then it would also be probably out of the visual range of SAAR 5 (if we put SAAR 5 at 10 km off shore).

CIWS doesn't really make much sense in this scenario since SAAR 5's CIWS would be too far from the freighter to be seen.

The C-802 explanation makes no sense either since it makes a lot more sense for Hezbollah just to continuously target ships near the coast. Also, we are not even sure how Hezbollah can identify something that far off shore.

Just my $0.02

Well it is possible that missile defenses weren’t in auto mode because of international civilian flights in the area… They probably didn’t won’t shot down 747 full of passengers like USS Vincennes did in 1988…
As for freighter that was hit is it possible that missile missed Israeli corvette and then locked on freighter?

Looks like c-802 stock just doubled...whatever else happens, expect A LOT of mideastern orders for Chinese c-80x systems in future.

tphuang said:

If the freighter is really 60 km off shore as stated in the report, just my 0.02

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I Had not seen the 60 km. If that is so, then it either was a deliberate act by the IDF; or, in fact it was a second missile. I woulkd lean towards a second missile because none of the IDF ships would be that far off shore.

Either way, your .02 is well worth it, thanks.

sydneylocks said:

Looks like c-802 stock just doubled...whatever else happens, expect A LOT of mideastern orders for Chinese c-80x systems in future.

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That's the truth, and not just for the Mid East. All over the world.

Now, if the IDF's systems on the Saar 5 were truly off (inexcusable IMHO, irrespective of the reasons...it was an active combat zone), it may or may not mean what the purchasing countries think...but since the powerful Saar 5 was hit and severely damaged...noone will care at this point.

Jeff Head said:

I Had not seen the 60 km. If that is so, then it either was a deliberate act by the IDF; or, in fact it was a second missile. I woulkd lean towards a second missile because none of the IDF ships would be that far off shore.

Either way, your .02 is well worth it, thanks.

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I actually got it from your article:
"The missile, is a C-802 radar-guided anti-shipping missile manufactured in Iran using Chinese technology. Its range is estimated to be about 110 km.

Apparently two such missiles were fired on Friday night, one of them hitting INS Spear and the other a Cambodian-flagged freighter, 60 km off shore. A dozen Egyptian sailors from the freighter were picked up by another commercial vessel after their ship sunk following the missile strike."

The targetting is also an interesting question. I wonder if Hezbollah just fired off in a general direction hoping that the C-802 will lock onto a ship and got lucky with SAAR 5 or whether they actually had a radar that locked onto the SAAR 5 and let C-802's radar seeker do the work once it got close to it.

tphuang said:

I wonder if Hezbollah just fired off in a general direction hoping that the C-802 will lock onto a ship and got lucky with SAAR 5 or whether they actually had a radar that locked onto the SAAR 5 and let C-802's radar seeker do the work once it got close to it.

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The IDF took out the Labanese coastal radars claiming that they helped Hezbollah lock onto their ship. Hard to say without more info, but if they did lock on, it begs the question why the second missile flew on another 44 kn off shore and hit the Cambodian ship with the Egyptian crew.

Perhaps the second missile was just fored line of site and failed to pick up the damaged Saar 5.

FuManChu said:

No offence, crazy, but what experience do you have of Israeli naval protocols? None of us were there, so we can't safely say things like "they would never have turned it off". Sometimes people make bad mistakes and poor judgements.

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Well, I wouldn't suspect anything fishy but when the fact came in that they are showing a picture of a "damaged" Saar 5 (which in fact is a picture of a normal ship), it just makes me wonder as to what else those Israelis are hiding...

IMO there's so much misinformation being tossed about right now, we prolly won't know all the facts until later.

Assuming if the weapon used is the C-802, I'd say that it demonstrated about the same level of performance as the French-made Exocet used in Falklands War:

1) Overall success (hit) rate of ~50% (on intended target!)
2) Doesn't always detonate upon impact, but will mission-kill the ship anyway

The Israelis claim that their anti-missile defense system were intentionally turned off. We cannot verify this claim, and if the Israeli intelligence didn't detect delivery of anti-ship missiles, then that's a major failure on their part.

The value of C-802's might go up, but China won't necessarily benefit because:

1) There'll be a lot more opposition to PRC exporting anti-ship missiles in the immediate future
2) C-802 anti-ship missile customers are limited in number
3) If Iran is producing copies of the C-802, customers can buy from them and not from the PRC.