Breaking: C-802 Missle hit Israeli Ship, not a UAV drone

Fox news has just reported that it was a Chinese C-802 missle that hit the Israeli warship killing two sailors, while it was on-duty blockading the harbor in Lebanon. The two other missing sailors have not yet been found. The Israeli ship was partly towed to it’s harbor after the hit, but halfway through the trip managed enough repairs to start moving on its own engines.

Final Update: Counter Terrorism Blog has a detailed analysis of the C-802 and its capabilities.  Also they note that Israel has deployed Patriot missles, although it’s not likely that they would be effective against this type of missile launched against a ship across water, as noted below these missles have a 98% hit rate vs. ships.

Israel has deployed three PAC-2 Patriot missile batteries near Haifa, “aimed at intercepting missiles launched at the area.” But it is unlikely the PAC-2 can intercept the smaller rockets, such as the Raad, which are being launched against the city. The Patriot systems are designed to shoot down aircraft, and have been modified to shoot down larger, medium range missiles such as SCUDs. “Patriot Advanced Capability-2 (PAC-2) is a surface-to-air guided missile defense system designed to detect, target, and destroy incoming ballistic missiles flying three to five times the speed of sound,” reports MissileThreat.com.

The PAC-2s are being deployed to intercept longer-range missiles (ballistic missiles fired from deeper in Lebanese territory, or perhaps Syria) and to take down UAVs launched from the Lebanese coast.

 UPDATE: Iran’s UN ambassador tries to distance Iran from Hizbullah at the UN — Friday Was it before or after THE MISSILE ATTACK HAPPENED?

 Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations Mohammad Javad Zarif here on Friday described recent accusations by the Zionist regime against Iran as “baseless.”
In a letter sent to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UN Security Council President Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, Zarif said it was ironic that a regime that has inflicted massive atrocities on defenseless civilians in recent weeks now accuses Tehran of wrongdoing.

Zarif was reacting to recent comments of the Zionist regime’s UN ambassador accusing Tehran of opening “another chapter in the war on terror.”
“It is ironic that the representative of a regime whose invading army began a new round of unbriddled atrocities about two weeks ago against the defenseless people in the Gaza Strip under the pretext of freeing a captive is now accusing my country of opening another chapter in the war on terror,” Zarif said

I would like to know the timing of this as well as the timing of the missle attack, was it BEFORE, or was it AFTER?

Original post filed at 3:55 am central time:

c-802_3.jpgFox news has just reported that it was a Chinese Silkworm type C-802 missle that hit the Israeli warship killing three sailors, while the ship was on-duty blockading the harbor in Lebanon. One missing sailor has not yet been found, and three bodies have been recovered. The Israeli ship was partly towed to it’s harbor after the hit, but halfway through the trip managed enough repairs to start moving on its own engines. The missle is reported to be Iranian made, based on the Chinese Silkworm design, which is in turn derived from Russian Styx.

Update from Lizardoid Golden Jerusalem & Haaretz: The IDF is now reporting that the missile is a C-802, more on this here. I had earlier posted the Fox report that it was a chinese variant silkworm. Golden makes study of Iranian weaponry a hobby.

Update MSM finally picks up the story, story at Yahoo News. Golden Jerusalem speculated on the type of missile used shortly after midnight last night, not long after the story came out in Haaretz. I posted this story at 3:55 am central, so the AP has an six hour to ten hour delay.

From the AP story:

JERUSALEM (AP) — 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, a senior Israeli intelligence official said.

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.

This from Jerusalem Post:

An IDF investigation into the attack showed that Hizbullah had fired an Iranian-made missile at the vessel from the shores of Lebanon, said Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan.

It was first thought that an explosives-laden UAV caused the blast.

“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.

Another Hizbullah missile also hit and sank a nearby civilian merchant ship at around the same time, Nehushtan said. He said that ship apparently was Egyptian, but he had no other information about it.

The Silk worm C-802 missle most likely came from Iran or Syria, as both countries have these missiles. It is a very bad sign that they are actively supporting terrorist murderers such as Hezbollah by supplying them with advanced armaments such as silkworms C-802’s. Whichever country did supply the armaments, it’s wholly unconscionable to put weapons such as these into the hands of murdering terrorist organizations, and this is a clear indicator of why it is so important to keep nuclear weapons out of Iran’s reach.

The Yinji, or C-802 missiles have extended range as well as capability to create immense damage from their High Explosive head. One of these fired into a civilian area would create disaster, and it’s obvious that the IAF must be watching for these after Nasrallah’s comments:

The Hezbollah leader repeated a threat to hit the Israeli coastal city of Haifa and other towns farther south. “We will reach Haifa, and believe me, even beyond Haifa.”

“Our homes will not be the only ones to be destroyed, our children will not be the only ones to die,” Nasrallah added.

C-802 Specs from FAS:

The weight of the subsonic (0.9 Mach) Yingji-802 is reduced from 815 kilograms to 715 kilograms, but its range is increased from 42 kilometers to 120 kilometers. The 165 kg. (363 lb.) warhead is just as powerful as the earlier version. Since the missile has a small radar reflectivity and is only about five to seven meters above the sea surface when it attacks the target, and since its guidance equipment has strong anti-jamming capability, target ships have a very low success rate in intercepting the missile. The hit probability of the Yingji-802 is estimated to be as high as 98 percent.

more on the Syrian backing of Hezbollah at Captain’s Quarters, with an interesting observation.

5 thoughts on “Breaking: C-802 Missle hit Israeli Ship, not a UAV drone”

  1. I knew/guessed this before it was in the press, as evidenced by my earlier posts on that LGF-thread you linked from.

    It’s obvious, the Iranians have massively transferred all sorts of weaponry to Hezb’allah for years…

  2. Thanks much for stopping by Golden, and thanks even more for helping me get the facts correct. You just can’t trust TV journalists nowadays.

  3. This whole incident seems more and more as if it is directed from Teheran. It has made everyone forget for a moment about such mundane things as uranium enrichment and Iran’s nukes. It has also meant that if Israel should falter in meeting its objectives in destroying Hezbollah that it may find that it has only one option left … nuke Iran. Perhaps it is fortunate that it is degrading Hezbollah and Hamas before it does that … only after they are combat ineffective will making Teheran glow green at night mean that Israel will finally find an end to credible armed threats against here.

    Without question this comes back to Iranian nukes and Iranian threats to decimate Israel. This may be Israels only hope for being around a decade hence.

  4. NOTR, thanks for stopping by, and for commenting I agree with your analysis. This is orchestrated, as the meeting prior to the start of all of it in Iran most likely demonstrates.

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