Chinese/Iranian anti-ship missiles defeat Phalanx CIWS!!!!

Originally posted by iskander
planeman, my apologies for bugging you, but I'm VERY anxious to know if you can share Crimean SAM sites coords with me. Let me know please.

www.abovetopsecret.com... last post

Originally posted by iskander
just posted on the helo situation, but defense systems being turned of simply can't happen. Even before the attack, CNN was reporting that Hezbollah was firing UNGUIDED Katusha rockets at Israeli ships.

Nice high ballistic trajectory, making them perfect targets, so turned off defense systems scenario just doesn't fly.

WEll, about the brace for impact situation i believe it was more like a "isheetmedrwrz" kinda situation, ,without being too graphic and here's why I believe why:

1) Distance
May sound basic, and yes, as you've stated, there was Awacs support in the area, but if Air sorties were going on, as well as shellings, the least they would expect in all that turmoil would be a modern missile, not some crummy wwII rocket, being fired towards the newest toy-just-out-of-the-box. But by some reason, either the didn't spot it, or weren't even scanning the zone, or whatever unknown reasons no one here will ever, all why can do is speculate. We don't even know if they were in that specific zone looking for that or not. First Israeli mistake was putting their toy next to the coast.

2) But let's say they did spot it, next is, identifying target, since as you know, another ship was hit as well later on. How would they know which ship was engaged? Where they actively searching for missile launches, or supporting the air sorties? All this, we do not know. I for one, I guess they just didn't see it, if they had, regardless of what, that ship could have been avoided a hit. This is logical isn't it?

3) You might have read about ww2 engagements, and how difficult was to actually hit something with unguided projectiles, a katyusha, a ww2 weapon as well, is no better. Add to this untrained ppl, and the difficulty of hitting something with it (many rockets just fall at the sea, when targeting Haifa) phalanx could have been deactivated to avoid friendly fire with patrolling asw helos, and by overconfidence, which is what I believe killed those 4 sailors.

They disregarded the Hezbollah threat, and overconfidence is a vulnerabilty alone

What we agree doesn't check is Barak, Barak "should" have shot down the missile, for it poses no threat of friendly fire, it has IFF radar correlation, so my guess is that it was active, it simply didn't see even what was coming, and I haven't been able to find it's minimun range, but the missile might have been well inside it when they found it, again this is speculation.

and about:

Which is even more troubling, because now everybody will be buying double the missiles they did before, and the ones that already have them (Syria/Iran) will be even boulder, allowing them greater political leverage.

Well if you noticed, Iran and China, as well as India and Russia have all been equipping new missiles for exactly this reasons, though without overconfidence and surprise, I have my doubts wether the missiles will work as well

morale of what happened? overconfidence will get your a%% blown off (literally in this case)

C'mon iskander nobody knows whether the Phalanx failed for sure. And your Hezbollah Iran connection is kind of lop-sided because if they can smuggle in an AShCM WITH a launch platform in then hell they can get almost anything.If they can get stuff like this then what's stopping them from getting decent Air defense equipment, hand-held or otherwise? This would totally undermine IAF/IDF air Ops that have probably completed 1000+ sorties by now.
Hezbollah surprised Israeli intelligence. Points to them for that. But this doesn't mean that the phalanx failed FOR SURE.
And I don't about the Phalanx, but I can vouch for the Barak-I. The C-701 OR the C-802 doesn't sea skim right from launch, especially the C-802. The C-802 acquires a height of at least 80 feet before dipping to a sea-skimming height.
The C-701 which requires optical guidance needed to be at a height of at least 20 metres (60 feet approx.?)to get a visual parity on ANYTHING 17km or more out to sea.
Visual Horizon(km) = 3.84 X SQRT(height in metres).
The Barak ELTA radar WILL pick up anything (here min length is 2.5 meters) at such heights within 20km.

The real question is how in blazes did Hezbollah take such a big risk by launching a AShCM at a ship that was publically known to host both the Phalanx AND the Barak. Or did they not know what they hec they were firing at except that it was definitely Israeli?

BARAK is no joke:

ELTA EL/M-2221

Barak Point Defense

Originally posted by Daedalus3
The C-701 OR the C-802 doesn't sea skim right from launch, especially the C-802.

Darksided mentioned that the missiles came from inland instead of being fired on the coast which explains why the C-802 wasn't detected.


Also, it doesn't make much sense to turn off the phalax in fear of friendly fire

C-701 and the iranian kosar

Originally posted by Daedalus3
your Hezbollah Iran connection is kind of lop-sided because if they can smuggle in an AShCM WITH a launch platform in then hell they can get almost anything.

Lop-sided how? I’m assuming you know Hezbollah has NO ability whatsoever to produce a missile of that type, much less be trained to fire it precisely against the newest ship on the IDF. No they can’t get anything, since it must have been no little feat to pass the weapon system from anywhere it came from to Lebanon.

what's stopping them from getting decent Air defense equipment?

Well, first, the total air superiority, what’s the point of resisting when you can you just hide and fire unguided, rather difficult to trace rockets and just wait for the bomb rain to end. The minute they deploy a decent air def system, they get either captured, or bombed, and then Israelis would have proof of who’s supplying Hezbollah with weapons. And anyway, they still haven’t been able to identify what hit them, a foreign SAM would most likely would be easier to identify and trace, hence giving up whoever gave the weapons system.
This missile is commonly made in Iran, and China, who knows were else, to whom does Israel put the blame…seems logical now? What better chance to test a weapon system in real combat, with the plus that your enemy has no way to proof it was you…logical yet?

Originally posted by chinawhite

Also, it doesn't make much sense to turn off the phalax in fear of friendly fire

Phalanx has no IFF correlation system, so it can’t tell friend from foe, the ship was hit in the hanger, yet no helo was hit, hence the helo was most likely on mission, not having a significant radius, and the fact that it had to rtb to it’s own vessel, it could be supposed that it was turned off for that, what other reason to turn it off then, if you’ll explain please? Note that Katyusha rockets were fired at them, i dismiss them as a real danger, due to extreme bad accuracy and lack of training from shooters, and of course, no guiding whatsoever except goodwill.

Lastly…

Originally posted by Daedalus3

I can vouch for the Barak-I. The Barak ELTA radar WILL pick up anything (here min length is 2.5 meters) at such heights within 20km.
BARAK is no joke

Well, Israel says point defense system Barak was offline, no good reason for that, you’ll have to agree being on a combat zone, even more when Barak has IFF and poses no threat to it’s own aircraft, much unlike Phalanx.
I already posted on a Barak failure 3 years ago, doesn’t mean it’s a total failure, just that for some reason it didn’t intercept what it was supposed to, that’s what we’re trying to find out…since it’s unlikely it was turned off…leave the ship without ANY defense? Unlikely…

Originally posted by chinawhite

Originally posted by Daedalus3
The C-701 OR the C-802 doesn't sea skim right from launch, especially the C-802.

Darksided mentioned that the missiles came from inland instead of being fired on the coast which explains why the C-802 wasn't detected.

I don't think that was confirmed..
How far inland?

Inland? But then Awacs would have seen it, and alerted the ship in time, wouldn't it? Awacs were reported the air sorties taking place at that time, that's why I mention it. C-802 range is 120 km, but what means would have Hezbollah to guide if so far inland, with no active radars near the coast?

I betted on visual guidance, but they would have to be significantly closer...

Originally posted by Daedalus3
I don't think that was confirmed..
How far inland?

He said beirut

Originally posted by chinawhite

Originally posted by Daedalus3
I don't think that was confirmed..
How far inland?

He said beirut

Well correct me if I'm wrong but Beirut has sea access, right?
Or is almost at sea, so it makes little diference...

C'mon iskander nobody knows whether the Phalanx failed for sure. And your Hezbollah Iran connection is kind of lop-sided because if they can smuggle in an AShCM WITH a launch platform in then hell they can get almost anything.

I just go by the circumstances, and Phalanx combat record. What is more likely, that it didn't fail because somebody forgot to turn it on, or it did fail as it did every single time it was previously used. I go with statistic on this one.

The smuggling aspect on the other hand is a pure assumption.
.
[quoteHezbollah surprised Israeli intelligence. Points to them for that. But this doesn't mean that the phalanx failed FOR SURE.

More assumptions. Israeli officials were saying on CNN that Iran is behind Hezbollah support, and I for one was not surprised, and I can't image that Israeli intelligence was aether. I'm sure they got CNN to.

Do we know that Phalanx failed for sure? We know for a fact that it did not succeed, and considering four sailor dead and a four hour fire resulting in severe damage, I for one do consider it a failure.

The real question is how in blazes did Hezbollah take such a big risk by launching a AShCM at a ship that was publically known to host both the Phalanx AND the Barak. Or did they not know what they hec they were firing at except that it was definitely Israeli

That's ware the drone comes in I take it, the one that was initially reported as the weapon that struck the ship.

hosted.ap.org...

So what we have is a servalance drone scoping out the ship for the subsequent missile attack. And since Isralies KNEW that Hezbollah previosly used drones such as Misrad-1, and knew that they could have been used as kamikadze drones, it is REALLY hard for me to beleiave that even after that they would not activate shipps defenses.

Hezbollah has flown simple "Misrad-1" unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, twice before, in November 2004 and April 2005. But those were reconnaissance flights, last just a couple of minutes each. And the drones were spotted fairly quickly, both times.

But, as Defense Tech noted in the Spring, the UAV had the potential to be much, much worse -- "a suicide bomber on steroids, basically."

www.defensetech.org...

What is interesting, is that after the attack, this incident occured;

Nehushtan said another Hezbollah radar-guided anti-ship missile hit and sank a nearby Cambodian merchant ship around the time the Spear was struck. Twelve Egyptian sailors were pulled from the water by passing ships, Brig. Gen. Noam Fieg said

www.chron.com...

Hezbollah only acknowledged firing ONE missile, so what is likely, is that the Cambodian ship was sunk by Israeli forces, thinking that that's where the the missile attack came from.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't C-802 capable of laser guidance? (That's what I get from global security but they've thrown me a screw ball every now and again).

The idea of the Saar-5 being painted from another vessel (of course it would be intended for painting from the air normally) would explain how such a well-guided missile made such a bad hit (helicopter bad rather than hull) due to movement of the vessel doing the painting.


But, it also does bear mentioning that the C-802 packs about as much payload as the two exocets that hit the USS Stark, yet the larger Stark targeted by the older weapons suffered more damage than the smaller corvette.

I tend to doubt that the INS Hanit was struck by a C-802 or Iranian Kosar missile; I believe that story is part of a series of questionable stories given by Israel (along with the "Hezbollah is waiting for Iranian permission to launch a Fajr-5s").

However, if we assume for the moment that it was a C-802, I think that there are two likely explanations for the hit on the "stealth" corvette, the first being laser guidance, the second being that the vessel may have been operating its own radar systems, thus exposing itself to radar-guided weapons (this also would explain the high hit, since the ships radar would not be emanating from its hull).


As for what would have happened if the Hanit had its systems on- we may never know. It was monumentally stupid not to have them engaged (if infact they were really off... perhaps in the process of giving the Israelis a wealth of military technology the US somehow forgot to teach them what an IFF is) but I wouldn't rule out by any stretch of the imagination that the C-802 might be able to get in at some rate- the probability can't really be extrapolated with the facts (or lackthereof) we have though.


I can't help remembering though that Hezbollah recently sank an Egyptian vessel carrying cement; hardly an indication that they are running a very high tech war. At 17km who knows what they really hit it with. I forget the name, but I recall that back on the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, in the museum, there was a hallway with pictures of various Marine heroes. One of them, as I remember it, had managed a miraculous mortar shot down a smokestack and into a ship's boiler, destroying it. Sometimes, for lack of the right weapon, you just take a thousand shots with the wrong one and get lucky. (i'm obviously not suggesting that a mortar shell hit the Hanit- just saying we can't be sure what it was).

It's preposterous to think that the israelis had the system turned off while on battle stations. Bigtrain i respect that you say you know weapons systems, but even if the phalanx wasn't what failed here then it was still a failure of the system since the humans that operate it are part of that system. It is HIGHLY and i mean HIGHLY unlikely that given the intel that the israelis have about hezbollahs capabilities that they would have this ship that close to shore without ship defenses activated. I'm just using a little bit of deductive reasoning and common sense here...

Planeman, I'm also voting you WATS. This is most interesting thread I have read in past few weeks! And I also respect your objectivity in all this stuff. Keep up the good work!

It's definitely a C-701 style missile.

Take a look at the facts :

-C-701 weighs 100kg so it's easy to transport. The 801/2 weighs 815kg which would be very difficult to transport.

-It's fire control systems that find a target and control the missile are small and mobile.

-It's warhead is about 29kg which would explain the damage done to the ship the C-801/2 have a warhead of about 165kg which in my opinion would have split that Israeli ship in half and to the bottom of the ocean.

-C-701 Range of about 15km-20km. The ship was hit about 17km from the mainland of Lebanon.

All evidence supports that the missile used was a C-701.

C-701 - www.sinodefence.com...
C-801/2 - www.sinodefence.com...

Originally posted by iskander
Ioseb_Jugashvili has it right;

1) Is the range of the target increasing or decreasing in relation to the ship? The CIWS search radar will see contacts that are out-bound and not pay attention to them. The CIWS will only engage a target if it's approaching the ship.

How did that skeet shot scenario with RIM-7 go again?

The feature that you are referring to was added as a direct result of the Sea Sparrow incident, when it was realized that Sea Sparrow may be engaging one target while Phalanx was engaging a different target.

Who ever made the statement that a naval vessel has all of its systems up and on alert in a combat zone has never served in a Navy. Operating systems are determined by the expected threat. It is entirely possible that the Phalanx was turned off. I'll be interested in what the Board of Inquiry determines.

Okay I am sorry but you have to be a fool tho think they had the systme turned off that is just standard DOD propaganda to make people feel safer. I guarantee that if you had a satellite to watch the mediteranean every ship that was withen the same range turned around and got out of range. I am sure the head of Raytheon got an unexpexted call from the DOD wondering how this could happen and I bet hundred of engineers are busy working round the clock to develop a new system that will detect these missiles. Just a joke but I am still waiting for China to unveil its real technology I bet they got little tiny helicopters that are just a little bigger than a perosn with a couple of missile and totally undetectable by radar almost like little bumble bees just zooming all over the place damn that would be funny to see on tv

Given that the initial reports said a UAV with an explosive warhead hit the ship, then maybe the reason the Phalanx didn't hit anything was because....

It wasn't an Iranian missile that hit the ship, it was a small UAV moving slowly that was not picked up (or dismissed) by the ships radar operators that hit it.

After all, the people saying it was a missile supplied by Iran are the Israelis.

They are hardly going to admit that Hezbollah caught their highly advanced ship with its pants down, are they.

People seem to have been sucked in to just believing one story here. Propaganda works both ways you know.

I think this was a one time hit ! And that possibly the IDF had their gaurd down not expecting a anti ship missile to be fired from Lebanon.

Since the hit on the ship last Friday video is still comming out of Lebanon of IDF ships off shore.

If Hammas, Hesbullah, Syria or Iran really wanted to make a statement or if they really had the ability they would have hit one of the ferries moving US or UK citizens out of Lebanon or shot more missiles at IDF ships sitting off shore.

One thing we need to notice is that the IDF ship was damaged not sunk.

I think this was just a lucky shot fired by most likley dead or vaporized Hesbullah terrorist. As soon as the shot was tracked back to the source I am sure that whole area was leveled, hopefully taken more of the missiles out of action.

Originally posted by SIRR1
I think this was a one time hit ! And that possibly the IDF had their gaurd down not expecting a anti ship missile to be fired from Lebanon.

If Hammas, Hesbullah, Syria or Iran really wanted to make a statement or if they really had the ability they would have hit one of the ferries moving US or UK citizens out of Lebanon or shot more missiles at IDF ships sitting off shore.

Well the least Hezbollah will want right now is either have the Us and Uk up their back , attacking both an Uk or Us citizens right now doesn't seem such a good idea. And well if you notice, it was quite the statement, not but Hezbollah but from Iran "If you come, we have big guns" that why it was single shot.

Originally posted by iqonx
It's definitely a C-701 style missile.

-It's warhead is about 29kg which would explain the damage done to the ship the C-801/2 have a warhead of about 165kg which in my opinion would have split that Israeli ship in half and to the bottom of the ocean.

-C-701 Range of about 15km-20km. The ship was hit about 17km from the mainland of Lebanon.

Can C-701 can be laser guided as well? If so this would explain the hit on Saar 5, as The Vagabond posted before

Originally posted by SIRR1
One thing we need to notice is that the IDF ship was damaged not sunk.

Well I remember USS Cole suffered quite a hit, yet survived, I believe that it survived only proves it was well built, not it's capability

And lastly:

I think this was just a lucky shot fired by most likley dead or vaporized Hesbullah terrorist. As soon as the shot was tracked back to the source I am sure that whole area was leveled, hopefully taken more of the missiles out of action.

Well, unlikely, I doubt they fired that and waited and see what happened. Most likely as soon as possible left, and I believe the Israeli tracing was as good as their detection at that moment....not good.

And about it being a lucky shot...well that's as lucky as they'd want to be, isn't it? Hitting a Saar 5, regarded as a stealth boat, bearing both Phalanx and Barak-1, and mission killing it (had to be towed) If they did die or not, they accomplished something, and that's all for them (most of them WANT to die, I guess they didn't mind some bombs)