Hezbollah use UCAV

Originally posted by unholy enterprise
how about if most of their ucav are stealth,sneaking around the israel defend building and then straight dive into it.i think this will trigger more firepower to bring in to the actions in to the battles

Sorry to rain on your parade old son, but why the use of funny icons? Do you want this action to escalate in to a full blown war?

If it was a Saar 5, or any other Israeli missile boat for that matter, this incident is a MASSIVE shift in the warfighting paradigm.

A tactical UAV based anti-ship "missile" is inherently less capable than even a small anti-ship missile with perhaps the single advantage of being visually aimed (can defeat radar stealth like on a Saar 5 by not needing a radar lock...)

By conventional wisdom a Saar 5 simply shouldn't be a viable target for such a weapon. The saar 5 (et al) have, on paper, more than enough air defenses - the crew must have been asleep.

And a UAV mounted bomb shouldn't be enough to disable a 1,000 ton corvette.


It's Saturday, so i'm off doing normal persons stuff, but I'll post on the practicalities and limitations of converting tactical UAVs into "missiles" some time.

According to newer reports it wasn't a UAV but a shore launched anti-ship missile: www.cnn.com...

A Chinese designed C-802 (YJ-82 www.sinodefence.com... ) missile probably supplied via Iran (which uses them). It would require a radar lock to hit a ship - which makes this report sound UNLIKELY in my opinion - Hezbollah have search radars etc etc hmmmm.... But the smaller C-701 which has a 20km range and is also manufactured under license in Iran has a choice of IR, TV or radar guidence, is much more within hezbollah's reach and requires fewer logistics. TV or IR guidence could overcome the radar stealth of the Saar-5 if it was in sight of the shore.

[edit on 15-7-2006 by planeman]

Originally posted by planeman
According to newer reports it wasn't a UAV but a shore launched anti-ship missile: www.cnn.com...

A Chinese designed C-802 (YJ-82 www.sinodefence.com... ) missile probably supplied via Iran (which uses them). It would require a radar lock to hit a ship - which makes this report sound UNLIKELY in my opinion - Hezbollah have search radars etc etc hmmmm.... But the smaller C-701 which has a 20km range and is also manufactured under license in Iran has a choice of IR, TV or radar guidence, is much more within hezbollah's reach and requires fewer logistics. TV or IR guidence could overcome the radar stealth of the Saar-5 if it was in sight of the shore.

[edit on 15-7-2006 by planeman]

While I am on record as always having preferred the 'swarm' approach of light weapons with intelligent targeting when dealing with any naval combattant's outer/mid/inner zone AD; the use of the C802 brings it's own problems.

1. It's an Exocet Clone.
Showing just how the 'sell to anyone and it won't come home to bite us' mystique of selfdelusional belief in own-CM remains unbroken: Eilat->Sheffield->Stark-SAAR-5.

2. It Signals Further International Cooperation.
Which has it's own long tradition of "They won't call us collectively a bunch of sand-bleeps as an excuse to butcher us all. That would be so 'insensitive' and un-PC!" In this case, the casepoint example is probably that of the initial U.S. Lebanese embassy bombing, you have Iranian Money, Syrian Military (explosives rigging expertise) and Guerilla Operational Support (then suicide drivers, now grunting the weapon into position and providing security and logistics).

Back in 1982, the almighty Brits lost themselves cruiser and a destroyer play-pretending at a missile trap off Elephant Island in which the high-cover SHAR were not even allowed to /break up/ the inbound A-4s with their oh-so-dumb single or paired 500lb bombs, skip-tossed into the sides of the RN ships hulls.

While operational details are different, the basic elements remain the same: If you bring a boat predictably close into shore so that you can use your cheapest weapons system to shell the helpless, you are not only pinning your own flag on the enemy ops board maps. But you are /just asking for/ a sophisticated head-shot return of fire.

Based on the assymetric value of your boat.

Now there are two ways to handle this.

One, put up a rotating CAP that guts any and all movement in 'likely AShM launch box areas' (i.e. more civillians dead for little or no gain) while maintaining a 'fire at the launch plume backtraceable immedate reaction force.

Or.

Two, going in with commandos and finding the launch box to make a bloody mess of the shooters (impaled on stakes, burned alive, you get the idea). This is less expensive in terms of wombat-huntin' logistics of sortie hours. But it has a high failure rate if the box is in fact a single-use (throwaway) tube instead of a sophisticated truck system.

Remember, when those inestimable gits the Bloody Minded Brits lost their /fourth/ ship to an Exocet, it was because they sent the Glamorgan into do NGS and, failing to pull back from the coast in time, got themselves a French enema via nothing more sophisticated than a converted garbage truck.

Where were the SAS/SBS you might ask? Indeed, where were the SAS/SBS when the Commandancia was so meaty a target and the two radars covering Stanley Field were the only things that let the Argentines continue to make supply runs and pretend they were still in the fight.

'Too Valuable To Risk' thos commandos were. 'Too Busy' blowing up already-wrecked unimproved short strips.

Israel will learn again the value of combined arms at ALL levels. Or they will take desultory attrition just like Her Majesty's Finest. Snicker.


KPl.

Originally posted by ch1466
1. It's an Exocet Clone.

Apart from the simialr size, what else does it have to make it a clone, considering the Harpoon is closer in shape to the exocet than the C-801

EDIT: MISSLEADING pictures going around other forums:




NOTE THAT THE DARK PATCH ON THE WATERLINE IS NOT A MISSILE IMPACT - that's normal of the ship. The ship in the pictures has NOT been hit by a missile - at least not on that side.

As you can see it is a Saar-5 stealth corvette. In terms of air defences it has Barak SAM and a 20mm Phalanx close-in-weapon system (CIWS) of US origin.

General consensous on military forums is that the missile was probably the smaller C-701 as per my thoughts above rather than a C-802 as reported. The C-701 can be guided by TV or IR as well as radar which makes it more practical against stealth ships. It has a range of about 20km but only a small warhead. The C-701 is loosely equivilent to the British Sea Skua.
Iranian C-701 shore battery:


The Hezbollah launcher may be more basic.

[edit on 16-7-2006 by planeman]

Why didn't the Phalanx destroy the hostile missile? Its suppose to be on at all times, it scans/tracks/engages/ autonomously, did the Israeli warship turn it off not expecting be hit by an anti-ship missile?

Either they shut if off (both phalanx and barak systems); God knows why they would do that, or the two system failed in engaging the incoming missile. If it was C-802 I believe that small ship would be severely damanged and may be split in two; so C-701 would be my guess since it is way smaller.

To Westpoint23,

Phlanx/goalkepper cannot protect in a 360 degree angles. There are certain areas of the ship which are out of the reach of such systems just becuase of the way ships are.

Even if it was on there is no guarentee that it could have stopped it depending on what angle the c701 was comming in from. And also factor in that the missile travels at 0.8Mach(500-600mph) with a max range of 15-20km it would only take a short time to hit the ship and i dont think the ship could cope with such a fast hit.

Yes, since the Saar-5’s only have one bow mounted Phalanx system the back of the ship is vulnerable to missiles. This weakness is greatly increased due to the fact that the superstructure limits the angle the Phalanx can engage targets. The missile had to have come in from the back of the ship at a very high angle to avoid the Phalanx. Given the range and speed of the missile the ship would have had about a minute to react, either by maneuvering to give the Phalanx a clear shot or by lunching countermeasures. However since this could have been an optically guided missile countermeasures wouldn’t have worked. But this does raise another question, could Hezbollah carry out a complex attack such as this without external support?

Chinawhite,

>>
Apart from the similar size, what else does it have to make it a clone, considering the Harpoon is closer in shape to the exocet than the C-801.
>>

The fact that it's derived from the C-801 which is even more of an Exocet clone (rocket propulsion, simplistic autopilot guidance).

The fact that it's 'shape' (long-taper ogival radome, aft set wings with deltoid vice near-rectangular [trapezoidal] configuration, short coupled wing:tail separations).

Exocet
www.netmarine.net...
www.acig.org...

C-801
www.globalsecurity.org...

C-802
www.fas.org...

HARPOON
www.ndu.edu...
www.air-and-space.com...

The fact that the French will whore anything to anyone not on the A-for-America list and then blame the world for the misery they've $ewn. Including the ANS/ANF design which is in fact not even /in/ French service but is being actively developed by China.

The fact that the Chinese aero industry doesn't make anything of their own but 'improves' on other peoples designs as a function of not having to pay for what they can steal or be given in spite.

The fact that I have a 'pretty good idea' whom you stole your market sample from.


KPl.


Some Added LINKS-
GSO Family Tree of System YJ-8
www.globalsecurity.org...

Chinese Missiles- YJ-81 = Exocet Clone
www.softwar.net...

WestPoint23,

>>
Yes, since the Saar-5’s only have one bow mounted Phalanx system the back of the ship is vulnerable to missiles. This weakness is greatly increased due to the fact that the superstructure limits the angle the Phalanx can engage targets.
>>

Barak is a VLS capable inner zone missile roughly equivalent to the Sea Wolf. If it didn't engage, it was because the weapons was not detected. A small radar target that ballistically lofted out of the clutter without any active terminal phase emissions could do this. Especially if it is supported by jamming or a 'tape' which saturates the ships mission systems. Especialy if said effort is done repeatedly with the intent of lulling the crew with falsealarms into deactivating the automated defense systems to conserve GTW frequencies and/or SRBOC launches.

>>
The missile had to have come in from the back of the ship at a very high angle to avoid the Phalanx. Given the range and speed of the missile the ship would have had about a minute to react, either by maneuvering to give the Phalanx a clear shot or by lunching countermeasures. However since this could have been an optically guided missile countermeasures wouldn’t have worked. But this does raise another question, could Hezbollah carry out a complex attack such as this without external support?
>>

No. As I said before, the Iranians pay their Syrian flunkies to provide the field engineering. That said, there are optical countermeasure systems for ships that function much like the smoke mortars for tanks. The REAL question then being:

1. Do the 'super duper' Israeli's not have Guitar 300 or similar, ship-mounted, terminal MLDS/MAWS systems that can see inbounds at other than radar bands? What about a mast-top IRST? All these (secondary optical adjunt) systems were supposedly given 'high priority' after the Iran Air insanity.

2. Can the Israeli Air Search system provide adequate in-clutter resolution to pick up the missile against the littoral clutter in time to cue the specific on-mount Barak FCR/optical complex? If not then they had no business being there. Keep in mind that the 1982 super-duper Sea Wolf was equally crippled by virtue of looking into a land-clutter environment with limited sectoring or PRF options to map out the bounds of the DbSnR.

3. Was the Israeli ship operating in a passive-only mode to support air ops (helicopters visible from land) or as a function of 'don't be a lighthouse' inshore NGS maneuver?

CONCLUSION:
I find it funny as hell that the "Oh no, look out, it's the /Israelis/ they'll know what to do!" got caught with their knickers around their knees. I'm sure it will effect the number of systems contracts they get from the DOD or at least USN for at least the next couple FYs. But the physics of the litoral boundary remain the same, IMO. You want to kill the missile, put a sophisticated LDSD radar platform into place than can track it using STAP modified transitional (real world mapped) clutter models to get BOTH the truck. AND the missile. From well out to sea. Broadcast-mode this down to your bloody corvette and equip said gunboat diplomat with advanced optical sensors and preferrably multihead laser systems (Nautilus/THEL-M would be easier from a naval mount, IMO). So that you can smackdown what wickedly this way comeths without the limited range of CIWS systems or the ballistic capture-to-tether window of missiles.


KPl.