Landing the Big One

Landing the Big One

Friday, July 14, 2006

Drone hits Israeli warship off Lebanon


Reported here:
- Israel says one of its warships was hit by an unmanned aircraft rigged with explosives.

A military official says it was sent up by militants in Lebanon, aimed at the ship which was off the coast of that country. Israel isn't saying anything about the condition of the ship, or about a report that four of its sailors are missing.

The drone was apparently developed by Hezbollah, putting yet another weapon at its disposal. At least twice in recent years the militants have flown unmanned drones over northern Israel, an area they spent much of the day blasting with rocket fire. One of those rockets hit a house, killing a woman and her grandson.
I note that in this post the following was stated:
Moreover, Hezbollah no longer depends exclusively on human intelligence. The group now has access to Iranian-designed and controlled Mirsad One unmanned aerial vehicles. While crude and rudimentary, the Mirsad is able to transmit live video footage, a capability instrumental in scouting targets that were previously inaccessible to Hezbollah human intelligence agents.
According to this site, Hezbollah has been flying UAVs over Israel for a couple of years. There are reports that the ship was damaged and four sailors are missing

UPDATE: Op-For has more, even if John got it wrong on the ship to begin with here. And his commentors have some theories of how the UAV snuck in...low, slow and made of non-radar reflecting parts. Might be one of the weapons that the Iranians were bragging about back in April including a "stealth" anti-ship airplane weapon as set out here.

UPDATE: (7/14/006) New info here. Probably a missile and not a UAV did the damage.

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