Posted on 7/15/2006, 5:47:23 AM by Anti-Bubba182
JERUSALEM (AP) - An unmanned Hezbollah aircraft rigged with explosives rammed into an Israeli missile ship late Friday, leaving four sailors missing and causing heavy damage and a fire, Israeli military officials said.
The army said a search was underway for the seamen. The statement confirmed earlier news reports the four were missing.
The attack by the remote-controlled drone indicated Hezbollah has added a new weapon to the arsenal of rockets and mortars it has used against Israeli troops.
The army said a missile ship carrying several dozen sailors suffered severe damage and was set on fire. Several hours after the attack, the fire was put out and the ship was being towed back to Israel, officials said. The military officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the news media.
In an official statement, the army spokesman's office would say only that the cause of the attack was still under investigation.
Hezbollah has never before used a remote-controlled unmanned aircraft to attack Israel. But in a signal of its growing capabilities, the guerrilla group has twice managed to fly spy drones over northern Israel in recent years. The drones caused great concern in Israel because they evaded the country's air defences.
Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV had reported earlier Friday that guerrillas attacked an Israeli warship that had been firing missiles into south Beirut.
"Now in the middle of the sea, facing Beirut, the Israeli warship that has attacked the infrastructure, people's homes and civilians - look at it burning," Hezbollah's leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah said.
The pre-recorded audiotape was aired shortly after Israeli missiles struck Hezbollah headquarters and Nasrallah's house in south Beirut.
The station showed a video purportedly showing an Israeli warship hit by Hezbollah. The video aired a few seconds of night-time pictures of an object flying over a city and falling in the distance, where it exploded. Al-Manar said this depicted the attack on the Israeli warship off the coast of Lebanon.
The footage was unclear and it could not be seen what the object hit.
Beat me to it. I was going to be a smartypants and ask "I wonder where they could have got THAT technology... hmmmm?"
Church lady would know.
It has to be more than you can buy at a hobby store.
From the Fox News description, it was a small drone which probably would not show up on radar. I guess by the time a lookout could have spotted it, at 100 MPH or so it would have been too close to engage. And that is if it was even recognized as a threat.
I'll bet the Israeli Navy won't make that mistake again.
A little confusing here,,,one account has it a missile hit the ship and this piece calls it a drone.
Yeh..it was a missile drone..yeh...thats the ticket.
I have no doubt about that.
http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2006/07/hezbollah-debuts-its-armed-uav.html
has a fair bit of information on the UAV attack. Hezbo has tested Iranian UAV's in Lebanon and at least once flown them into northern Israel in the past few months. Lebanon is currently a proving ground for Iranian weapons.
I don't see how Israel can tolerate Hezbo UAV's that could potentially carry chem or bio WMD into Haifa or even farther south. Looks like Israel will have to move ground forces into to southern Lebanon and clean out the rats nest.
UAV..hhmmm... surely this is an interesting acquisition for Hezbollah. it's got Iran's fingerprints all over
Yea, a bit more than a hobby shop plane but not "high tech" by any means. A basic plane capable of carrying a 50lb bomb is fairly simple to construct. Manual control via a line-of-sight video/control link can be done with off the shelf components. Commercial transmitters that will go for tens of miles are relatively inexpensive. An advanced hobbyist or average engineer could do this - I would guess for less than $20K.
I hear that and Thanks for the link. Israel, and the US as well, needs to find a way to defend against those. It would be nothing to launcf these across the Mexican or Canadian Border or within the US.
Fifty pounds would make a pretty big shaped charge for a ship,
not to mention Poison gas or Biologicals.
My bet is that Hezbollah will mount some minor attacks this weekend...and by Monday evening...Isreal decides to mount an invasion force for a 5-10 mile march into Lebanon. The bombings will double in scoop, and you're start to see 100plus Lebanese folks dead each day. Within seven days...it'll be readily apparent that Syria won't do anything and Hezbollah will start to beg Iran to help...which isn't going to happen in this scenario. I see three more weeks of intensive fighting before the two soldiers are grabbed by a Lebanese army force and released. The entire top 10 guys in Hezbollah will either be dead or sitting in Syria by that point.
Supposedly the UAV's leave a heat signature and can be downed if your alert and prepared.
We can hope!
That's a good question. I suppose the signature of a small drone most not be much. Probably made with strong but inexpensive foam wings and not much metal except the engine. Some careful construction may be able to make them just stealthy enough. I imagine you could fly it at a very low altitude which may help too.
Flying low it might look like "clutter" until it gets close. Then what could they do? I saw a pic of the corvette-type that got hit. I saw no anti-air guns. Just missile boxes. Some one would have had to shoot it down with a .50 on short notice probably. All guesses.
my first thought was 'hobby stuff'.
what kind of engine?
weed wacker
mini jet
Don't know.
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