Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Never blow off your J2

Never blow off your J2. Especially if your N2 wants to.
Two days into the war, Hezbollah hit the destroyer INS Hanit with a surface-to-sea missile that Iran provided the organization. Four members of the crew were killed and others were injured, while the navy's flagship suffered serious damage. The following day, the head of the navy appointed a committee of inquiry. More than six weeks have past and the war has ended but the public has still not heard the findings of this committee of inquiry.

In an inquiry that we held, it turns out that the intelligence branch at the General Staff had issued a warning to the navy, long before the incident, that it should assume the Hezbollah arsenal contained a Chinese-made C-802 missile. The navy concluded otherwise and rejected the warnings.
....and then get cocky.
A similar sort of warning was issued by intelligence to the air force over the SA-18, a Russian-made surface-to-air missile. The air force acted accordingly and even though the missile was not fired in Lebanon, the pilots were instructed to operate as if the missile was in the Hezbollah arsenal.

This is not what happened in the navy. They concluded that the Chinese missile that had been sold to Iran was not in Hezbollah's hands.
Never assume your problems away.

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