Anti-ship missiles
Hezbollah has a significant arsenal of anti-ship missiles, which the Center for Strategic and International Studies has limited to two types.
"Noor" missiles
The C-802 is a medium-range anti-ship cruise missile, developed by China in the 1970s and 1980s. Iran began purchasing dozens of Chinese missiles during the 1990s until Washington pressured Beijing to stop sales to Tehran. Iran developed its own version of the missile, called Nour, and transferred it to Hezbollah. The missile has a range of 120 kilometers, and carries a warhead weighing 165 kilograms. The missile operates with a turbine engine and has a high speed, subsonic.
On July 14, 2006, Hezbollah fired two Nour missiles at the Israeli Israeli Sa’ar 5-class corvette INS "Hanit", which was imposing a blockade along the Lebanese coast. One of the missiles successfully hit the ship, killing four Israeli sailors. It is unclear how many Nour missiles Hezbollah currently possesses.
"Yakhont" missiles
Russia developed the Yakhont missiles in the 1990s, a type of anti-ship cruise missile. It can be launched from the air or the ground. The Yakhont has a range of 300 kilometers, and carries a 200-kg high-explosive warhead, or a 250-kg SAP armor-piercing warhead. The Yakhont is considered a supersonic missile, capable of flying at sea, and uses guidance based on inertial navigation. Russia delivered 72 Yakhont coastal defense missiles to Syria in December 2011, along with 18 TEL vehicles. Syria transferred a number of these systems to Hezbollah. As of January 2016, the United States estimated that Hezbollah possessed up to 12 Yakhont missiles.
Reports indicate that Hezbollah does not have the necessary means to launch the missile without Iranian or Syrian support. Israel considers the Yakhont missile one of the main threats it faces from Hezbollah.
P-800 Oniks missiles
Essanews contends that Hezbollah possesses weapons in its arsenal that could pose a serious risk to US warships in the Mediterranean. Specifically, the report highlights that the Lebanese Resistance possesses in its arsenal the Russian-produced anti-ship P-800 Oniks missiles. The report stipulates that the threats leveled by Hezbollah's Secretary General back in early November against the American warships are far from being empty rhetoric.
The P-800 Oniks, also known as Yakhont, are surface-to-surface supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles capable of attaining speeds of Mach 2.5. The missile is around 9 meters long and weighs almost four tons. Its warhead in itself weighs 200kg. It is also equipped with fire-and-forget guidance technology (meaning it could self-adjust to take out the target without being in line with it during launch).
Furthermore, the missile is immune to electronic countermeasures (ECM), and is capable of overriding defensive countermeasures that work to disrupt the missile's targeting system. The missile's technology also enables it to fly in relative stealth, as it flies in a sea-skimming, low altitude trajectory close to the water's surface to avoid radar and infrared detection.
In October 2023, Russian President Vladimir Putin questioned the purpose of the deployment of the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier. Putin stipulated if the US hoped to scare the Lebanese with this move, it would change nothing because there are people in Lebanon who do not fear the US. A few weeks later, during his long-awaited speech, the Secretary General of Hezbollah Sayyed Nasrallah warned the US saying, "These fleets that you are threatening [us] with, we have prepared the appropriate response for them."
Russia had supplied the P-800 Oniks missiles to Syria during the early years of the war against Syria. They are expected to have been transferred to Hezbollah's arsenal through Syria, according to the report. Syria's possession of the P-800 Oniks has long raised Israeli concerns. In 2013, the Israeli occupation's air force conducted an air bombardment on Latakia in an effort to neutralize Syria's arsenal of the missile.
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