INS Hanit
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The INS Hanit (translated as Spear) is a Sa'ar 5-class missile boat of the Israeli Navy that was built by Northrop Grumman Ship Systems in 1994.
During the 2006 Israel-Lebanon crisis, the vessel was patrolling in Lebanese waters ten nautical miles off the coast of Beirut. It was damaged on July 14, 2006 on the waterline, under the aft superstructure by a missile (likely a Chinese-designed C-802 or C-701, supplied by Iran) fired by Hezbollah. Reportedly, the missile started a fire aboard the ship and critically damaged the vessel's steering capability, requiring it to be towed part of the way back to Israel. A large explosion caused the landing pad to cave in and be engulfed in flames that threatened the aviation fuel storage below, and flames were not fully extinguished until several hours later. There were four fatalities amongst the ship's crew, that were found later in the ship. .
According the the Israeli Navy, the ship's sophisticated automatic missile defense system was intentionally disabled. This was done for two reasons, one, there were many Israeli Air Force aircraft conducting operations in the vicinity of the ship and it was feared that the system may accidently be triggered by a friendly aircraft, potentially shooting it down. Second, there was no intelligence pointing to the fact that such a sophisticated missile, roughly equivalent to the American Harpoon, was deployed in Lebanon by Hezbollah.
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