Surface Forces: The Venezuela Version

November 5, 2020: In late September 2020 Venezuela announced that it had obtained some C-802A anti-ship missiles from China. Attached to the Twitter announcement is a video claiming to show a test firing of the missile from a Venezuelan warship. The video did show a warship firing a Chinese anti-ship missile but the video was of a Thailand frigate test firing a C-801 missile in 2019. The C-801 is 5.81 meters (18 feet) long, 360mm in diameter, has a max range of 42 kilometers, and weighs 636 kg (1,400 pounds) each. It entered service in 1987 after more than a decade of development. The C-801 is similar to the French Exocet and is believed to…