The battle of Latakia was a milestone in postwar naval engagements—never before had anti-ship missiles and missilejamming technology been pitted against one another in open combat. The context of the battle was the opening actions of the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

On October 6, Egyptian forces launched a surprise eastward thrust across the Suez Canal against Israeli forces in the Sinai. Syria made a simultaneous attack from the north across the Golan Heights. In an attempt to check the potential threat to Israeli ships from Syrian missile boats, Israeli commanders decided  to mount a preemptive naval strike, sending six Saar-class corvettes to draw the Syrian missile boats out of their harbor at Latakia and destroy them. The Syrian vessels posed a realistic threat to Israeli shipping. They were armed with the same SS-N-2 Styx anti-ship missiles that had sunk the Israeli destroyer Eilat in 1967. The Israeli warships were also armed with anti-ship missiles, but since the Israeli Gabriel—which had yet to be used in battle—had only half the range of the Styx, the crews would have to rely on newly developed, and still unproven, electronic countermeasures (ECM). These consisted of two principal elements: chaff dispensers to fill the  air with metallic strips, clouding  the incoming missile’s target picture;  and jamming systems designed to confuse the missile’s tracking system.  At Latakia both systems would be tested for the first time against real threats.

Contact was made quickly as the six Israeli missile boats approached Latakia. An offshore Syrian P-4 torpedo boat was picked up on radar, and the Israeli corvette Hanit moved to engage her, sinking the boat with long-range gunfire. Assuming that the Syrian torpedo boat had reported their presence off Latakia, the Israeli boats waited for new threats to emerge. The radar soon threw up another contact, a Syrian T-43 minesweeper to the northeast. This time Reshef peeled off to deal with her, hitting the ship with a Gabriel missile at a range of 11 miles (18 km). Reshef rejoined the main group, now coming within Styx missile range of Latakia. At this point the Syrians responded in earnest. Three Syrian missile boats (two Komar class and one Osa class) moved out from harbor and fired their Styx missiles, well beyond the range of the Gabriels. As the missiles approached the Israelis deployed their jamming systems and chaff—both worked, and the missiles splashed harmlessly into the sea. The Israelis now closed to range, and a missile exchange ensued in which all three Syrian boats were destroyed.