Merkava Tank - Combat
During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israeli armor suffered heavy losses from Egyptian and Syrian wire-guided anti-tank missiles. The high casualty rate spurred the IDF, which had previously depended on US-made Patton and Sherman tanks and British Centurion tanks, to develop the Merkava (Heb., chariot), considered one of the world's most effective and safest battle tanks.
Chaim Herzog, Director of Israeli Military Intelligence in 1974, commenting on Israel's setbaks in 1973, noted “We thought after the 1967 war that all we needed was a tank and a plane, and then we could do whatever we wanted. But in the end we did not do what we wanted.”
In 1980, large-scale production of the Merkava began, and by June 1982, when Tel Aviv began its ground invasion of Lebanon, there were 200 Merkava tanks in the possession of the Israeli army, many of which clashed vigorously in numerous battles with the Soviet T-72 tank it used. The Syrian army at that time.
In the Lebanon War of 1982 from the Israeli side of the IDF's 4,000 tanks participated, according to various sources, from 500 to 1,000 vehicles. These were then in service with the M60A1 "Patton", "Centurion" and "Merkava" Mk.1; the latter - about 200 units. Mk.1, according to foreign experts, has proven itself well in battles. They did not catch fire, despite the turrets and hulls pierced by Syrian T-72 shells. Affected by the successful operation of the automatic fire extinguishing system, the rational protection of ammunition in the rear of the fighting compartment. However, in this war about 50 "Merkavas" were put out of action and, mainly, from the fire of 125-mm T-72 cannons. Many of them were subsequently restored and only seven were lost forever. Only nine crew members were killed.
Evaluations of the battles fought by the two sides varied between those who claimed the superiority of the Merkava and those who said that most of the Israelis' successful confrontations with Soviet tanks were thanks to the use of American anti-tank missiles or the laying of mines in their path. However, Sharon's statements about the superiority of the Merkava became widespread, and the door to Israeli propaganda that promoted it as an invincible tank was quickly opened.
From that moment on, the Merkava became the jewel of Israel's ground forces, from which new generations were constantly produced, without being tested in any real regular battle, or exported to a country waging a regular war in order to prove its efficiency or lack thereof. The limited armament of the Palestinian resistance throughout the eighties and nineties, and the withdrawal of the Syrian army from Lebanon and from any direct regular confrontations with Israel, caused the continued imbalance in favor of Israel, which was superior in the numbers of its forces and its huge arsenal, versus resistance groups that did not have control in the air or sea, and barely achieved successes. Wilderness with barricades in cities. Therefore, a confrontation that exposed the shortcomings and usefulness of the Merkava did not erupt during those years.
Nevertheless, the Israeli military command considered that the Mk.1 had insufficient armor, since they could be disabled by direct hits even in the frontal part of the hull and the turret. At the same time, the development of the Merkava Mk.2 tank with more powerful armor protection began.
In the fall of 1997, Merkavas were used in hostilities against the armed formations of the Hezbollah organization in southern Lebanon. Using anti-tank guided missiles 9K111 "Fagot" (according to other sources - "Kornet-E") of Russian production, the Arabs managed to knock out three Merkava Mk.3.
In 1998, Israeli tanks began to receive modules of added armor for both the turret and the hull. The tanks thus modernized were designated Merkava Mk 2B , or less formally Batash. Merkava Mk 3 tanks, later referred to as Merkava Mk 3D or Dor Dalet, received a similar package of additional armor. The protection was effective against grenade launchers and PTRS from the 80s of the last century. However, the battle between Merkava tank armor and Hezbollah anti-tank teams was far from over.
In light of American hegemony presence in the region in the 1990s, and the Palestine Liberation Organization’s bias towards diplomacy, new resistance movements began to emerge more than before, led by Hamas, in addition to Hezbollah in Lebanon. The first years of the new millennium heralded a boom as a result of the transfer of Iranian resources and expertise in irregular wars to them. Against the backdrop of the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000, and the expulsion of Israeli forces from Lebanon in the same year, new, more intense rounds of confrontation with the army began, quickly reaching their peak in the middle of the first decade of the new century, and highlighting the fragility of the Merkava.
In February 2002, after gunmen from the Palestinian resistance attacked Israeli settlers, Tel Aviv sent a Merkava tank to confront them. It quickly became clear that the Merkava was heading into a carefully crafted trap via an explosive device placed in its path by the Palestinian resistance. The explosion destroyed the tank, flipped it on one side, separated the tower from the rest of the tank, and killed three Israeli soldiers. Israeli analysts commented on the attack at the time, saying that it was a devastating blow to the prestige of the Israeli army.
Tanks Mk.2, Mk.3, Mk.4 also participated in the Second Lebanon War in 2006. In 2006, when the July war broke out with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Israeli army suffered both, and lost dozens of its tanks. The Kornet missile emerged at that time after Syria passed it to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. It is an advanced Russian missile with a range of five kilometers and can penetrate armor more than a meter thick. Over the course of 33 days of the battle with Hezbollah, in which 400 Israeli tanks participated, 48 tanks were subjected to attacks from anti-tank weapons, 40 others were severely damaged, and 20 others had their armor penetrated, while more than five tanks were completely destroyed.
“One of the military surprises of the fighting in Lebanon was the apparent fragility of Israeli weapons in the face of Hezbollah anti-tank missiles,” said a BBC report after the July 2006 war. The Merkava was famous for its armor being designed to give special protection to the tank crew, a design that Tal was keen on given the importance that Israel attaches to the lives of its soldiers and officers. But the number of tank crew soldiers killed in Lebanon in 2006 reached 30 out of 120 killed Israeli soldiers, that is, a quarter of the dead.
Of 400 such vehicles, 52 were knocked out during the battles. Of these, 50 were guided missiles and RPG grenades, and twenty-two were pierced through the armor. including six Mk.4. Two cars were blown up by land mines. In total, eighteen Mk.4s were damaged. One Mk.2 and one Mk.4 were irretrievably lost; two more Mk.2 and one Mk.3 were completely destroyed by missiles. 23 tankers were killed.
Most of the Merkavas were quickly restored and re-entered service after repairs.
Eliyahu Winograd, head of the Israeli investigation committee into the July 2006 war, presenting the committee’s final report, stated “A paramilitary organization of a few thousand fighters succeeded in resisting the most powerful army in the Middle East for weeks.”
The Lebanon War demonstrated the boom achieved by Hezbollah six years after the Israeli army withdrew from the south of the country, and the extent of the fragility of the army in the face of an armed and highly trained organization far from regular open wars in the deserts, in which the Merkava was paradoxically designed to move with ease. After about a year, Hamas came to power in Gaza, and there was another headache in Israel's head, this time from the south. It did not take long until the movement accumulated sufficient experience and equipment to inflict pain on the army. But what has changed after all these years is the nature of irregular wars themselves, in which the Ukrainian war made a major shift thanks to the extensive use of marches and reliance on trenches on both sides in light of a densely populated geography in which movement is difficult, unlike open regular battles.
In the round of confrontations between the resistance and the army in 2014, the network of tunnels and their military uses emerged decisively, as Al-Qassam fighters were able to change the rules of engagement and cross through them to the Gaza envelope and infiltrate behind the enemy’s lines and attack it from within its territory. The tunnels also helped them capture soldiers. While the clashes that took place from October 7 until now between the resistance and the army indicate that the Merkava, like in 2006, fell victim to missiles, mines and resistance drones, without the tunnels and their impact being tested until now. Israel's losses from Merkava tanks have so far amounted to 15 tanks, four of which were completely destroyed, 10 fell into the hands of the resistance, and one was damaged, in addition to dozens of troop carriers.
During the October 2023 war, the Al-Qassam Brigades distributed instructions to its fighters to target Israeli tanks. The soldiers obtained them from one of the fighters who was martyred in the fighting. They included instructions to target the “Trophy” systems installed on the tanks. Trophy is a group of small radars and missile launchers that automatically sense and intercept any missiles heading towards it, and was developed by Tel Aviv after the 2006 war. The instructions revealed that launching a missile from a very short distance could disable the “Trophy” system, so it was not surprising that the recording was broadcast. Hours ago, it shows an attempt to target Merkava from a distance approaching zero, a scene likely to be repeated in light of the population density of Gaza City, as well as the massive destruction that occurred in many of its residential neighborhoods, which may give the resistance an additional fortification if it is able to use it in the face of the Israeli attack.
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