Here is the Merkava. You could say the same thing about our Black Hawks. They're easily taken out by guerillas with RPGs. But does that mean we stop using Black Hawks?
Posted on 07/11/2013 5:24:32 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
TEL AVIV—Israel's military plans to downsize its conventional firepower such as tanks and artillery to focus on countering threats from guerrilla warfare and to boost its technological prowess, in a recognition that the Middle East turmoil has virtually halted the ability of neighbors to invade for years to come.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Just shift all weapons to nuclear and use them!
“Israel’s military plans to downsize its conventional firepower such as tanks and artillery...”
New technologies are rapidly changing the battlefield. Israel has the most advanced RPV’s in full-scale production. Israel is selling them world-wide. The Merkova suffered unacceptable losses in the last Lebanese incursion. I read in a Defense magazine that they were planning on taking them all out of service as a $10,000 wire-guided missile can take them out easily. So, unless you kill everybody you pass, eventually somebody will get behind you and take you out. The artist’s rendering of the replacement tank resembled a VW bug with a gun on it and was too small to contain a crew. As for artillery, laser guided bombs are many times more accurate and, all considered, less expensive.
Here is the Merkava. You could say the same thing about our Black Hawks. They're easily taken out by guerillas with RPGs. But does that mean we stop using Black Hawks?
...in a recognition that the Middle East turmoil has virtually halted the ability of neighbors to invade for years to come.Lead-up to 1973 war ping.
I see a critical need in Israel to have a small fleet of heavy bombers, whose purpose would be to drop large numbers of independently targeted GPS guided Small Diameter Bombs (285/500 lb).
Once at altitude, SDBs can glide some 110km to their target.
It would be worth it to launch several hundred decoys, just so that their enemies would use up their surface to air missiles.
Why don’t they put a large sacrificial dome or cone on the back? Have it detachable, when you get to a combat area, hook it on. It gets blown off, put another on.
Hell, load the thing with claymores or something equivalent to detonate in the direction of the missile.
Sounds like Israel is getting too comfortable for her owown good.
orrrr, they’re trying to tempt one of their none-too-neighborly neighbors into an open attack, a little rope-a-dope. I’m pretty sure the near-disaster (and overwhelming field victory that followed) of 1973 taught them a valuable lesson. :’)
“Here is the Merkava. You could say the same thing about our Black Hawks. They’re easily taken out by guerillas with RPGs. But does that mean we stop using Black Hawks”
It probably has to do with battlefield statistics. Let’s say a Blackhawk is vulnerable during 3% of its mission. So, the probablility of getting shot down is P*3%*mission time. But the Merkava is vulnerable during 100% of its mission. So, the probability of destruction is P*100%*(Days,weeks,months.)
Artillery can still fire in weather that would ground planes. You also cannot assume you will always have air supremacy.
” You also cannot assume you will always have air supremacy.”
I don’t think they’ll eliminate artillery, just reduce its footprint and logistics on the battlefield. Also, I suspect that in the future there will be no such thing as air superiority as we know it now. Hamas and Hezbollah both have RPV’s. I suspect that RPV’s will range with impunity due to their small size not just over the disputed territory, but over the combatant’s home territories.
What’s on the battlefield is, in addition, controlled by fashion, like hemlines. Before WWII it was the fashion to have battleships even though it had been demonstrated that a relatively cheap airplane could sink one. It was fashionable that soldiers wear polished boots until too many of them died because they shown so clearly on night optics. Nations knew this to be a fact long before people started dying from it. Militaries change too slowly and at the expense of too many lives.
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