Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and other Related Conflicts in the Middle East (read the rules in the first post)
- Thread starter phrozenflame
- Start date
Iran has always been on their hit list. Just looking for an excuse and right moment to attack.
This might be the worst 'opportunity' that the USA has ever had to attack Iran lol.
US has little say in the matter, depends how far Israel is willing to pull the strings.
Most likely pro israel lobby is pressuring US through media connection. See how they stopped cover Ukraine. Now they taunt Biden if he do not commit he will look weak. Election next year. Given Biden's personal connections I can see him rather focus on Ukraine, but Israeli lobby is too powerful to ignore. Biden admin is kinda doing minimum to placate them, but this is not enough.
If US is dumb enough for a 3 front war (doubt) then China better not disappoint and take initiative in Pacifics.
Based on an instruction pamphlet obtained by the IDF, HAMAS exploits the Merkava's weakness by firing RPGs at an extremely close range, so close that the Trophy has no time to respond.
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They are also sending Merkavas without Trophy. And video released today showed a Hamas fighter setting a magnetic charge on the turret of what's a really early variant of a Merkava Mk.3
Are they sleeping inside? Do they not hear anything outside?
Extreme close range is the key, but it works not because of time limit but more of the radar blind area created due to the close range. APS simply can not see the incoming projectile. For reference, China's GL-5 is stated to be able to intercept the projectile at 1.5 meters and beyond provided it can be seen by the radar, the time it takes from detection to destruction is in the milliseconds.
There are four radar panels. In the horizontal plane, if each one covers 90 degrees, it can cover 360 degrees without blind area ONLY if the panels are mounted right next to each other. In reality they are mounted on the four corners more than 2 meters apart. This create a infinite gap. To cover the gap each panel need to cover more than 90 degrees to overlap, the more the better, but there is always a blind region. It is illustrated in this diagram. The green area is the blind region, it is more than twice the width of the tank or 8 meters of Merkava.
In the vertical plane, the covering angle is much smaller giving a much longer blind region especially downwards because panels are mounted more upwards. Assuming the downwards angle is 8 degrees and the mounting point is 2 meters, the blind range extends to 14 meters of Merkava.
I took the radar covering angle figure from China's GL-5. Since there is nothing secret in case of design principle, capability, limitations of AESA radar, I think it is accurate enough for illustration purpose.
We know IDF lost several hundred vehicles since the war. Among them we can guess tanks roughly 100. Their starting tank number is about 400, all mk.4. The number of operating tanks only increased following mobilization. From this we know there are not enough mk.4 with trophy for all tank crews. Of the starting 400 mk.4 some of them were destroyed making number even lower. Israel is sustaining by using older stocks already mothballed from warehouse. I suspect only half the tanks are mk.4 using trophy.