If merkava really joins the Ukrainian ranks. It's gonna be interesting on how they will be used.
AFAIK Merkava was built based on very unique Israeli doctrine of wanting a tank that can be supplied from protected position. The Bar-Lev line appears to taught them that conventional tank can have difficulty being supplied with munitions from hatch.
Therefore Merkava was born, with the unique rear hatch, and narrow turret, which constantly getting bigger as the versions progressed, but most of the turret are armor.
The Ukrainian could put Merkava in their trench, exposing only the turret while the tank can keep watching and constantly firing without need to retreat and reload its munition. The reload of the tank is done via the rear hatch. There were beliefs that Merkava's rear compartment can be used for infantry, which is true but doing such will make the tank devoid of ammo or maybe only have about 8 ready to fire rounds in the bustle storage.
I don’t think artillery will care much at all, they will go kaboom as easily as any other tank in the world.
I just don’t understand why it’s so hard to comprehend that there are no silver bullet wonder weapons. You throw any tank in the world into a hopeless situation against impossible odds with inadequate support and it will get dunked on as easily as the worst tank in the world.
The closest things to such wonder weapons that the west could supply which might make a disproportionately big impact are things they will never send, such as top of the line EW and jamming systems, and F35Bs.
Part of the reason given for why the initial pushes by the Ukrainian counter-offensive was so calamitous was the heavy Russian EW and jamming that effectively neutralised the Ukrainian drone fleets, and it seems like the Ukrainians were counting on a massive FPV suicide drone swarm that never arrived.
If Ukraine can shut down Russian drones, and not just commercial DJIs, but Orlans and Lancets, then that could decisively swing the artillery war in their favour.
Similarly, having a VLO/LO VTOL AA and long range precision strike capability will give Russia massive headaches.
But NATO won’t provide these, since there is a good chance they will be captured by the Russians eventually.
