B-52's and iron bombs are an effective countermeasure to this.
Interesting read. Syria is the problem.
Hez anti-tank missles? Where's the factory they make them in?
Israel had this problem in the Yom Kipper war when they were not prepared for the Egyptian anti-tank, anti-aircraft weapons that the Egyptians had and misused her tanks, sending them in without proper infantry support.
The sooner Israeli armor is destroyed the sooner Damascus and Terhan evaporate.
It's also interesting how the BBC tries so obviously to spin this into making it sound like this is a "weakness" that keeps the Israelis from being effective against Hezbollah.
Hezbollah took higher casualties in most every battle. They were able to kill rather small numbers of IDF members through guerrilla tactics and then fleeing and using civilians for cover, however Israel won every engagement and even though Hezbollah had the home field advantage, the advantage of using civilians for cover and the advantage of booby trapping many areas beforehand their effectiveness against the IDF was minimal.
The Israeli government hampered the IDF by allowing them to only use relatively small ground forces, and overly restricting where they could go.
Under those horribly unbalanced rules of engagement which gave immense artificial advantages to Hezbollah, the IDF still could not be stopped or contained, and won every battle.
It doesn't matter how successful the IDF is, or how ineffective Hezbollah is. The BBC and similar groups will always spin things to indicate that the IDF is ineffective and comitting atrocities, and Hezbollah is achieving their goals and that Israel is somehow to blame for whatever harm befalls anyone in the conflict.
The BBC should pay more attention to one of the spoken rules of modern warfare. When a force must fight to defend themselves, the level of civilian casualties that are considered acceptable is mostly dependent on how much risk the rules of engagement create for those fighting under them.
If Hezbollah shows itself to be a viable threat to the IDF because of RPGs, Israel will be forced to re-evaluate it's rules of engagement, and do more to clear areas before moving into them.
When Israeli tanks have little to fear, Israel can much more easily afford to root out Hezbollah on the ground.
If Hezbollah is effective at taking out those tanks, Israel must then do much more to reduce or remove that threat before moving in.
It is the civilians that are going to suffer.
So maybe the BBC should quit telling the Israelis that they can't afford to continue to be so cautious in their targeting, because that is what they are telling them.
Hezbollah hasnt created sh*t...it is Russian and Chinese technology.
In Iraq our armour improvised shields that would absorb the first charge, making the second break against the armour.
So it would seem that those who advised Olmert NOT to rush into Lebanon with heavy armor, as Israel had done so well in the past, saved a lot of IDF lives and equipment. Hezbollah and Iran claim a victory never-the-less, but they gotta be disappointed.
Good thing that the Jewish supporters of Israel here are so hep on Russia. That ought to serve to give Russia a bye.
The reactive armor needs to be modified, to deflect in skewed fashion, than radially outwards. That way the second tandem charge, while surviving the reactive explosion, will get turned up, and essentially will fire its slug of hot metal...off target.
The Merkava is an Excellent armoured vehicle.
The problem is the way that Israel was using them in this conflict.
Tanks need Infantry for support, you do not send tanks alone into a war zone, because they will be hit with antitank rockets etc from enemy infantry. You need infantry to back up the tanks and to take out the enemy foot soldiers that would take out the tanks. Those soldiers are not nearly as mobile as lightly armed infantry, and therefore are easily taken out by lightly armed infantry.
Also, Hezbollah was launching these rockets from 3 to 5 story buildings, when firing down on a tank, you are hitting some of it's lightest armor, and will take it out, because a tank is built to take on other tanks on the same horizontal plane, and from the front.
A tank is an offensive weapon, it's heaviest armour is on the front, and the front of the turret. Hitting it from above, or from behind, will take the tank out, because it takes much lighter munitions to do it.
A tank cannot be armoured all the way around, it would be unable to move, some wieght restriction are inherent in the dsign, therefore, the heaviest armor will be where it will most likely be hit in offensive operations by other tanks.
The merkava is one of the most advanced tanks in the world, but it does have some weak points, as do all tanks.