[spetznaz]

It will not be that easy even with systems like the Trophy (which is quite the system. Israel, together with Russia and the US, have been exploring various hard and soft kill systems to protect their tanks, particularly since in the perennial war between weapon and armor the weapon has been having the upper hand for quite some time now. Not even the Leopard 2, Challenger 2 or Abrams are invulnerable). What a system like Trophy does is protect the tank from dual-warhead modern anti-tank missiles. The system works (and not just the Israeli one but also the Russian one, and the US has been testing some concepts that also show promise - if they are not cancelled).

The PROBLEM is that the 'war' between weapon and armor (whether the 'armor' is rolled homogenized steel, chobham armor, ERA packs, or a hard-kill system like Trophy) is that the weapon immediately starts to evolve as well. Already Russia is showing a concept whereby the missile fired releases a small 'micro-missile' ahead of it, which is intercepted by the hard kill system, enabling the 'main' missile to impact the tank! You pick a stick, I wear leather, you make a sword, I wear chain mail, you invent the bow, I wear plate mail, you invent a gun, I build a tank, you build a missile, etc etc etc etc. The war between weapon and armor goes on.

Furthermore, even without the new missile designs, the Trophy system can be saturated. It may intercept one Kornet missile, but what if four are launched at the same time? The cost of a Kornet is far far far less than the cost of a Merkava. Or, if I was in charge of guerilla tactics against Merkavas in an urban environment (one of the worst places for a Main Battle Tank), I would have 5 chaps with RPG-7s and two chaps operating Kornets. Have the 5 guys fire the RPGs, and a moment later the Kornets are fired. I'd bet doughnuts that the Merkava, if not killed, is definitely out of commission.

[Eye of Unk]

Thats a good rendition of what I see, Israel has been always ahead of offensive weaponry, to me I always think of the Uzi when I hear of Israel.
There is nothing wrong with a continuous involvement of technology, what is wrong is when a leader of a nation decides to shut such research down and to create policies of surrender.

Through history its often wars and preparing for wars that allow a nation to expand and grow.Britain ruled the seas until the steel clad monitors arrived, who knows what the next great advancement in offensive weapons will be, my first hopeful guess will be miniature guided bullets, or smart urban drones with adaptive camouflage that will hunt down terrorists in any location.

We have the the resources to build smart bullets, we have them in certain aspects already with distance timed spin fuzing but what is need now is literally steerable bullets, or micro miniature cruise missiles.