Posted on 06/26/2025 8:40:16 AM PDT by daniel1212
In a devastating IED attack in Khan Yunis, Gaza, seven IDF combat engineers were killed when terrorists exploited vulnerabilities in Israel’s Puma armored vehicle. The incident exposes critical flaws in the APC’s defenses, raising urgent questions about battlefield preparedness as asymmetric warfare escalate....
The attack’s ease is infuriating. IEDs, crafted from scavenged explosives and triggered by cell phones or timers, are stealthy and simple to attach, likely slapped onto the Puma’s underbelly or flank, its weakest armored points, during a crowd or brief halt. The Puma’s design lacks add-on defenses like slat ("cage") armor, leaving it vulnerable to shaped charges or explosively formed penetrators (EFPs), tactics refined by insurgents from Iraq to Gaza. These charges, echoing WWII’s German Hafthohlladung, pierce armor with terrifying precision, turning a halted vehicle into a fireball. This wasn’t luck; it was a calculated slaughter exploiting a known gap....
when a fighter jet drops a bomb near a force, the soldiers are required to enter armored vehicles to avoid being hit by shrapnel or debris from the airstrike. ...And that was how they tragically met their end.
While the soldiers were inside the Puma armored vehicle, a terrorist emerged, approached the vehicle, and within a matter of seconds climbed onto the Puma...
[excerpt] The Puma, developed by Israel Military Industries and assembled by IDF Ordnance since the early 1990s, is built on the hull of the Sho’t, a modified British Centurion tank. Weighing 50 tons, it stretches 7.55 meters long and 3.38 meters wide (without side skirts), standing 2.75 meters high, with a crew capacity of up to 10. Powered by an AVDS-1790-6A engine delivering 900 hp, it hits 43 km/h cross-country. Armed with three 7.62 mm FN MAG machine guns (one in a Rafael Overhead Weapon Station), a 60 mm Soltam mortar, and two TAAS IS-6 smoke grenade launchers, it’s a versatile beast.
The Germans were impressed with our ‘bazooka’. So much so that they made their own, the ‘panzerschreck’ (tank terror).
Earlier in the war they joked, “Why don’t Amis put bazooka cannons on their Sherman tanks?”
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