alanch90

Well, even if we don´t know the deatils of where the tanks ended up, we know they haven´t been scrapped. So including the 4Ms from the former 847th this is the total number I came up with. (momentarily I´m counting all tanks from the 847th as in active service and didn´t include Caracal´s tank company yet) BTW perhaps the company from the Caracal Btn got Mk.4 from the 4th reserve Bde which in turn may have replaced them with former 847th´s Mk.4M.

Yes I check mostly the hebrew version for info. But theres some funny things. Both the 188th and the 7th are stated to use the model 400, thats...curious because the model 400 was unveiled very recently. On the other hand, the 188th is also claimed to have not 3 but 4 Btns, the latter (Btn 275) being the reserve Btn and its 4M tanks were previously from the 847th, so there is a solution to the mistery. Could it be also that the other active Bdes got a 4th Btn with tanks from the former 847th? https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/חטיבה_188

I´m counting 12 bdes (including 460th) and at 96 tanks per brigade. You sure it should be 90? I thought that that Btn commander and XO get their own tanks, making a total of 96 per Bde. If so I´m getting a total of 1080: 420 Mk.4 and 660 Mk.3. That Battalion thats it being reopened, was it part of 847th? If so, its using some of its Mk.4?

I count a total of 480 Mk.4 of the various models and 704 Mk.3, so its close to 1/3 of the total (so its still a mistery what became of the 847th´s tanks?). And its gonna take almost another decade until the 3 active units get Baraks and the 4M cycle to reserve, making 2/3 of the fleet Mk.4. I´m not saying that the rate is slower than it should but Mk.4 took a long time to get here. The program had many obstacles in the late 90s and early 2000s. I remember that there were reports of Bibi wanting to kill the whole Merkava program and buy Abrams instead. In 2006, Mk.4 were extremely scarce but only after that war the political side decided to reinvest in the Merkava program for real. Same could be said for the decision to adopt Trophy en masse (only tank fleet in the world to have that many APS). However its clear that the tank fleet isn´t the priority they used to be decades ago, which is not the same as saying that tanks have been neglected. Its understandable given the kind of wars Israel fights. One would think that after 20 years, Mk.4 would make up the bulk of the fleet, including reserves (but yes, in general the whole reserve system has been neglected in favor of having very limited but extremely well equipped active units, thats why it took that long for IDF to organize the current ground maneuver).

All three. Its understandable given the context and potential war scenarios. But truth is that theres been a steady decline in the amount of tank units over the last decades while newer units are usually infantry/commando with heavy emphasis on technology. The 888th unit is the best example of this trend/bias. Merkava 4 is a 20 years old tank and nowadays makes up only about 1/3 of IDF tank fleet.

I´m thinking about a module mounted atop the main structure and the side sensors then attack to it. Something like this: Means no extra turret roof surfice is required, no extra stuff gets in the way of other stuff, the thing takes advantage of the motor and stabilizers already in place, etc. Slickest integration possible. If you know anyone at Elbit I´ll give you the details so they can send the paycheck We´ll see where this ends up. Because until now I get the impression that tanks themselves haven´t been that big of a priority for IDF and someday in X decades we´ll have export T-14 rolling around Syria.

So I take that Golani and Givati can be considered "Mechanized Infantry Bdes" while Nahal and Kfir would be "Motorized/Medium Inf Bdes". That leaves 1 active tank brigade without its mechanized infantry counterpart, right? When it comes to task organizing combat teams, you said that it gets its name after the infantry bde part of the team (and I guess its commanded by the infantry brigade commander). If that combat team was task organized to face a conventional enemy with tanks, it would be named after the tank brigade? True, but it could be way better. Because at that position it can´t cover the rear- right side aspect because its obstructed by Trophy and the turret bustle. Thats why I argue for 2 at this positions: Even more, given the design of COAPS, a module with an RCWS may be integrated into it relatively easy. That would be a super slick solution. If vibrations are a problem, then use a Negev LMG instead of a Mag. Since COAPS can be slaved to the TC head movements, it could allow crazy fast reactions with the RCWS. I´m thinking something along the lines of Rheinmetall StrikeShield, which integrates into a single module the reactive armor, sensors (with the lowest electronic footprint supposedly) and hard kill efector. Israel could develop something like that relatively easy and I´m imagining those modules replacing the current Merkava 4 side skirts and can even be placed at the weakened LFP and the back of the hull. Well, Gaza is a pretty contained environmet. The drone threat will be in a whole different scale if used in Lebanon, because IDF sensor coverage inevitably will be a lot worse because of distance and mountains. Tanks should at least carry organic drone sensors to then shoot them down with RCWS or APS. Or take for example FPV drones which by some miracle Hamas isn´t using. Imagine those things flying around streets and covers with tandem warheards, it would be a disaster (and the only solution would be wide permanent area jamming which in turn you say isn´t ideal for IDF). I´m not sure if Trophy radars are tuned to find them since they fly so much slower than traditional ATGMs. AFAIK this and Ukraine war are reviving the interest on tanks proper and moving military away from the super tech gadget infantry bias. The only possible next step in tank development for the israeli design school is going for an unmanned turret. The technology developed for Barak clears the path for going there, solves most of the problems associated with having an unmanned turret. I have only 2 questions regarding an israeli unmanned turret mounting a tank gun: When it will be unveiled and what platform will carry it? Regarding the latter, I believe that if IDF wants to keep 4 men crews for doctrinal reasons, it will mount it on a modified Merkava 4 hull and call it Merkava 5. Otherwise, if they want to go with 2 or 3 crewmen, they´ll use the Carmel platform and that will be the end of the Merkava series. MANTAK should hire me.

Meaning that an entire Bde can be equipped with new tanks over 3 years. If so, there will be a lot of Merkava 4 and 4M freed up for reserve units over the next decade. Even so, there are 8 reserve tank Bdes., 5 of them with Merkava 3. AFAIK, the 847th, which was disbanded recently was equipped with Mk.4 (or wwhere them 4M?), don´t know what happened with these tanks. The 4th ´Kiryati´ has older Mk.4. So, if Barak production will be 3 Bdes, 3 reserve Bdes can switch to Mk4M/"Model 400". In other words, 10 years from now the tank fleet will be composed of: - 3 Active Bdes with Barak - 3 Reserve Bdes with Mk.4M - 1 Reserve Bde with Mk.4 - 4 Reserve Bdes with Mk.3 (these should get some upgrade though) These would free up 4 brigades worth of Merkava 3s, which again can be recycled and converted into pseudo Namers or whatever else is needed. By the way, currently the Namers are part of the tank or infantry brigades? What units will be equiped with Eitan? Yes I´ve seen the concept art. Still, the 3 Baraks we´ve seen don´t have any RCWS (and neither smoke grenades nor the internal mortar). It should have at least 1 RCWS with very high elevation capable to shoot down drones hovering over the tank. But ideally, there should be 2 RCWS: one can be integrated with the new CITV and another one in the back-right of the turret, just back of the TC hatch. Why 2? Because the current Trophy screens are an obstacle to the coverage of a single RCWS. Also 2 RCWS allow all of the turret crew to engage targets coming from various angles, which is critical in ambush situations (again, Oct 7th lessons). This combined with the augmented situational awareness should produce good results. There is an absolute minimum reaction time (apart from the system detecting, processing and calculating interception angles) due to the launcher being oriented towards a threat, distributed systems are mechanically simpler (no moving parts) and don´t have a "mechanical delay", hence being better suited for very close range interceptions, so a combination of APS may be ideal to deal with different situations. On the other hand, Trophy should be modified to eliminate the blindspot on top of the tank. Perhaps an extra radar can be added facing upwards together with a 3rd launcher, like on AbramsX. The drones are more a sensor problem, because they are so hard to detect. In Ukraine, Ukrainian and Russian soldiers carry commercial man portable drone radio frequency detectors, so that gives them the heads up to start looking to the sky and trying to listen for nearby drones. IDF can come up with something more dedicated to mount on tanks, and ideally connected to a soft kill (jammer) while having a hard kill and high elevation RCWS as back ups. This resolves the drone problem, and the weight penalty shouldn´t be too much. Gaza Hamas drone footage is particularly scarce, I guess this is because of heavy IDF electronic warfare in place, but Lebanon/Hezbollah would be a lot harder to deal with if tanks don´t have ways to deal with drones themselves. I´m collecting most of the propaganda footage coming from both sides. So far I have 12 videos published by Hamas consisting of compilations of succesful ambushes on IDF units. Most of these videos have at least 1 (but most of them, several) succesful ambush on isolated AFVs (that resulting in AFV destruction/damage is another issue, Hamas never shows a succesfully destroyed/burning AFV). All succesful ambushes on AFVs rely on no infantry providing security to the AFV in question. So, granted this is like focusing on the tree instead of the forest, there are still numerous situations showing insuficient coordination.

Do you happen to know if Barak tanks will be newly built or mostly upgraded Merkava 4? Because if its the latter, theres going to be a good number of Merk 4 FCS components lying around collecting dust. Perhaps IDF should explore the option of transplanting them to reserve Merkava 3 (and updating its armor modules as well). In light of the experience of Oct 7th, the Barak upgrade seems to me "not enough", at the very least the APS needs some changes to address the super short range engagement and the drone threat and the tank should get added an RCWS. On the other hand, the turreted Namer IFV should be revived for the active units while Merkava 2 hulls can be converted to Namer-like APCs/IFVs for the reserve ones. Perhaps an organizational change should take place as well. We´ve seen too many instances of insuficient tank-infantry coordination, perhaps it comes down to infantry and tanks belonging to entirely separated brigades (but forming ad-hoc mixed combat teams). Pretty much every other maneuver capable army in the world has organic infantry for tank units and viceversa, perhaps IDF should do the same, switching from brigades with 3 single arm battalions to a 2:1 composition. This can be done by having Nahal, Givati and Golani each donating a single infantry battalion to 188th, 7th and 401st and receiving from them a single tank battalion in return and the same for the reserves. This way, the tank units would have organic infantry riding on Namers and infantry units could use mainly Eitan APCs.

Not Vacuum per se but 2A82 is reported to achieve that muzzle energy. Its completly possible that given the likely weight of this rod, the velocity doesn´t exceed what is achieved by Svinets fired from 2A46 (1660 m/s) but I wouldn´t discard at all much higher velocities in the 1750 m/s range either. After all, 2A82 is just a 152mm gun (APFSDS were claimed to be fired from it at velocities higher than 1900 m/s) scaled to 125mm. Also I guess that the enlarged dimensions of the projectile produce less drag and hence less velocity loss over distance. All in all, likely impact velocities at combat ranges (assuming muzzle velocity anywhere between the 1650-1750 m/s range) produce a penetration performance well above 800mm of steel.

This is mine. One very useful thing on Fig.1 is that the bottom end of the penetrator is clearly marked (4 represents the begining of the cavity for the tracer). To estimate how far the penetrator reaches into the ballistic tip, I used a CAD model from a few years ago, which you published on your website as well. The resemblance between the CAD model and the drawings on the patent is very telling. For the rod width, I made a separate estimation based on Fig.2 which is a top down, clearer cutaway. Fig.1 Fig.2 CAD model To sum up. Projectile total length 867.5mm Penetrator length 775mm Penetrator width 25.5mm This is the bigger charge shown last year (in orange): I´m 99 percent sure its Vacuum.

Was about to point this out, the patent says so. While outwardly it resembles svinets, especially the ballistic tip (and not enough is theorized about that tip BTW), this is a way bigger projectile. I estimate it to 860mm of total length, with a penetrator of 775x25.5mm. The patent deals mostly with the sabot because "previous designs" (Svinets?) we having inadmisible dispersion when fired with higher energies. The new sabot design produced an improvement of 16 percent less dispersion compared to the prototypes. *edit: this said, I think its fair to refer to this round as an "upscaled Svinets" with a different sabot to compensate for the difference in energies involved. Both the dimensions of the projectile and the mention of higher energy to me suggest almost unequivocally the Vacuum series of APFSDS. I recall that at last year´s Army Forum, ammunition mock ups for Armata were displayed and among them a main propellant charge that is 25 percent longer than traditional 125mm propellant charges (500mm vs 400mm). Now what remains to be known is the muzzle velocity of this thing. 2A82 produces significantly higher muzzle energy than past 125mm main guns, question is if that energy is only enough to maintain a velocity compared to rounds like Svinets or if shoots faster. I think that in 2 years from now at most, Vacuum will be displayed at Army Forum just like Svinets was with good mockups and specifications.

Thats exactly what I was about to point. Given the record low readiness rate of the units around Gaza, its not impossible that the systems weren´t getting as much maintenance they needed.

Thats because its no RCV. Its a concept for M1E3 maskirovking as RCV. Either that or RCV program has been absorbed into M1E3 just like with OMT or the various names it had through the years.

Is that an RCWS replacing the old commander´s MG? If so, its another element that its not present yet on the real life samples.