The website Defence Blog has some interesting posts on the war in Gaza. As far as I can determine, the site is run by a Ukrainian defense analyst, but it doesn’t appear to be primarily a propaganda organ for Ukraine.
It reports that Hamas launched kamikaze drones against Israel:
Palestinian militant group Hamas has released a short video of an improvised attack drone, also known as a kamikaze drone, launched during a Saturday morning surprise attack on Israel.
The 22-second-long video posted on Sunday by the militant group to social media shows several launch sites of improvised kamikaze drones hiding in the resident building and storage facilities.
The Izzedine al Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, claimed on Sunday that they launched more than 25 kamikaze drones, including Al-Zawari wing-type, that destroyed Israeli targets, including vehicles and equipment.
I’d never heard of Al-Zawari kamikaze drones until I read the above report. The videos mentioned seem to be mostly on Twitter, but I found this one on YouTube:
See the original post for the Twitter links.
The same site has this report on high-tech Israeli tanks that have been captured by Hamas:
Israel’s tank with Trophy system fell into hands of Hamas militants
Israel’s most advanced operational tank, equipped with a Trophy active protection system, has been captured by Hamas militants.
As Israeli troops continue fighting in various locations and special forces and taking control and cleaning some areas, the first footages of abandoned and captured modern Merkava and Namer combat vehicles have emerged.
Multiple videos of abandoned Merkava Mk4 main battle tank and Namer heavy armored personnel carrier have been published on social media.
The vehicles were left by soldiers behind at their positions along the border during a surprise offensive by the Palestinian militant group Hamas that began on Saturday morning.
[…]
The newest Merkava Mk4 and Namer armored personnel carrier had a modern Trophy active protection system. The countermeasure system combines a radar with launchers that shoot a burst of metal pellets, akin to a large shotgun, to destroy incoming anti-tank rockets and missiles.
I know nothing about these matters. I’m hoping that people with expertise in military hardware will expand on this topic in the comments.
Probably that technology is already on its way to Moscow for dissection and reverse engineering via Iran.
It doesn’t sound like anything too revolutionary though.
Tanks are most vulnerable to attacks that target the top of the tank or from underneath the hull; both locations tend to have much thinner armor. Most of the ATGMs and drones use shaped-charge warheads that are able to pierce the armor in these locations relatively easily. Russian tanks use bricks of reactive armor that are basically explosive blocks that detonate outwards in response to being hit by the jet of vaporized metal formed by a shaped charge, thus breaking up and dissipating the jet before it can cut into the armor of the hull.
This technology led to the strategy of tandem shaped charges, and the countermeasure of multiple layers of explosive reactive armor to defeat them.
Drones are dangerous because they are much cheaper to produce and operate than ATGMs, and can loiter over a battlefield waiting for a vehicle to expose itself. They have been around for decades in very small numbers but the current conflict in Ukraine has led to them being produced and used in the thousands. The Russian electronic countermeasures are far ahead of the West’s so while Ukraine can be supplied with drones, they are relatively easily defeated by Russian anti-drone technologies which are already in widespread use on the battlefield.
The Israeli system sounds like a point-defense type of technology which is intended to target drones in the terminal phase, and thus are the equivalent of reactive armor rather than a system designed to electronically knock the drones out of the sky before it can approach close enough to enter the terminal phase of its attack.
As far as the Merkava goes, it is an unusual tank design which is weighted towards armor and crew survivability at the expense of mobility, speed, and profile height. It is a very large tank, partly because it is also designed to carry a squad of infantry in the rear compartment where the engine and transmission would traditionally be located. Instead, these items are located ahead of the driver at the very front of the tank behind an already thick layer of armor so from frontal attack its a very difficult proposition to penetrate the hull with traditional armor-piercing rounds or more exotic depleted uranium sabot-type rounds.
The Israelis discovered several decades ago that just having powerful tanks doesn’t make them effective in urban combat, where they were easily defeated by militants firing at them from all angles and scoring mobility kills even if they couldn’t pierce the interior. Tanks are still very effective when used correctly, but persistent kamikaze drones and urban environments make their use very problematic for armies with doctrinal blinders; which is just about every western army these days.
I have little interest in this dustup, but it should make Americans question whether their security can be guaranteed. Having come from that community I can assure it is an important question.
Seems like Israel and the USA both have problems keeping their southern borders free of infiltrators!
My hope is that, as a result of this event, more people will start acknowledging that Europe is in deep trouble from having allowed in so many Muslim immigrants.
I’m not sure capturing the tanks is anything but a psychological victory. How many are undamaged? It’s doubtful these tanks can operate for long without ammo resupply, spare parts and maintenance facilities. Does Hamas have anyone qualified to operate such tanks to a modern battle standard? Also, the low number of captured tanks doesn’t make them a significant asset against the mobilised IDF that knows its capabilities and weaknesses intimately. If the announced ruthlessness of the ground offensive will be as described then Trophy or no Trophy, these captured tanks will not provide any kind of advantage.
The captured tank does three things. First, it taught the locals that they can take a tank, second it is demoralizing to the IDF, and third armies try to keep stuff secret to preserve what they feel is an advantage.
Those Jew thanks are useless for Hamas..
They are equipped with preventive safety futures to not start a engine..
not to mention to have necessary skills to use them..
Very sophisticated war hardware..
It is somewhat ironic that exported Israeli kamikaze drones together with Turkish exported drones greatly assisted the Azerbaijani military destroy Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020. Now they can begin to understand the catastrophy that was inflicted on these Armenians then and much more recently. “What goes around comes around.”
Yeah, it’s dumbfounding, isn’t it? Almost like the Merkava was being offered up as a sacrificial lamb like we see being done in Ukraine. In fact this is most likely what was done. Israel is the Alamo, and the rallying cry has effectively unified the West against Hamas, Hezbollah, and their masters, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Notice you hear and read people foisting the narrative of this is Israel’s 911? Because yes this was allowed to happen. In fact it was facilitated in order for it to happen. IDF withdrawal from any close proximity to GAZA some time ago. 15,000 work visas given to Gaza residents a year ago to facilitate infiltrators penetrating Israel’s towns and villages.
The Trophy and Iron Fist active protection system should’ve protected the Merkava unless it had been turned off or broken. Most importantly all it had to do to defeat this top attack with a drone carrying a mortar round was to keep moving. But is stayed still long enough for it to be destroyed. Inexperienced crew? Was there even a crew inside? Or was this a drone tank?
Anyhoo for you uninformed you should know Ukraine is Magog of Ezekiel 38 and 39. Persia is Iran that now has massive forces in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Georgia and Armenia are the stepping stones for the Magog move to the south, and y’all can read the rest in the Book of Ezekiel. Or don’t and get swept along in what is just another cause for their next escalation in WWIII which they began back in 2019.
“We’re already in World War 3. We are already in conflict that extends so far beyond Ukraine, actually, even within the context of Western Europe but we’ve clearly been pretty much at war in space, uh below the surface of the oceans, submarine warfare between super powers, uh, I’d even say this has been happening for at least four years, [since 2019] and it’s spilled over into public view on the ground, uh, but we don’t “frame” it that way.” ~ Philippa “Pippa” Malmgren (Economist, Former U.S. Presidential Advisor) statement at the 2022 World Government Summit in Dubai.