Metis-M & Kornet AT Missiles vs. Merkava Tanks

PlasmaKrab · #3 September 15th, 2006, 04:17 AM

The whole story sounds strange in many aspects.
No one could confirm that the Hizballah had either Kornets or Metis or both; there have been some rumors about Kornet crates being found out in Lebanon with markings like "From: KBp Tula/ To: Syrian Ministry of Defence", but I have yet to see evidence of that.
The Russian government seems eager to crack down on anyone smuggling advanced weaponry into Lebanon (including Syria), but then again, try and check if they do.

On the other hand, one feather in the cap of the Hizballah PR planners (if I may use the term) is the relentless exploiting of the technico-military cluelessness of the average journalist.
When they say "tank" destroyed, you have to understand "armored vehicle of any kind", if not "truck". As far as I know, in the early weeks of the ground "offensive", the Hizballah claimed 4 Israeli tanks, and every journalist googled for Israeli tanks, hit Merkava 4 and merrily concluded to the vulnerability of the invincible Tsahal etc.
From Israeli sources, it turned out that of the four disabled vehicles, one was a Centurion-converted APC (hard to beat but still one generation too old), one was a T-62-retrofit Tiran (no comment), and only two were early, non-uparmored Merkava-2s. This version of the Merkava was about as much 'best tank of the world' back in 1988 than the M1A1 and Leopard2A4 were back then.

Also, on the final day, it turned out that a majority of the tanks that were disabled in the field could be fixed in under-division echelon workshops.

So, much bad planning on the IDF side, much clever boasting from the Hizballah, and you have unneeded deaths and the now-classical 'guerilla victory'.

The Hizballah made extensive use of their ATGMs, including Syrian Milans, Konkurs and Fagot, and apparently some TOWs (Iranian oldies?). They also used scores of old MCLOS AT-3 Sagger/Malutka as bunker-busters against occupied buildings.

For more detail here, there should be a couple of threads in the TOEs subforum about a possible Hizballah OOB.