The Merkava 4 MBT

[kevin]

FYI to all......

The US Army brought back infantry on tank tactics for Iraqi Freedom. A brigade of 101st troopers were attached to the 3rd Mechanized Infantry Division. During the assault through the Karbala Gap, fireteams (4 soldiers) were assigned to each tank. The terrain was suburban, no tall buildings, but enough infrastructure to be concerned. Each soldier lay prone at the tank's corners, behind sandbags. The TC and Loader were on their MGs, the gunner used the coax in a limited front field of attack.

Someone mentioned it would be suicide for the infantry if someone with an RPG struck or an MBT was encountered. Well...... yes. You only use these tactics when the chance of an encounter with enemy MBTs is very low. As far as RPGs, the tanks carry Infantry to add 360 degree immediate response fire, and RPG launchers show up like a sore thumb on TI sites.

[loktarr]

Each soldier lay prone at the tank's corners, behind sandbags. The TC and Loader were on their MGs, the gunner used the coax in a limited front field of attack.

I didn't understand, could the turret move or not?

[kevin]

Yes the turret could move, but they limited the movement to a 20-30 degree angle or so. It was a neat trick, I was suprised to see it done. As far as I knew, the Army had not been practicing that sort of thing. Then again, it's not too hard to grab some sandbags and hang-on.

I wonder if this was done in response to the heavy helo casualties the US took when they 1st entered the Karbala Gap? An air assault landing was out of the question to they found other ways to make the 101st mobile?

[Shadowcougar]

Well the tanks needed inf support. The 101 has a lot of inf.

[Backis]

JaM said:
Backis:
1.I was not talking about reality,My priority is make OOB as much accurate as it gets. In SP game rear hit often immobilize target.(side hits too, but not as often,side hits make more kills than rear hits).Merkavas in game if hit in rear are immobilized, and this is not real.

Fair enough...

But to reach reasonable consensus on what is accurate representaion in the game, we must reach reasonable consensus on what interpretation of reality thats supposed to be represented in the first place, no?

I'd say that a vast majority of "real" MK's are track related rather than engine related, I'd hold the designs difference due to front or rear mounted engines as pretty much irrelevant to in-game handling of mobility damage.

I'd play around with the games handling of the survivability trait instead.

Oh, the Merkava entered service in 1979, the M1 Abrams in 1980, calling the Abrams "inferior by age" is bit off... Eventhough the IV is mightily improved it shares layout with earlier marks and isn't "magically" better. Armour mass is increased, but it still need to be more distributed due to the percieved need to have better allround protection.

[Backis]

loktarr said:
I think that this rear door must be a really good to fire at for a RPG bearer, it musst be quite unarmored...

***-protection ain't that hot for any MBT, if there is a door there or not, you're pretty much toast if you let them shoot you up the rear.

I'm not a specialist but the turret seems to be a good "shell trap", I mean when a shell did hit the tank on the top hull or end of the turret, he can slide and hit at the jointing point of the turret and the hull. That's not good, german had this problem with the Panther A during WW2 and added in D a little steel protection over the hull. This is the same problem with Leopard, but Challenger and M1A2 don't have this problem...

Long-rod penetrators doesn't really richochet, its not really a problem having "shot traps" against APFSDS.

[Backis]

PlasmaKrab said:
Got it, just dug out the reference.

The book is FM 7-8 "Infantry Rifle Platoon and Squad", 04/22/1992, chapter2, section 2-47 "riding on armored vehicles".

I DLed it long ago from the Army library website, which has much changed since, so I don't know if you can still get it from there.

You got it in digital format?

Would you be interested in sharing?



ulven@chello.se

[JaM]

Merkava Mk3 is complete new tank.But even Merkava Mk1 had better design than Abrams for purposes that israel needs.Abrams is grat tank for WW3 war, but it is not as good as merkava in golan or sinai.Both tanks were build with experience from 1973 Yom Kippur war in mind, but M1 Abrams was much more attack tank and Merkava was suposed to defend.M1 has superior mobility, same firepower and standard protection against KE and good against CE. Merkava Mk1 had very good frontal protection (front turret was quite strong,unpenetrable for late 70s early 80s APFSDS direct hit).Engine in front made Front hull unpenetrable for all CE weapons of late 70s and early 80s,due to compromising mobility.
Merkava Mk4 has most modern passive armor.If you look at Leopard 2A6 front turret addon armor rised protection from 650-700mm KE to 950-1100mm KE.But this layout is 10 years old(2A5)Merkava mk4 has layout from year 2000, so there must be adleast minor improvement in technology.
Biggest weakness of Abrams (in early 80s it wasnt weakness but strongpoint...) is glacis armor. 83° degree is enogh for deflecting all non-precise HEAT warheads and sheated APFSDS rounds, but it is not enough now. Most ATGMs have not problems with it.Even RPG-29 could easily penetrate it.All modern APFSDS will penetrate it from quite great range (BM-42M could do 600mm at 2000m...)
Merkava Mk4 could face Egyptian M1A1 tanks armed with KEW-A1 APFSDS (590mm at 2000m)or new KEW-A2 (660mm at 2000m), so its front hull and turret could handle it. Autotracker and Firecontrol system gives quite good bonus against M1A1.(Same thing works against Jordanian Challengers)

[loktarr]

Long-rod penetrators doesn't really richochet, its not really a problem having "shot traps" against APFSDS.

I don't know, because I readed that during WW2 the shell who does 'ricochet' where the german tungstene penetrators, against flat inclinated armors...
Are you sure about what you said?

[Backis]

loktarr said:

I don't know, because I readed that during WW2 the shell who does 'ricochet' where the german tungstene penetrators, against flat inclinated armors...

Nobody used APFSDS in WW2. Closest thing was spin-stabilized APDS, which couldn't be stabilized at nearly the same L/D ratio.

loktarr said:Are you sure about what you said?

I applied an oversimplified absolute, which is always a bad idea...

Complaining about JaM doing just this and then doing it myself is a sign of dumbarseness, so I'd better start to think about what the hell I'm writing... especially in areas where I'm barely a semi-enlightened amateur, if that...

Sorry, I only meant to say that I think the problem I responded to isn't that big or relevant. A lot of engineers with fancy titles designing armour does seem to believe that creating shot-traps isn't a big deal, I don't think they're just stupid (I reserve that comment for myself) and "forgot" about it. Long-rod penetrator structural failure/breakup will probably occur before it being deflected so much it will be a threat to the deck hull or turret ring, but most likely it will be embedded in the front turret armour.

However, I'll indulge myself and writing down what I've come to believe so far...

The inertial stability of high length to diameter (L/D) ratio penetrators makes ricochet yaw practically irrelevant when applying the ricochet effect on armour penetration unless we're talking very extreme angles. At lower angles the effect will be to small to significantly affect the penetrator. This is of course varied relative to the exact constitution of penetrator and armour material.

Still, long-rods most likely will not bounce off, and the armour need to be strong enough not to simply be overmatched.

So, simplified and unabsolute, I think that unless at extreme angles, LOS increase by angled armour will likely be more relevant to protection against long-rods than angle induced ricochet.

Angle-induced yaw short of a ricochet is probably still desirable though, since the increased stress put on the penetrator may cause it to fail structurally and break up.