Lebanon 2006
by Lt. Col David Eshel (IDF retired)
from Tank Magazine December 2006
Lebanon 2006
by Lt. Col David Eshel (retired)
from Tank Magazine December 2006
Merkava Mark IV
The Merkava Mk IV is the very latest version of Merkava (Chariot) and as with
earlier models it armour and survivability
have been given very high priority. Fully operational since 2004, it has a
combat weight of 65 tonnes. Its front-mounted
1,500hp diesel engine is new, with an improved top speed and power-to-weight
ratio over the 1,200hp diesel that
powered the Mk III. The driver sits to the immediate front of the turret on the
left side (he has a camera for improved
reverse driving), the turret contains the rest of the crew and the 120mm
smoothbore gun (48 rounds carried) and a
coax MG, plus an internally mounted 60mm mortar. Additionally there is a
roof-mounted MG that can be fired by the
commander from under armour. The main gun has a new compressed gas recoil system
and a thermal sleeve. The
Tank Sight System (TST) provides video coverage of the surrounding terrain day
and night, through 360dgrees, via
four cameras in hardened cases. The Merkava Mk V is already under development
and it is thought to be armed with
a 140mm gun.
The Battle of Wadi Saluki
This battle will be remembered as one of the fiercest fights of
the second Lebanon War, one in which
Merkava IV proved its mettle in its first, but ultimate combat test.
It was during the push to the Litani River - a few hours before the UN-brokered
cease-fire went into effect - that a
column of Merkava tanks from 401 Armoured Brigade began crossing Wadi Saluki in
the face of fierce Hezbullah
resistance. The battle order described the canyon like Saluki as the "gateway to
the Litani river", an essential objective in the hurried sweep across southern
Lebanon placed before the brigade, before the cease-fire went into action- a
fateful
decision by the political decision-makers, which would have crucial
repercussions after the war.
Military experts criticised the "Battle of the Saluki" as a microcosm of all the
mistakes that were made during the war
in Lebanon. Soldiers waited for a week, like sitting ducks, for orders that were
twice received and twice cancelled, reflecting
a total lack of clarity and confidence within the General Staff, and the
political echelon directing the war.
Crossing the Saluki meant the troops and tanks had to climb a steep hill while
exposed to attack from mountains on
every side. Understanding the risk to his tanks, Brig-Gen Guy Zur, commander of
Division 162, deployed Nahal Brigade
infantrymen on the high ground outside the villages Andouriya and Farun, to
provide cover for the armoured
column advancing below.
Commanded by Colonel Moti Kidor, 401 Armoured Brigade Merkava tanks had been
waiting for the push to the
Litani for close to a week. Twice, they had received the word to go, but were
immediately ordered to stop, as soon as they
started rolling. At last, on August 11, just before 1500 hours, orders came, but
made no sense to the brigade staff: 'why
push to the Litani hours before the UN was set to approve a cease-fire? However,
orders were firm and by 20,00 Hours
the tanks began to move.
The problem was, that during the passing week Hezbullah fighters were waiting,
watching every step that Kidor's forces
made. Knowing the ground, the guerilla commanders realised that the only way
westward would have to cross the
steep wadi slopes, where they had deployed their advanced Russian-made AT- 14
Kornet anti-tank missiles en-masse in
excellent firing positions.
Hezbullah had prepared well for this kind of warfare. On 22 November 2005 when
Hezbollah attacked the village of
al-Ghajar in an attempt to capture IDF soldiers. The then commanding general Udi
Adam said in his after action report,
that " it was the first time that Hezbollah used its entire tactical arsenal",
revealing that one of his Merkava tanks
received no less than seven hits from different anti-tank missiles, none of
which penetrated its armour and all the crew
escaped unhurt. Iranian instructors had taken the al-Ghajar incident very
seriousely and reacted by sending antiarmour
specialists from Tehran to their training base located in the Lebanese Beka'a
valley. Iranian tank experts examined
Hezbollah video shots from the action at al-Ghajar, clearly displaying hits on
the Merkava tank, carefully studied these
displays by looking for "blind" spots in which Merkava could be vulnerable to
AT- 14 Kornet and RPG-29V fire, which they
wished to introduce in future engagements.
As the tanks started moving downhill into the Wadi, two tanks of the leading
company were immediately hit, one of
the tank commanders mortally wounded, caught in the sights of scores of Kornet
anti-tank missiles with their lethal tandem
laser-beam warheads penetrating the advanced armour of the Merkava Mk 4. It was
the first engagement this tank had
faced. A reserve commander rushed to the rescue with six tanks leading them to
climb up sheer slopes to the top of the
gorge, an ascent angle few other tanks, than Merkava Mk 4 could navigate. By now
all hell was breaking lose from the
high ground as hundreds of missiles were pouncing on the advancing tanks, now
moving up the far slope. In all. two
companies, some 24 tanks, participated in the operation. and 11 were hit by
anti-tank missiles.
The Hezbullah fighters were firing missile after missile from vantage
positions at the
vulnerable points in the armour. Tank commanders were frantically calling for
air and artillery support, but because of
the large number of Nahal infantrymen present, Northern Command refrained from
calling for assistance from artillery
or helicopter gunships, fearing to hit friendly forces. The tanks were left to
fend for themselves until they reached the top and
stormed the Hezbullah anti-tank positions. When this was achieved, the brigade
commander making his rounds, found
to his surprise, that in all, only four crewmen were killed, but scores wounded,
fortunately most of them suffering minor
wounds. Later summing up the battle of Saluki, Colonel Kidor
said that it had been "an unqualified triumph of his Merkava Mk 4. Had those
tanks been of an earlier generation, not
equipped with state-of-the-art technology and active self-protection mechanisms,
50 crewmen might well have perished",
the colonel emphasised with satisfaction.
Two rather remarkable incidents happened in the heat of battle and are worth
recounting: one Mk 4 tank was hit by a
tandem missile which penetrated into the rear compartment, hitting a stored HEAT
round setting it on fire, which activated
the automatic fire suppression system, but wounding two of the turret crew, who
were evacuated and replaced by a reserve crew - the tank then continued to
fight. Another tank had its main armament 120mm barrel blown off by a "lucky"
shot, but the crew managed to drive it back to the border, where a field
ordnance repair team exchanged the barrel and sent the tank back into battle
within hours.
An overall assessment of Merkava in the second Lebanon War
2006
Four types of Merkava tanks were in action in Lebanon 2006, including Merkava Mk
4, the Merkava Mk 2D (with its
distinctive sloped turret), the standard Mk2 (mostly with reserve units), and
Merkava Mk3 Baz.
Towards the end of the fighting, Brigadier General Halutzi Rodoi, the chief of
IDF Armoured Corps was asked to assess
the performance of his tank force and especially the lessons drawn from the
fighting against advanced anti-tank missiles
fired by Hezbollah on the coveted Merkava. Mk4, which saw its first combat
engagement in Lebanon. According to
General Rodoi, the Merkava proved to be well protected and designed to minimize
the risk even when it was penetrated.
The IDF employed several hundred tanks in combat. According to official reports,
about ten percent were hit by
various threats. Less than half of the hits penetrated. In over-all assessment,
the potential risk to crewmen would have
been much higher, if the tank had been of a conventional design. A colonel
commanding an armoured brigade which
bore the brunt of battle, mentioned in an interview that during the war that
hundreds of antitank missiles were fired on his
unit, and in total only 18 tanks were seriously damaged. Of those, missiles
actually penetrated only five or six vehicles and according to statistics, only
two tanks were totally destroyed, however, both by super-heavy IED charges.
The unique Merkava design uses special aims to minimize the risk of spall
(flakes coming off the inside of the turret), generated by the shaped charge
plasmajet. All Merkava types use fire retardant containers to store ammunition
preventing high-lethal secondary
explosions. Furthermore, tanks are equipped with rapid fire extinguishing system
that eliminates sympathetic detonation
of ammunition. As result, only few tanks encountered catastrophic fire hazards
after suffering penetrating missile attacks on ammunition, but substantially
reducing lethal burn casualties to crew members.
Some of the tanks, especially those outfitted with the LIC urban combat kit are
equipped with bottom hull plates to protect against heavy mines and belly
charges. Several Merkava tanks and heavy AFVs encountered a number of these
charges, some weighing over 150 kg. While heavily armoured vehicles can hardly
be expected to survive such an attack, the upgraded vehicle types demonstrated
effective protection for the crew, which, in some cases, even managed to survive
such attack with only minor injuries. In one instance, a Merkava tank was hit by
a belly charge weighing over 150kg of explosives, killing one crew member and
wounding the
remaining six., (some travelling in the rear compartment).
Despite the loss of one crew member, this incident is
considered proof of the effective protection of the new
Merkava 4. To reduce this threat the heavily armoured D-9
bulldozer was employed to precede the tanks over high-risk
tracks in order to cause IEDs to blow up with minimum
damage and clear the way for the following tanks.
The IDF Armoured Corps has traditionally invested
considerable effort in examining hit after-battle statistics on
its tanks, in order to establish new tactics and techniques.
The founder of this procedure was Major General Israel Tal,
"Father of the Merkava" and one of the leading tank experts
of worldwide recognition.
After the 1973 Yom Kippur War General Israel Tal led a
development team which took into consideration Israel's
unique battlefield characteristics and lessons learned from
previous wars. On General Tal's orders a special team of
experts examined every single tank hit, while still on the
battlefield and on the findings an in-depth investigation was
made to develop effective means for crew protection, which
formed the basis of the unique Merkava project. A similar
investigation team has already recorded all hits on tanks
received during the Lebanon crisis and a full report was made
available for further detailed assessment team of experts
which is already examining these reports in detail, in order to
make the necessary amendments without delay, pending
the resumption of the conflict, should the presently fragile
ceasefire fall apart.
Assessing Hezbollah anti-armour tactics and weapons
Hezbollah fighters used the heavier, more capable missiles,
including Metis M and AT- 14 Kornet to engage Merkava 4.
The Konkurs, Fagot and RPG-29 were mostly used against
less protected Merkava 3 and 2 while non-tandem weapons,
such as Tow, Fagot and RPG were left to engage other
targets, such as AIFV. The least used were AT-3 Sagger and
non tandem RPGs, which are considered obsolete, but
proved quite lethal against troops seeking cover in buildings.
Overall, almost 90% of the tanks hit were by tandem war-heads. In general, Hezbollah militants prioritized Merkava Mk
4 over Merkava Mk 2 and 3, and in general, targeted tanks
over AIFV. At the beginning of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon
conflict, the main Israeli concern was a report that Hezbollah
possessed Russian Kornet antitank missiles. However, it also
saw the RPG-29 Vampir with a tandem HEAT that had stolen
the show. There were even rumours that Hezbollah had
received the notorious TBG-29V thermobaric rounds, but
these could not be confirmed in action.
An estimated 500 to 600 members of their roughly 4,000-strong Hezbollah fighting strength in South Lebanon were
divided into tank-killer teams of 5 or 6, each armed with 5-8
anti-tank missiles, with a further supply stored in small fortified
well camouflaged bunkers, built to withstand Israeli air
attacks. In another tactic, Hezbollah tank-killer teams would
lie in wait in camouflaged bunkers or houses, having planted
large IEDs on known approach routes. Once an Israeli tank
would detonate one of these, Hezbollah would start lobbing
mortar shells onto the scene to prevent rescue teams rushing
forward, also firing at outflanking Merkava tanks by targeting
the more vulnerable rear zone with RPG. The IDF tried to
respond with heavy artillery fire, smoke and advancing
special MEDEVAC Merkava tanks, to evacuate casualties. It
took some time, until the Merkava crews could change tactics
and lower losses from Hezbollah tactics. This included having
dismounted infantry advancing over suspected high-risk
ground and take out the enemy bunkers with close-in fighting
and using heavy armoured D-9 for recovery action under fire.
Inadequate combat training in tank crews and short-
sighted funding priorities
During the last six years, in which the bulk of the IDF was
constantly engaged in low intensity urban counter terrorist
warfare in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, all regular forces,
including tank crews were retrained for small unit infantry
policing activities, which was mostly dismounted action. This proved extremely
painful, when young conscripts, who
make up the bulk of the regular IDF were rushed into battle,
after hasty retraining. It soon turned out to their commander's
dismay, that tank combat in Lebanon, fighting a highly
prepared and equipped enemy was a totally new "ballgame"
for those youngsters, courageous as they proved themselves
in battle. As result, Israeli tankers had to quickly re-adapt old-
new procedures during combat. At the beginning of the war,
several tanks lost tracks due to driver's inexperience, espe-
cially when travelling in the mountainous and rugged terrain
trying to avoid the heavily mined paved roads and tracks.
Moreover, during the Intifada, the armoured corps did not
receive top priority among senior defence establishment offi-
cials. Short-sighted budget cuts took a heavy toll on annoured
units. As result, at the beginning of the war, tanks were lacking
basic countermeasures such as instantaneous smoke canisters, laser warning detectors and infrared jammers. While
some of these devices were urgently supplied later during the
war, the damage was already done. "Money kills" was what
several senior Armoured Corps officers blamed authorities
after the war, expressing their frustration over the defense
establishment's refusal to fund the installation of a rocket
defense system on Israeli tanks and claiming that soldiers
were paying the price with their lives. The officers were
referring, among others, to the Trophy a new and unique,
locally developed active protection system that creates a
hemispheric protected zone around armoured vehicles such
as the Merkava 4 tank.
The Trophy design (video
report) includes four flat-panel antennas and
a search radar mounted on the vehicle. When properly
mounted, the combined radar view is a full 360 degrees.
When a weapon is fired at the vehicle, the internal computer
uses the signal from the incoming weapon as an
approach vector. Once the incoming weapon is fired, the computers calculate the optimal time and
automatically fire the neutralisers. The response comes from
two launchers installed on the vehicle, one on each side. The
launchers have a pivoting/rotating ability and thus are able to
fire in any direction the computer requires. The launchers fire
the neutralizing agents which are usually small metal pellets
like shotgun shot.
If those measures would have been available, Merkava.
tank crews would have fared a much better survival chance
against even third-generation weapons thrown at them.
Summing up the performance of Merkava tanks, especially
the latest version Merkava Mk 4, most tank crews agree that,
in spite of the losses sustained and some major flaws in
tactical conduct, the tank proved its mettle in its first high-
saturation combat. The overall consensus was that with less
well-armored tanks, the toll would have been much higher.
(All photos courtesy of Noam Eshel - Defense Update)
Below: AT-14 Kornet missile
The Kornet AT-14 anti-tank guided missile is one of the
latest systems to emerge from Russia and was first
seen in 1994 at a major defence exhibition. Kornet is
a laser beam-riding system. Missile Specifications are:
Diameter: 152mm, Length: 1,200mm, weight of tripod
launcher: 19kg, Launch tube c/w missile: 29kg, Weight of
TI sight 11 kg, Range: 100m to 5,500m. All the operator
has to do is to lock the laser onto the target and a Kornet
will fly down the beam to strike the target.
