# Merkava 4 Video



## tomahawk6 (30 Aug 2007)

Nice video particularly the night live fire ex.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T-GKplzI0k&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Estrategypage%2Ecom%2Fmilitary%5Fphotos%2F20078301352%2Easpx


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## retiredgrunt45 (13 Sep 2007)

That's a nice piece of kit, especially in the hands of a battle hardened military like the Israelies. 

I pitty the poor saps who try and invade.


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## a_majoor (16 Sep 2007)

retiredgrunt45 said:
			
		

> That's a nice piece of kit, especially in the hands of a battle hardened military like the Israelies.
> 
> I pitty the poor saps who try and invade.



As a piece of military hardwear it is certainly impressive, however warfare operates on multiple planes now, and the fact the Israeli military has top of the line hardware not only failed to help the military to achieve their objectives against the Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, but turned out to be actually counterproductive in a way, since the preception from Hezbollah and Iranian propaganda (and the American MSM) was that Hezbollah had scored a huge victory against a large and powerful army.

I still would not say "no" to having Merkava 4 C-1's in our own inventory, and was very interested in the point at @ 3:03 in the video where the Merkava is used as a HIFV.


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## muskrat89 (16 Sep 2007)

Were they engaging the helicopter with the main gun?


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## tomahawk6 (16 Sep 2007)

The Israelis are adding TROPHY to all their tanks to neutralize the RPG threat. I want to point out that Hizbollah gave up trying to kill MBT's and used their anti-tank missiles to kill tank commanders who were exposed.


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## a_majoor (16 Sep 2007)

tomahawk6 said:
			
		

> The Israelis are adding TROPHY to all their tanks to neutralize the RPG threat. I want to point out that Hezbollah gave up trying to kill MBT's and used their anti-tank missiles to kill tank commanders who were exposed.



The issue I was getting at was the Hezbollah didn't have to destroy tanks (or even kill many tank commanders), and indeed had only limited success in that area. Their PSYOPS and Information campaigns effectively neutralized the huge advantage in manpower and machinery that the Israeli armed forces could bring to bear, something we should be keeping in mind when contemplating how and where to use our shiny new kit. Leopard C2A6 may well be unbeatable when it comes to smashing improvised bunkers and other Taliban strong points, but if and when these are being created in occupied buildings, schools, mosques etc., legal formalities like buildings losing their protected status when being used by combatants are rapidly trumped by video images of burning buildings and dead civilians (or at least people dressed as civilians).


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