Merkava to undergo updates.. then stop production?

[zraver]

PDF,

it is not a merkava it is an uparmored M-60 patton known as a magach.

if you look along the upper side of the turret laong nea rthe loader shatch you can see that the blast was powerfl enough to break the composite armor and welds cracking it like an egg.

while this may look like a failure the lack of medical detrius indicates the armor did it's job and protected the crew.

[pdf27]

The panel down the left of the turret certainly seems to be further out than it originally was. However, you can't tell how it was attached originally - for instance if it was just bolted on, it would take far less to break the bolts than it would some major welds. I can think of one or two reasons you might want it to work that way. While we can't see that surface, there is no apparent damage to the area around it which is what makes me think it may have been done hitting the ground, rather than by any explosion.

[Bill]

One of the major military surprises of the fighting in Lebanon has been the apparent vulnerability of Israeli armour to Hezbollah anti-tank rockets.

Apparently they didn't read enough of my posts here at WAB, or they'd have known better than to be surprised.

Heavyweight ATGMs are NO JOKE.

[Bill]

All this cobbled together junk that the Israeli's use to quell the Palestinian ghetto's were blown away by the vampir's, IED's and Kornet's. Its surprising for the IDF to use junk to fight Hezbollah when they should've known better that the Iranians and Syrians would supply their ally with lethal new stuff. Check this out. This pathetic modified Megach 7-C was runnin like hell from a barage of RPG's and hit an ambush IED, which not only blew it sky high, gutted its belly probably killed the entire crew and landed on its side. Its also interesting that the IDF propaganda outfits spurriously hide their real losses, whichj included many other types of armoured vehicles besides the Merkava's. This must've hurt too:

The above photo doesn't really support your characterization of the events that led to the toppled tank what so ever.

For one, the tank is not burned out.
For another, it hasn't even thrown a tread.

[Bill]

There is another possibility - that the frontal armour on the T-80 and T-90 tanks is nowhere near as good as the French think it is. After all, this was tested against them while the French don't have any to play with so are guessing.

Agreed. And what's more, it fits the usual pattern of Russian weapons hype.

[troung]

The tanks in question/pictured crashed, well tipped off the road...