Long lost tactical manual

[Marek_Tucan]

Originally Posted by shilka77

The last armed conflict with Hezbollah (2006) however proved the new RPG rounds deadliness against the Merkava Mk 4 really was at short ranges. They cracked them opened like rotten sardine canisters, it didn’t help the IDF that Hezbollah also had gotten their hands on the Kornet ATGM system either.

Just a quick question, how many Merk IV's were destroyed and by what means? How many were penetrated? To my knowledge most of casaulties were commanders and loaders hit by shrapnel from exploding warheads while out of the hatches and there were very few penetrations, let alone total kills - for all Merkava variants, not just IV's.

They still run around with vintage 60s RPG-7s That is madness.

But they mostly do. Many armies do. I bet even Russians themselves still have hefty loads of PG-7VM grenades and use them. Czech army uses 60's level RPG's (technology, not actual date of manufacture) for sure and many countries still use 60's-level M72LAW. Given the state North Korea is in, I seriously doubt they have too much funds for massive rearming with new RPG's and run around with old but proven PG-7VM equivalents.

As for hardness of fighting against Abrams in desert, well, real world sucks. Advancing with inferior tanks against enemy with superior targeting, spotting and most likely crew experience is never cheap - it can be costly even with superior equipment if your enemy knows what is he doing, have a look at Israeli defense on Golans in 1973, they were able to pull out a night battle with only old passive IR binoculars for tank commanders, against tanks with "full" active IR night vision.
So... If you are to assault US Army in 1991 with T-72 in desert, you¨re screwed. That¨s the way it is, all you can do is reduce losses - by any means neccessary. If you smoke densely enough, ti would be severely limited. If you shell long enough, enemy is gonna be in bad shape.
and outside flat desert, use cover. I was able to pull off balanced (numerically) running skirmishes between T-34/85's and T-55's, and between baseline T-72's and T-55A's vs. Leopard 2A4. It was not cheap but enemy lost more than me.