מידע ותמונות רבות על טנק המרכבה     
       
MERKAVA IVB
DROID ARRIVES

See Below for pics & details on this new Merkava tank series Droid Hostile Fire Control Acoustical Sensor

This Just In 
   BOTH  IAI 'Iron Fist' & RAFAEL 'ASPRO' DID SEE
   COMBAT IN Jan 2009 GAZA-HAMAS CONFLICT...
   Due To OpsSEC I am not saying WHO or What Used
   These Systems. Also, What The Out Come & Feedback
                            was...          at this time!

  Merkava Mk III BAZ ON It's 75 TON Prime Mover a DAF tank transporter cab and Netzer Sereni Metal Works trailer 
 
After the Egyptian brokered 2008 Hamas - Israel ceasefire came to an end late December 2008, the Iranian proxy decided
not to renew despite Egyptian Hosni Mubarak's dire warnings of an Israeli onslaught worse than the Lebanon 2006 conflict.

Sure enough Hamas decided to test a defeated and outgoing government Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and who had nothing
to loose, months of provocation by Hamas and well over six thousand rockets, Katusha missiles and mortars flying over the
border and crashing into homes, schools, farms, vehicles, fields of crops and just about anything else in a 20 mile radius of
the Gaza 8 mile by 25 mile international border.

After Battle Report & Combat Images
2009 Gaza Hamas & 2006 Lebanon Hezbollah Conflicts

In fact on Christmas Day December 25th 2008 a Thursday, Hamas sent just over 80 rockets on their destructive course into
Israeli farms, villages, shopping centers, restaurants and grade schools just to provoke a response.... Not too brilliant hamas!
 

Well, the Jerusalem government met & gave the IDF Kirya (the Israeli version of the Pentagon) the green light for retaliation
which not surprising opened up with an IAF aerial blitz on the entire Gaza strip shock and awe. Hamas said they were taken
by a NINE year surprise (that is how long rockets were being fired over the border into Israel). The IAF went after four main
areas, Command & Control, weapon supply tunnels, rocket launching teams and hamas troop movements to blend into the
entire Gaza 1.5 million civilian population which they have a nasty habit of using as their 'living' shields.

No one except the foreign Press, the drive-by Media & even the Hamas leadership believed for a NY
minute this charade of making innocent civilians the guinea pigs and fraudulent targets. 

Even neighboring Arab governments were very silent and quietly hoped the Hamas - Iranian  puppets
would get their rear ends kick down a few notches.

That was Saturday 27th December. Following Saturday January 3rd the promised ground forces came
and proceeded to divide Gaza up into five separate pieces; thus separating them from their toys, ammo, 
weapons caches in the South, tunnels and resupply routes also in the South from their missile launching
bases and troops in the Northern part of Gaza. Systematic destruction of over 400 tunnels begun by the

Israeli Air Force were finished by the IDF special forces. Costal interdictions and disruption of costal
convoy routes were conducted by the Israeli Naval fleet. Ground forces in the North on the second day
found the command and control Hamas facility in the Northern corner of the Gaza strip and began a

siege and elimination of the Hamas terrorist army. Leaflets were also dropped urging anyone for Gold Bullion to turn in Hamas leadership

& to begin a civil war among the inhabitants. A military solution with a force like NATO will be sought to
turn Gaza into the same neutered out come that Lebanon now is experiencing and prevent cross border
rocket attacks in the future.

  Once the IDF ground forces discovered what they could not ascertain from the air... mainly that the NEW
  central command headquarters was rushed and moved to the entire basement facility of the main Gaza
  medical hospital, medical school and only operating trauma unit so they would be protected from any IDF
  attack and latter moved their main listening and INTEL post and Gaza TV station cameras to the roof  
 
  So.... Hamas, what part of BOOM !  didn't you understand ?  IDF Video for Cast Lead is at LINK:
                                          MERKAVA CAST LEAD VIDEO


Enter Merkava Mk4 Droid  

Merkava Mark IV company with FCD prior to entering Gaza December 2008 at the start of Cast Lead combat
                                                                              "DROID"
This new IDF innovation is a highly refined and new generation of directional sensors that triangulates the exact
direction and location of enemy fire as it can differentiate between hostile and friendly fire and give results in a
split second (.24785 of a second)! It is also 3 dimensional and can lay horizontal and azimuth co-ordinates of a
tank main gun for immediate counter battery fire and with net centric BMS can tie in all other elements such as
the entire tank company, commanders, UAV's and airborne support to the same targeted area instantaneously. 

Being used for the first time in combat Gaza 2009 the Rafael FCD (Fire Control Director) can be seen below...

Merkava Mk IV's with Fire Control Director on top that automatically tells the BMS & FCS the direction of all
incoming RPGs, ATGWs & KE rounds that allow for Fast counter battery fire by ANY Merkava in the company

Again ONLY a lead tank from a Merkava Mk IV Aleph Company with Droid Fire Control Detector in place

Merkava Siman Arba Aleph with DROID seeing first time combat during a war 


                         Gaza - Hamas 2009 Christmas Day War
Hamas Starts 6:45 AM with over 80 120mm Katusha Rocket bombardment Across entire 125 mile Israel border

Hamas expresses surprise that IDF (Israel Self Defense Forces) retaliates...  Height of Hypocrisy

Final IDF preparations and armament restocking at jump off point for Gaza land battle

Last minute prayers before going into battle, a practice that is over 5,000 years old in this HOLY land


On the outside looking in. This is the mortar launching area for Hamas for the past eight years and counting.


Notice how Hamas builds right up to the border fence which can be seen in the middle of the picture?


See: the electric lines, Going INTO Gaza? the fuel trucks going INTO Gaza? Israel supplies all 100% plus water!
In return Hamas attacks Israel 365 days a year for decades: 10,000 rockets, missiles, grenades, mortars, IED
road side bombs, mines, suicide children bombers, snipers & etc. Why does Israel then still continue all the above
humanitarian aid, utilities, medicine and food. Because USA, UN and EU FORCES Israel to act Peaceful!

Close up of stowage baskets on either side of clam shell doors used for resupply, wounded, entrance & fast exit.


MaTak (Tank Commander -T/C) on his Merkava IV 'bridge' with an assortment of accessories and necessories!

    
Lebanon 2006 - Gaza 2009 In Depth After Battle Report
 

Imagine a battlefield filled with thousands of soldiers wearing vests, and carrying machine guns and handheld computers. Imagine that hundreds
of sensors - optical, radar, acoustic, thermal and others - are deployed throughout the battle arena, acquiring a wide-range of targets, from snipers
stationed in apartment buildings, to Kassam rocket launchers in nearby fields.

Now imagine that the moment one of the sensors acquires an enemy target, a dot appears on the map of the battlefield, which is displayed on
small, lightweight computers worn on the arms of platoon and company commanders, fitted inside tanks and artillery batteries, in Israeli Navy
Sa'ar 5 class missile ships, as well as in the cockpits of Cobra and Apache helicopters and F-16 fighters.

What happens next is the most complicated stage - choosing the weapon to destroy the target. This is done by an officer sitting in a Command-N-
Control center, either behind enemy lines or back in Israel, from where he can see everything that the sensors are transmitting.

This level of interoperability among various forces, military branches and sensors does not currently exist in the IDF, but - according to Brig.Gen.
Shachar Kadishai, commander of the Ground Forces Command's Technology and Logistics Department - the day is now not that far off.  2009!

"The vision is to create full integration and interoperability between the ground forces and other branches in the IDF," Kadishai told the Israeli
English edition Jerusalem Post newspaper. "We are currently working on creating the necessary systems and the infrastructure that will then be
used to create this level of interoperability."

TO BETTER grasp what the IDF is aiming for, it is important to understand what the situation is in the IDF today. Currently, IDF branches, such
as the air force and the ground forces, operate independent C4I communication systems. For example, Division 36 of the Northern Command was
recently outfitted with the Tzayad (Hunter) Digital Army Program, which links all of the land combat elements into a single C4I network. Outfitting
of the rest of the IDF divisions with the DAP system will likely end by 2012.

During the recent operation in Gaza, some elements of the DAP were utilized. For example, 1 new sensor that debuted during Operation Cast Lead
was a mounted binocular-like device that is capable of identifying flashes from sniper fire, pinpointing their exact location and transmitting it to the
handheld DAP computers.

The DAP can also work with autonomous firepower systems, such as the Rainbow 120-mm. mortar system developed by SOLTAM (maker of
the Merkava tank series of internal 60mm anti-missile mortar & ATGW teams), which is designed to deliver its first round on targets up to eight
kilometers away (or Beyond Visual Range) within 30 seconds of receiving a target, and with almost perfect accuracy.

But this is in the ground forces. The idea, Kadishai explains, is to have ALL of the different weapon systems of the Navy, Air Force, Armor as
well as the IDF Army seeing the same exact picture of the battlefield, and working on the same 'Centric' network.

"Today there is minimal interface between IDF Ground and IDF Air Forces," said Col. Eyal Zelinger, head of the IDF's C4I Weapons Department.

During Operation Cast Lead, if a battalion commander wanted an attack helicopter to bomb a building or provide air support, he needed to talk
directly with the pilot and - while both looked at the same map - explain exactly where he and his forces were located, and where the target was.

"It takes time to describe the target to the brigade commander, who then has to explain it to the division commander and then explains it to the
General Staff," Zelinger said. "We are striving to reach a point at which a battalion commander can make a dot on a screen, and that same dot will
appear on the screen in the cockpit of the fighter, bridge of a warship, tank commander's control console or helicopter gun ship attacking above."

According to Zelinger, no military currently has this ability, which is based on advanced C4I capabilities, including wide streaming and broadband
capabilities to transfer information - such as video feeds from Heron UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) and other dispersed sensors - to all tactical
forces and command-and-control centers.

THE IDF is not alone in its attempts to reach a high level of interface among its branches, partly due to the lesson it learned from the 2006 Lebanon
Conflict, during which communication and coordination between ground and air forces was inadequate and led to several deadly friendly-fire incidents.

The US Army has also been working on creating a joint network under the FCS (Future Combat Systems) Program. This suffered a setback,
however, as Defense Secretary Robert Gates in April 2009 decided to cut funding for it, as part of an over all  shift toward spending more
on counterterrorism and less on preparing for conventional warfare. This also killed the 2011 Raytheon APS (Active Protective System)
the US Marines & Army was counting on BACK in 2006 to substitute for the Israeli Trophy ASPRO APS. Now the US has...    Nothing !!!

Israel, Kadishai says, has a need for a network that can operate both in low intensity conflicts, such as Operation Cast Lead and high intensity
conflicts such as a conventional war with Syria, 24/7. rain or shine, day or night, heat or cold... any conditions.

"The threats vary," he says, "and the idea is for there to be a network system that can function in both types of 21st century conflicts."

TO ACCOMMODATE the overload expected on the new network, the IDF C4I Directorate plans to start installing a new communications system -
called WIMAX - in the Northern Command later this year (2009). WIMAX (worldwide interoperability for microwave access) is a technology that
enables Secure Encrypted Wireless Transmission of data / images across multipoint links in a covered area.

Already begun February 2009, the IDF began deploying antennas along the northern border that will encompass even parts of Lebanon, so that if
command centers are deployed out of its reach, portable antennas can be set up behind enemy lines. This was a lesson learned just this January in
the 2009 Gaza conflict 'Cast Lead.'

This is in contrast to the situation during Operation Cast Lead, when brigade commanders who set up command centers inside Gaza could not see
the same visuals that the various sensors deployed both in the field and in the air above were transmitting back to headquarters. The new WIMAX
system will change all that. And the IDF will be the first military in the world to work with WIMAX.

The ultimate goal, Kadishai and Zelinger explain, is to create the technology that the IDF needs to decisively defeat its enemy.

"The idea is to create intelligence in real time and translate it into targets," concludes Kadishai. "We will soon reach the stage where everyone in the
same small area will see the same targets, the same enemy moving around, hiding, lurking (even snipers) and and be reading the same maps. This
will change the way we future combat operations will unfold and contribute to less friendly fire casualties and collateral enemy civilian fatalities."

Merkava Mk III BAZ crew in their Type 602 tanker helmets doing some serious damage hunting buried Hezzie's found in rat holes. Same for Hamas 

Ok readers, these floppy helmets you see below we call 'mitznefet' and they break up the typical helmet outline
& so they save IDF lives. Our tank squads wear them, but we tankers wear the above ballistic intercom helmet

IDF Sniper Teams deployed from under armor Merkava MBT hidden compartments!


After The 2006 Lebanon conflict Everyone Was Required To Complete Combat
Combine Arms Familiarization Courses Involving Air Cav Helo's, MBT's & PsyOps


Merkava IV 10 man Squad securing LZ (Landing Zone) for special forces teams

One of eight Merks used to establish the LZ perimeter, all of which are Data Linked

The lessons of the 2006 conflict have been documented, studied and now put into
practice and is a part of the mandatory annual Active / Reserve training schedule.
The results of which can be found less than 2 years later with the Gaza action. Loss
of soldiers to friendly fire 100% reduction to zero. Loss of combat troops less than
a squad. Enemy losses in excess of two thousand. Civilians claim to have been killed
5,000 but, according to the UN that Hamas political figure is exaggerated & hospital
patient count was less than 250. Most civilian casualties were actually Hamas terrorist
that have NO uniforms or can be identified with any army or military unit.
 

 
 MERKAVA  III on Northern Border Watch Continues    
 

MERKAVA IV Combined Arms Operations Lebanon below, Gaza above


BELOW MANTAK CHARIOT MBT & TIGER APC IN FRONT OF ARMOR PLANT TEL HASHOMER

El Tanque Merkava Siman Arba BAZ

               Shalom L'hitra'ot  שלום להתראות

Merkava Mk IV BAZ Extreme

                                          COMING HERE SOON TO MXCD-ROMOS