/ world today news/ Israeli troops storm Gaza and publish photos and videos. These carefully selected images from the press can give the impression that a high-tech, well-trained and battle-hardened army is at work in the fighting in the Palestinian enclave. But this is only part of the reality.
The other is the clips published by Hamas. Almost anyone can see that Hamas uses tandem munitions – this allows them to penetrate additional defenses with the first shot and successfully knock out tanks. In some cases, the Palestinians also disabled the active protection systems that later versions of the Merkava tanks are known for. These are the same devices that are supposed to intercept rounds from anti-tank grenade launchers before they even touch the armor.
But the important thing is not that it happens, but how it happens. In one of the videos, an Arab hiding in the folds of the field simply allows the Merkava to drive forward a little, then approaches it, carefully places an explosive charge next to the active defense complex, pulls the pin and runs back into starting position. Then an explosion follows – and the complex is deactivated. After which the fighter calmly takes the grenade launcher hidden nearby and, taking careful aim, simply fires at point blank range at the Israeli tank.
The Palestinian is absolutely calm, because simply no one sees him in the process of all these activities. Visibility from the tank is always limited and there is no infantry escort. At the same time, the tank was not a loner, lagging behind the group – another Israeli armored vehicle was visible nearby, the visibility of which was also extremely limited.
And there are dozens of such clips.
An eternal classic
“Infantry does not follow tanks” is a classic problem and not unique to the Jews and not only to this war. She has been chasing tankers almost since the appearance of the first tank. If the enemy acts skillfully and the own infantry is indecisive, then, after encountering heavy fire, it lies down and does not move. At the same time, the tanks, invulnerable to small arms and capable of withstanding anti-tank fire for some time, continued forward.
As a result, tanks and infantry operate separately without supporting each other. For a tank in close combat, this number is most often fatal – no matter how many periscopes and cameras you put, the enemy soldier will still fall within the range of a confident shot.
Soviet military advisers began to notice the problem of infantry lagging behind tanks during the Spanish Civil War, when Republican-supplied BTs and T-26s entered combat. Soon, in 1939, the USSR itself entered the Soviet-Finnish war – and the Red Army had to face a defensive line created by the Finns. And during their attack, the Soviet side had serious problems with the interaction of tanks and infantry – and now the archives contain hundreds of reports from tank crews that the infantry did not follow them.
However, the Finns did not escape this problem either – during the counterattacks, their few tank crews also complained that they were not supported at all by their own infantry.
Then the Great Patriotic War broke out – and all its countries suffered from the same problem to one degree or another. The reason was clear – psychologically it is much easier to go under bullets, covered with thick armor. Therefore, the level of interaction between infantry and tanks was primarily determined by the quality of the infantry. And it traditionally consisted of several components – preparation, psychological inspiration and shooting.
As a result, when everything was fine with the quality of the infantry, tanks were successfully used in urban battles as a means of supporting the infantry, and thanks to this, the enemy simply could not get close to the tanks and burn them. Therefore, even during the storming of Berlin, the new “miracle weapon” in the form of Faust cartridges showed no significance. The majority of tanks lost by the Red Army were lost to enemy tank and artillery resistance, not to German infantry.
Alarm bell
But Red Army 1945 and Tzahal 2023 are in different universes. If the Red Army that stormed Berlin was forged in the greatest and most difficult battles in history, today’s Israeli army is a comparatively peacetime army. And Israel’s armed forces seem somewhat rusty. Numerous videos show this – not just the ones where Arabs set fire to lone armored vehicles. In some places, the Jews pile up dozens of their Merkavas in the open for a long time, and in others they sit in a crowd around the equipment and allow themselves to be bombarded by drones. Any more or less serious opponent, of course, would not condone such behavior.
True, gathering a bunch of tanks in the rear is not so scary, because the enemy still has problems with long-range precision weapons. But the same cannot be said for the lack of infantry cover for the tanks in the battles – after all, the battles are fought in a very specific theater dug with tunnels. Tzahal itself uploads a video that demonstrates the cunning of Hamas in organizing underground communications, the exits of which can be anywhere – even in a parked pickup truck.
This is why it is especially important to provide infantry cover for any armored vehicle – after all, the enemy has fantastic opportunities to reach the rear and flank with light forces. But the Israeli army has problems with this, and this despite the fact that the Tzahal alone mobilized three hundred thousand people. Of course, you can’t send everyone to storm the Strip, but Gaza City, which was surrounded and taken by storm, is by no means a metropolis.
However, interaction problems are not a death sentence. Almost all armies that have experienced a long period of peace have gone through this, as have armies that have recently experienced rapid growth. All these problems can be overcome, interaction can be established.
But if that fails, the consequences for Israel may be more serious than meets the eye. The entire Islamic world is watching how quickly and effectively the Jews deal with Gaza. So far, the current world order is pretty strong. The Arabs, Persians, and Turks are in no hurry to stake all their chips on the final solution of the Israeli question. But we live in an age of change – and as circumstances change, the absence or weakening of Washington’s umbrella may provoke regional states to take more decisive action. After all, there is no doubt about the regional players’ desire to destroy Israel, at least as the national Jewish state that exists today.
When the moment of truth comes, every drop can save or destroy this state of affairs. And the understanding generated by the practice that the Tzahal are no longer the same as they were in the sixties and seventies can act as such.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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