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Al-Saqr
Nov 11, 2007

One Day I Will Return To Your Side.
Hey guys sorry I hope I'm not intruding on this subforum but I have a question and maybe some of you have more military experience might be familiar. there's been some footage out of this conflict that I have questions about.

What is best practices when you're a tank columns to prevent ATGM fire and how badly of a gently caress up is it on the part of the column that ATGM teams manage to make it within 100 feet of your armour? is there a field manual that says 'try to prevent enemies from getting within a certain number of feet from your tank' I'm genuinely curious.

how big of a gently caress up is it for infantry (around 30 or so ) to bunch up within 2 feet of each other and not notice a small drone dropping an anti-personnel grenade from barely 60 feet over their heads in the middle of them in an active warzone?

I'm genuinely curious what your experiences might be and how for example an american team would handle that.

anyways, if I'm asking stupid stuff I apologize and will buzz off.

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Platystemon
Feb 13, 2012

BREADS
Letting the enemy get close to your tank with anti‐armor weapons is bad, and you should not let it happen.

https://irp.fas.org/doddir/army/atp3-20-15.pdf posted:

Tank platoons almost never fight alone. Open terrain such as desert, plains, and flat countryside is conducive to the employment of massed armor formations. In such terrain, mechanized Infantry supports the forward movement of the armor units by providing local security, retaining key terrain, clearing dug-in enemy positions, and enhancing direct fires with organic small arms and antitank fires. On the other hand, restricted terrain (such as built-up areas, forests, and jungles) increases the vulnerability of armor units. In close terrain, it is more advantageous for tanks to take a supporting role in the forward movement of the Infantry. Armor provides close-in direct fire support against hard and soft targets that could slow the Infantry’s advance.

Platystemon fucked around with this message at 11:36 on Nov 2, 2023

ThisIsJohnWayne
Feb 23, 2007
Ooo! Look at me! NO DON'T LOOK AT ME!



What you're seeing is probably Israeli complacency and not structural incompetence, they very much should be taught better than that. A lot of tactical teaching were reinforced by analysis of the arab-israeli wars back when. They look to have walked over the border overestimating how safe they are in that space and if they got any sense they'll start acting professionally soon enough.

E. Personally? I doubt they got any sense. Everything is stupid, horrible, and Israeli leadership seem to only care about things that result in less palestinians per square km in the land they want to annex and not share.

ThisIsJohnWayne fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Nov 2, 2023

Radical 90s Wizard
Aug 5, 2008

~SS-18 burning bright,
Bathe me in your cleansing light~
It's exactly as stupid as it seems, basically.

E) I guess if I was being charitable I could say maybe the infantry being in a far enough back area to think they were safe (i havent seen the footage) but lol, no.

Radical 90s Wizard fucked around with this message at 11:13 on Nov 2, 2023

RandomPauI
Nov 24, 2006


Grimey Drawer
How are people keeping track of how the IDF offensive is going? Specific papers or blogs?

bird food bathtub
Aug 9, 2003

College Slice

Al-Saqr posted:

Hey guys sorry I hope I'm not intruding on this subforum but I have a question and maybe some of you have more military experience might be familiar. there's been some footage out of this conflict that I have questions about.

What is best practices when you're a tank columns to prevent ATGM fire and how badly of a gently caress up is it on the part of the column that ATGM teams manage to make it within 100 feet of your armour? is there a field manual that says 'try to prevent enemies from getting within a certain number of feet from your tank' I'm genuinely curious.

how big of a gently caress up is it for infantry (around 30 or so ) to bunch up within 2 feet of each other and not notice a small drone dropping an anti-personnel grenade from barely 60 feet over their heads in the middle of them in an active warzone?

I'm genuinely curious what your experiences might be and how for example an american team would handle that.

anyways, if I'm asking stupid stuff I apologize and will buzz off.

*shrug* You paid your :10bux: like everyone else around here. So far as I know nobody is automatically denied entry at the doorway for their status, it's actions that make that happen. You didn't come in slinging hot takes and talking poo poo so whatevs join the crowd in wishing this shitshow of horrors was over.

Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD
Hey the only democracy in the Middle East bombed another big group of civilians sgain

Handsome Ralph
Sep 3, 2004

Oh boy, posting!
That's where I'm a Viking!


"Five men is a juicy opportunity, one man is a waste of ammo."

I only went as far as Y3 ROTC but even that was hammered into us early on, and we had cadre who had gone to Iraq that told us about units that relearned that lesson the hard way. So yeah, complacency/under estimating Hamas which, you'd think they would stop doing that due to last month's events and yet.

Cugel the Clever
Apr 5, 2009
I LOVE AMERICA AND CAPITALISM DESPITE BEING POOR AS FUCK. I WILL NEVER RETIRE BUT HERE'S ANOTHER 200$ FOR UKRAINE, SLAVA

Handsome Ralph posted:

I only went as far as Y3 ROTC but even that was hammered into us early on, and we had cadre who had gone to Iraq that told us about units that relearned that lesson the hard way. So yeah, complacency/under estimating Hamas which, you'd think they would stop doing that due to last month's events and yet.
And complacency in the face of such tactics would be especially negligent given Russia spending the last year getting trounced in Ukraine with some very similar tactics. So much talk of drones presenting a drastic change from the past which militaries need to adapt their defense to, but it's not clear how much that's truly translated into action anywhere, let alone the military which apparently didn't bother alarming on their critical border sensors going down.

Handsome Ralph
Sep 3, 2004

Oh boy, posting!
That's where I'm a Viking!


Tiny Timbs posted:

Some drivel about the White House expecting Netanyahu's political career to end over the attack on Israel

In fairness, from what friends with family in Israel have said, this isn't too far fetched. The way it was explained to me is people have a "When the immediate crisis is over, he's gotta go"

Also his son being in the US right now is pissing a lot of people off over there apparently.

M_Gargantua
Oct 16, 2006

STOMP'N ON INTO THE POWERLINES

Exciting Lemon

Handsome Ralph posted:

In fairness, from what friends with family in Israel have said, this isn't too far fetched. The way it was explained to me is people have a "When the immediate crisis is over, he's gotta go"

Also his son being in the US right now is pissing a lot of people off over there apparently.

Among Netanyahu's nationalist party the "immediate crisis" seems to be the existence of the Palestinian people.

There is no immediate crisis to the existing state, so they're just beating the drums to keep the domestic heat off of them.

Electric Wrigglies
Feb 6, 2015

I think it is a bit like Russia in Ukraine, all hopped up on stories from generations ago (WWII for Russia, Six Day War for Israel), planning to win the next fight the same way the last one was won (disregarding that others can learn and adapt), bit of dismissive otherism, over-hyped hero-worship of our own soldiers, plenty of disconnection between those making the decisions and those suffering the consequences.


Complacency is a hell of a drug.

bulletsponge13
Apr 28, 2010

Keeping interval is a constant fight in the Infantry.
The scourge of low cost suicide drones built from COTS is relatively new; and causes an change in battlefield attitudes slowly. In conventional operations historically many of these dudes clumped would be relatively safe.

ATGMs are now smaller and more effective, and have more training literature and experiences filtered out.

It's ridiculously easy to get close to units with patience and knowledge of the local terrain

pantslesswithwolves
Oct 28, 2008

Handsome Ralph posted:

In fairness, from what friends with family in Israel have said, this isn't too far fetched. The way it was explained to me is people have a "When the immediate crisis is over, he's gotta go"

Also his son being in the US right now is pissing a lot of people off over there apparently.

Netanyahu has presided over so many bouts with Hamas in the nearly 15 years he's been in power that he absolutely owns 1. creating the conditions where Hamas would be able to conduct the 10/7 attack and 2. allowed his extremist political allies to escalate things in the West Bank to the degree that the IDF diverted resources away from Gaza 3. sowing so much discontent with his "judicial reforms" that it led to a public rift with commanders in the IDF, which is pretty unheard of for them. He absolutely can't survive this from a political standpoint, and if he did make yet another Faustian bargain to somehow stay in power, I think there's a non-zero chance that the IDF would remove him.

Here's a paywall-free NYT article concerning the intelligence, military and political failures, which are too many to list here: https://archive.ph/DEY3c

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Handsome Ralph posted:

"Five men is a juicy opportunity, one man is a waste of ammo."

I only went as far as Y3 ROTC but even that was hammered into us early on, and we had cadre who had gone to Iraq that told us about units that relearned that lesson the hard way. So yeah, complacency/under estimating Hamas which, you'd think they would stop doing that due to last month's events and yet.

Cugel the Clever posted:

And complacency in the face of such tactics would be especially negligent given Russia spending the last year getting trounced in Ukraine with some very similar tactics. So much talk of drones presenting a drastic change from the past which militaries need to adapt their defense to, but it's not clear how much that's truly translated into action anywhere, let alone the military which apparently didn't bother alarming on their critical border sensors going down.

Also keep in mind that Israel has a conscript military. So a lot of their forces heading into Gaza have zero practical experience with MOUT and have probably only really spent a grand total of a couple of weeks preparing for some of the most complex fighting terrain imaginable. Even for their reserves that have experience, 3-4 weeks is not enough time to shake off the rust and build unit cohesion/TTPs necessary to operate smoothly in that kind of environment. Layer in a healthy amount of hubris, and it's not a recipe for success.

Laughing Zealot
Oct 10, 2012


It can't be a good sign for the Israeli army that they've barely started to operate in Gaza and already there are 17 soldiers dead.

Tiny Timbs
Sep 6, 2008

Handsome Ralph posted:

In fairness, from what friends with family in Israel have said, this isn't too far fetched. The way it was explained to me is people have a "When the immediate crisis is over, he's gotta go"

Also his son being in the US right now is pissing a lot of people off over there apparently.

I think whatever security failures his opposition tries to pin on him will be well overshadowed by his success in delivering kinetic strikes on Palestinians.

Laughing Zealot
Oct 10, 2012


Tiny Timbs posted:

I think whatever security failures his opposition tries to pin on him will be well overshadowed by his success in delivering kinetic strikes on Palestinians.

Eh, I feel like everything points to whatever popularity this war will have with Israelis will not be shared with Bibi. Dude got absolutely slammed just a few days ago when he tried to blame the army for allowing the 7th October attack to happen.

PurpleXVI
Oct 30, 2011

Spewing insults, pissing off all your neighbors, betraying your allies, backing out of treaties and accords, and generally screwing over the global environment?
ALL PART OF MY BRILLIANT STRATEGY!

Laughing Zealot posted:

It can't be a good sign for the Israeli army that they've barely started to operate in Gaza and already there are 17 soldiers dead.

I don't think I'd call 17 casualties in a week of attacking a built-up urban area with entrenched enemies particularly bad, at least compared with other catastrophes in the history of urban warfare.

But Jesus it's some grim, Russians-in-Grozny images coming out of there, videos of Israeli tanks obliterating civilian cars just trying to get away from the fighting, that sort of thing. The IDF are in full warcrimes mode and I'm incredibly disappointed in any government that "stands by Israel" with the "Israel has a right to defend itself"-trash as an excuse for not condemning every second of this.

Qtotonibudinibudet
Nov 7, 2011



Omich poluyobok, skazhi ty narkoman? ya prosto tozhe gde to tam zhivu, mogli by vmeste uyobyvat' narkotiki

psydude posted:

Also keep in mind that Israel has a conscript military. So a lot of their forces heading into Gaza have zero practical experience with MOUT and have probably only really spent a grand total of a couple of weeks preparing for some of the most complex fighting terrain imaginable. Even for their reserves that have experience, 3-4 weeks is not enough time to shake off the rust and build unit cohesion/TTPs necessary to operate smoothly in that kind of environment. Layer in a healthy amount of hubris, and it's not a recipe for success.

zero motivation was a documentary and you can't tell me otherwise

Laughing Zealot
Oct 10, 2012


Feel like recommending Pod Save the World's episodes about the situation. This is the newest one from yesterday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjHUCy4JbH4

Lum_
Jun 5, 2006

Laughing Zealot posted:

It can't be a good sign for the Israeli army that they've barely started to operate in Gaza and already there are 17 soldiers dead.

11 of those were in one APC that got hit with an ATGM.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/01/fifteen-israeli-soldiers-killed-as-fighting-intensifies-in-gaza

Israel is being *extremely* careful trying to avoid IDF casualties, which is one reason Gaza City is essentially one large free-fire zone. But as that APC strike shows, it's not something you can easily avoid.

Lum_ fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Nov 2, 2023

LtCol J. Krusinski
May 7, 2013

by Fluffdaddy
gently caress this.

Borscht
Jun 4, 2011

LtCol J. Krusinski posted:

gently caress this.

Lovely Joe Stalin
Jun 12, 2007

Our Lovely Wang
I generally avoid videos of this stuff, but there's a gore-free body cam video where a Hamas man climbs out of a prepared (reinforced walls) pit disguised under a bush in relatively open scrub ground. He runs maybe ten yards, places (not throws) some sort of charge on the engine deck of a Merkava under the turret, and then runs away back to his foxhole. Apparently without being seen or fired upon. All the while talking/yelling in, as you'd expect, a degree of excitement. There is at least one other armoured vehicle in the video but no sign of infantry.
As the charge goes off the last thing you see in the smoke is him and another guy prepping their RPGs.

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. He shouldn't have gotten anywhere near the tank, let alone made it back. I assume the infantry are buttoned up in their carriers and to hell with sane armour doctrine.

Electric Wrigglies
Feb 6, 2015

Lovely Joe Stalin posted:

I generally avoid videos of this stuff, but there's a gore-free body cam video where a Hamas man climbs out of a prepared (reinforced walls) pit disguised under a bush in relatively open scrub ground. He runs maybe ten yards, places (not throws) some sort of charge on the engine deck of a Merkava under the turret, and then runs away back to his foxhole. Apparently without being seen or fired upon. All the while talking/yelling in, as you'd expect, a degree of excitement. There is at least one other armoured vehicle in the video but no sign of infantry.
As the charge goes off the last thing you see in the smoke is him and another guy prepping their RPGs.

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself. He shouldn't have gotten anywhere near the tank, let alone made it back. I assume the infantry are buttoned up in their carriers and to hell with sane armour doctrine.

And reportedly, that footage keeps getting deleted off the combat footage reddit so it is not a popular video with some at least to have out in the wild. I wonder if it is because people don't like to see IDF challenges or because it is Hamas fighting the IDF out in the scrub and not with three babies strapped to their RPG.

Also notice "cope cages" on the Israel tanks and APCs. The were roundly derided when the Russians used them going into Ukraine so interesting to see them make a re-appearance in Gaza.

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Electric Wrigglies posted:

And reportedly, that footage keeps getting deleted off the combat footage reddit so it is not a popular video with some at least to have out in the wild. I wonder if it is because people don't like to see IDF challenges or because it is Hamas fighting the IDF out in the scrub and not with three babies strapped to their RPG.

Also notice "cope cages" on the Israel tanks and APCs. The were roundly derided when the Russians used them going into Ukraine so interesting to see them make a re-appearance in Gaza.

I haven't been watching videos, but in the Ukraine thread someone pointed out that putting fencing/RPG slats on the top of an armored vehicle is a good way to protect it from drone-dropped munitions. It's not gonna stop an NLAW or Javelin, but I'd imagine it would stop an IED dropped from a quadcopter.

pantslesswithwolves
Oct 28, 2008

Electric Wrigglies posted:

And reportedly, that footage keeps getting deleted off the combat footage reddit so it is not a popular video with some at least to have out in the wild. I wonder if it is because people don't like to see IDF challenges or because it is Hamas fighting the IDF out in the scrub and not with three babies strapped to their RPG.

Also notice "cope cages" on the Israel tanks and APCs. The were roundly derided when the Russians used them going into Ukraine so interesting to see them make a re-appearance in Gaza.

Also no infantry support for the tanks, which makes them incredibly vulnerable to things like this. During the early days of the Syrian civil war, rebels took out a lot of Assad’s tanks by putting grenades in the turret barrel or throwing Molotovs on the engine block and then tossing grenades in the hatch when the crew would try to escape. The only thing I can think of in this case is that the Israelis were using tanks as artillery and didn’t expect to get engaged at all.

Electric Wrigglies
Feb 6, 2015

Makes sense from the quad-copter, the Russians certainly knew about the technique from previous fighting and the subsequent removal from their tanks is that the Javlin and arty became so overwhelming a threat that easy escape was more important than defending against quad copters.

I seen a comment that the Trophy system precludes having soldiers standing so close to the tanks and it's possible that the Hammas soldier was obscured by dust and hopes to make his escape before the protective infantry can respond.

Radical 90s Wizard
Aug 5, 2008

~SS-18 burning bright,
Bathe me in your cleansing light~

pantslesswithwolves posted:

Also no infantry support for the tanks, which makes them incredibly vulnerable to things like this. During the early days of the Syrian civil war, rebels took out a lot of Assad’s tanks by putting grenades in the turret barrel or throwing Molotovs on the engine block and then tossing grenades in the hatch when the crew would try to escape. The only thing I can think of in this case is that the Israelis were using tanks as artillery and didn’t expect to get engaged at all.

Some of the videos from Syria of that were absolutely nuts. I remember one where the grenade rolled back out of the barrel after the dude ran off, so he just waited like a minute and ran back and hucked another one in :stare:

Count Roland
Oct 6, 2013

It's crazy that in this modern world getting into bayonet range is a valid tactic for fighting a tank

Herstory Begins Now
Aug 5, 2003

pantslesswithwolves posted:

Also no infantry support for the tanks, which makes them incredibly vulnerable to things like this. During the early days of the Syrian civil war, rebels took out a lot of Assad’s tanks by putting grenades in the turret barrel or throwing Molotovs on the engine block and then tossing grenades in the hatch when the crew would try to escape. The only thing I can think of in this case is that the Israelis were using tanks as artillery and didn’t expect to get engaged at all.

Yeah fuel soaked rugs dropped on top combined with molotovs were eventually the refined version of that method for loving up tanks early on in Syria. First year or so of tank use in Syria was some wild west stuff, they were getting used almost entirely unsupported, beyond sometimes being used in pairs. crews were also super quick to bail out and they lost a lot of tanks before the SAA settling into just using indirect fires as the solution to basically every problem for the next couple of years. Strangely the Russian intervention repeated basically all of the same mistakes and they rapidly got a lot of tanks blown up before adapting by adopting extremely risk averse ttps for their tanks, particularly the later models. There's probably a specific lesson in here about how vulnerable tanks are when you don't respect your opponents and you think that a simple show of force is going to accomplish anything at all. the Houthis also had way, way more success than they should have against KSA tanks with broadly similar tactics that exploited extremely poor crew reactions to contact.

Count Roland posted:

It's crazy that in this modern world getting into bayonet range is a valid tactic for fighting a tank

honestly it's a really, really lovely way to oppose tanks and only works if the tanks are being woefully misused and the people launching the attack are extremely desperate. syria is again a good example where for every video that was made of a successful close-range attack on a tank there were a bunch of failures that ended very unceremoniously. with that said, it is striking that the start of many conflicts will have tanks getting used in extremely reckless ways with little regard for the things that maximize their impact and minimize their vulnerabilities. part of that is the inherent vulnerability of tanks on the move as part of offensives, but a big part of it seems to also be an initial wave of complacency and a very false sense of security, though in most cases that appears to evaporate pretty quickly. Hell in Ukraine it was only a matter of a couple of months before both sides adapted to just staying completely out of the effective range of the other side's tanks and AT weapons.

Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 13:35 on Nov 3, 2023

bird food bathtub
Aug 9, 2003

College Slice
What I'm hearing is that a unit of spearmen on the defensive really could defeat a unit of tanks.

Knew it.

ThisIsJohnWayne
Feb 23, 2007
Ooo! Look at me! NO DON'T LOOK AT ME!



bird food bathtub posted:

What I'm hearing is that a unit of spearmen on the defensive really could defeat a unit of tanks.

Knew it.

As long as the tank unit didn't read their loving books or ever trained against infantry, suuure, yeah, OKAY


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiJXALBX3KM&t=238s

A.o.D.
Jan 15, 2006
Rushing tanks with infantry is kind of a binary state.

Either it's a surefire way to get all your soldiers killed, or it's the best way to annihilate every tank in a formation. It's so situationally dependent on terrain, troop quality, training, and disposition that I don't want to make a generalization on when it's a good idea to bum rush a tank.

bad_fmr
Nov 28, 2007

If you dont have any other weapons. Then jam logs in the tracks and molotov cocktail the engine intakes winter war style.

Crab Dad
Dec 28, 2002

behold i have tempered and refined thee, but not as silver; as CRAB

bad_fmr posted:

If you dont have any other weapons. Then jam logs in the tracks and molotov cocktail the engine intakes winter war style.

I talked to guy who as a young man tossed a can of white paint on the engine deck of tank and that lights up just fine. At the time the Russian troops didnt think much of a boy hauling around milk pales.

Borscht
Jun 4, 2011
Apparently a ceasefire is contingent on the return of hostages. That’s coming from Bibi so take it with a grain of salt.

I’m no Hamas expert but that’s not going to happen, is it?

Al-Saqr
Nov 11, 2007

One Day I Will Return To Your Side.
sharing this since you guys are military heads

Qassam put out an informational video about their hand-placed anti-tank weapon, why they use it and it's specifications, along with a demonstration. along with footage of several merkavas being knocked out by it.

https://x.com/TurkiShalhoub/status/1720466927519244734?s=20


it's made to be placed right next to the merkavas munitions magazine.

they gave some statistics, it weighs 3 kilograms, 50 CM tall 105 mm wide, it was made in Gaza, and they say it can penetrate 60 cm of hard steel armor.

so it's not a weapon of desperation its on purpose to be placed by hand.

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Tiny Timbs
Sep 6, 2008

The design is very human

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