The tank era, which began a hundred years ago on the fields of the First World War, today seems to be close to its end.
"The Israeli Defense Ministry has decided not to continue working on the Merkava Mark V tank, and at this stage, the Merkava Mark IV will remain the last tank to continue production." This message caused the effect of an exploding bomb in the tank world - after all, the Merkava tank, which embodied the latest ideas and technologies of tank building, was recognized by authoritative experts as one of the best, if not the best main battle tank in the world.
Although the formal reason for the termination of work on the creation of the fifth generation tank "Merkava" was officially called the reduction in funding for the project, in reality we are talking about a true revolution in tank building and in the very concept of tanks in modern warfare.
The role of tanks in modern warfare is undergoing a radical reassessment today. Anti-tank protection is becoming more effective and cheaper, and in the eternal dispute between armor and a projectile, a third participant has now appeared - the means of active protection of armored vehicles. And it looks like they can put an end to the tank history.
The history of five generations of the Merkava main battle tank reflects the evolution of ideas about the role of the tank in modern warfare.
General and his tank
Israeli General Israel Tal (1924-2010) went down in the history of tank forces not only as the winner of tank battles, but also as the creator of the main battle tank "Merkava", who made a real revolution in the tank world.
Israel Tal was born in 1924 in Palestine, in the Galilean village of Mahanaim, into a family whose roots go back to the Polish Hasidim who settled in the cities of Safed and Tiberias in 1777. At the age of five, he miraculously survived when the Arabs set fire to the house where he lived with his mother and younger sister. From childhood, Israel learned hard work - as a boy, he began to work in the village smithy.
Israel Tal, 1970.
At the age of 15, he became a fighter in the Hagan's Jewish illegal army. In 1942, at the age of seventeen, Israel Tal volunteered for the British Army. He fought the Nazis in Libya, in the ranks of the Jewish Brigade he participated in the Allied landings in Italy and fought to the Rhineland in Germany. After the war, he joined the militant organization of the Avengers, which was engaged in the search and elimination of Nazis, whose hands were in Jewish blood.
Israel Tal met the War of Independence that began in 1948 in the ranks of the IDF - he began his service as an instructor-machine gunner, and then quickly climbed the commander's steps. After graduating from a military academy in Great Britain, in 1955 Tal assumed command of the 10th Infantry Brigade, at the head of which he fought in the 1956 Sinai Campaign.
In 1959, Colonel Tal was appointed to the post of commander of the 7th Armored Brigade, which forever linked Israel Tal with the tank forces.
In 1964, General Israel Tal became deputy commander of the tank forces. As an experienced tanker, he understood that in conditions of multiple numerical superiority of the enemy in tanks, only excellent crew training would give a chance to survive and win.
Based on combat experience, he developed completely new tactical techniques for waging tank warfare. Tal paid special attention to the fire training of tank crews, becoming a true innovator in introducing sniper fire from turret guns of tanks to tank forces at long and ultra-long distances - up to 5-6 kilometers and even 10-11 kilometers.
This gave noticeable advantages in battle - the enemy fought according to Soviet tank regulations and instructions, which ordered to open aimed fire only at a distance of 1.5 km. So Israeli tankers, opening fire from long distances, destroyed enemy tanks even before they reached the line of fire.
General Tal fundamentally revised the entire system of combat training for tankers: the tank gunner became the central figure in the crews, and the entire crew had to work for the gunner and for hitting targets.
New tactics were tested in battle during the "Battle for Water" in 1964-1966. Then Syria tried to divert the water from the Jordan River and thereby deprive Israel of water resources. The Syrians began to build a diversion canal, which Israel could not allow. It was decided to destroy the enemy's earth-moving equipment, tanks and artillery batteries covering the construction with the fire of tank guns.
To this end, the Israeli command staffed tank units with trained crews. In accordance with the principle "Do as I do" adopted by the commanders of the Israeli army, General Tal took the place of the gunner in one of the tanks, the battalion commander became the commander of his tank, and the commander of the tank brigade, Colonel Sh. Lahat, became the loader.
In the course of tank duels, sniper fire from Israeli tankers destroyed all targets at a distance of up to 6 km, and then tank fire was transferred to targets located at a distance of 11 km.
The Syrians suffered heavy casualties and were forced to abandon their water diversion plans altogether.
In the Six Day War, Major General Tal commanded the Steel (84th Panzer) Division. His tankers broke through the front in the Gaza region and, with heavy battles advancing through the Sinai Desert, three days later reached the shore of the Suez Canal.
The Yom Kippur War, which began on October 6, 1973, became another test for the Israeli tank forces - in the vastness of the Sinai to the Golan Heights, the largest tank battle in world history unfolded, in which up to 7,000 tanks fought on both sides.
General Tal took command of the Southern Front. There, in the Sinai desert, up to four thousand tanks met in battle. In the Egyptian offensive, which began on October 14, more than a thousand tanks and two hundred armored personnel carriers with infantry were involved.
The advancing Egyptian forces were attacked by Israeli armored divisions, which included up to 700 tanks. In the ensuing oncoming tank battle, the largest since the Second World War, General Tal's tankers inflicted a heavy defeat on the enemy - more than 250 Egyptian tanks were destroyed, Israeli losses amounted to 40 tanks.
The 143rd, 162nd and 252nd Israeli tank divisions launched a counteroffensive, during which the 3rd and 2nd Egyptian armies were surrounded and destroyed, the Israeli troops crossed the Suez Canal. In the battles on Sinai, General Tal's son, the commander of a tank company, Captain Yair Tal, was seriously wounded.
Project "Merkava"
Analyzing the results of the tank battles of the Sinai Campaign and the Six Day War, Israel came to the conclusion that it was necessary to create its own tank.
There was simply no other choice: before the Six Day War, the IDF tank forces were armed with American M48 and M60 tanks and British Centurions, but the United States then banned the supply of weapons to Israel, and Great Britain was pro-Arab and could veto purchases at any time tanks and spare parts for them.
The Arabs were in a different situation: the USSR supplied the Arabs with thousands of its modern tanks free of charge, while guaranteeing the replacement of all battered equipment.
When creating his tank, General Tal was guided not only by technical improvements. He put forward completely new conceptual ideas for the tank. The main emphasis, along with firepower and maneuverability, was placed on the maximum protection of the crew members (let the tank be completely disabled, but the crew must survive) and on the maintainability of the tank (even after serious damage, the tank must be quickly restored and go into battle again) …
Tank Merkava in East Beirut, 1982. Photo: AP
The Israeli tank is fundamentally different in layout from all combat vehicles built according to the classical scheme, first used on the French Reno FT-17 tank of the 1916 model: in front of the control compartment, in the middle - the combat compartment, in the back - the engine compartment.
General Tal completely refused to follow tank traditions and proposed a completely new scheme of the combat vehicle.
1. An Israeli tank has an engine-transmission compartment located in front of the vehicle, providing additional protection for the crew from anti-tank weapons - according to statistics, most of the shells hit the frontal projection of the tank.
2. "The tank is the home of the crew in wartime." Tankers can stay in combat for several days, experiencing severe overloads from fatigue and nervous exhaustion. Therefore, Tal proposed the concept of round-the-clock use of the tank, for which the fighting compartment should be large and accommodate two crews - one is resting, the other is at war, or it can be used to transport a tank landing.
In order for even a wounded tanker to leave a wounded vehicle, the landing hatch must be large and located in the rear of the tank.
A fire in a wrecked tank leads to the death of the crew, so the fire extinguishing system must be reusable, because the tank can be hit multiple times during a battle.
3. Statistics showed that in the event of detonation of ammunition and fuel, the crew was completely killed. Therefore, the fighting compartment must be separated by armor from the fuel tanks and ammunition, and the ammunition itself must be placed in a separate container and automatically shoot back from the tank when it is hit by an anti-tank weapon. Fuel tanks should be in the aft part of the tank, in the area of the least likely damage from anti-tank weapons.
4. The tank must have a modular design - by replacing the modules, a damaged tank can be quickly restored on the battlefield. In addition, the modernization of the tank can be easily carried out by replacing outdated modules with more advanced ones.
All these ideas were revolutionary for tank building and completely changed the traditional ideas about the role and place of the tank in modern combat.
The program for the creation of the tank was approved in August 1970, and a group of only 35 tank officers, led by General Tal, began to develop a new tank.
This is how the Israeli tank industry was created, today more than 200 Israeli industrial companies are involved in the project, producing most of the tank's components - from armored steel and artillery pieces to ultra-precise electronic and computer equipment.
The implementation of General Tal's ideas led to the creation of a large, heavy (tank weight 63 tons) vehicle with powerful armor protection in the front of the tank and a spacious fighting compartment. The fighting compartment can be used to transport troops and property, as well as provide for the evacuation of the wounded from the battlefield.
General Tal gave his tank the name "Merkava", which means "Battle chariot" in Hebrew. This word came from TANAKH, it is mentioned in the first chapter of the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel as a symbol of movement, power and stable foundation.
The first rumors that Israel was developing their own tank began to circulate in 1972. In the spring of 1977, Israeli television showed a new tank, after which the pictures taken from the TV screen went around the pages of many military publications.
At the same time, information appeared that the production of a pre-production batch of 40 cars had begun; in October 1978, the first tank "Merkava" was officially transferred to the troops. The command of one of the first battalions, equipped with "Merkavas", was taken over by the son of General Tal.
The official presentation of the tank took place during the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to the tank plant of the Israeli military-industrial corporation Israel Military Industries.
Tank Merkava on the border with the Gaza Strip. Photo: Emilio Morenatti / AP, archive
Already four generations of Merkava tanks have left the conveyor lines of Israeli tank factories. Since 2005, the entire tank fleet of the IDF consists of domestic combat vehicles "Merkava".
Today, almost all armored vehicles produced in different countries of the world are built on the basis of concepts first tested in the Merkava tank. The design of the most modern Russian tank "Armata" also implements the ideas of the Israeli "tank guru".
What will be the "tank of the future"
The Arab Spring, which began several years ago, led to the collapse of countries hostile to Israel. Today, the regular armies of Syria and Egypt are practically destroyed and thousands of tanks in their armament are no longer able to attack Israeli borders. The enemy is no longer capable of waging a classic "symmetric" war, like the Second World War, in which huge regular armies of the opposing countries participate. And the tank was created to wage just such wars.
Today, the likelihood of an "asymmetric war" - a war of the regular army against terrorist groups - has sharply increased. The enemy here does not manifest himself at all unambiguously, he often hides among the civilian population sympathizing with the terrorists. However, it may be armed with modern weapons, with which it is capable of inflicting heavy losses on the regular army.
An example of such a defeat of the regular army by terrorists is the storming of Grozny by Russian troops on New Year's in 1995 and the death of the Maykop brigade, which then lost 189 people killed, captured and missing, 22 T-72 tanks out of 26, 102 BMP out of 120 … The tanks turned out to be defenseless against the anti-tank weapons of terrorists, acting contrary to the laws of "symmetric" wars.
The rapid development of means of destruction of armored vehicles called into question the prospects for the combat use of tanks and combat vehicles. It was impossible to solve the problem of the survivability of the tank and its crew by further increasing the thickness of the armor due to the fatal increase in the mass of the armored vehicle. Powerful armor has ceased to be the key to the survivability of modern armored vehicles.
The answer to the victory of the shell in the battle "armor - shell" was the creation of Active Protection Systems (APS), which made a real revolution in the fight for the survivability of tanks and their crews.
APS destroys or changes the flight paths of missiles, shells and grenades flying up to the tank. To solve these problems, various technical solutions are used, conditionally divided into Soft-kill and Hard-kill methods.
Soft-kill methods of protecting armored vehicles are designed to create decoys or change the flight path of incoming ammunition. As a result, the approaching ammunition goes "into milk" without reaching the attacked armored vehicle.
Hard-kill methods of protecting armored vehicles involve an active impact on incoming ammunition, their interception and destruction. The APS work in this case is reduced to detecting the attacking anti-tank projectile and shooting at the appropriate time with a protective ammunition.
The detection of ammunition flying towards the tank is carried out by an onboard radar station installed on the tank. In battle, the radar provides search and detection of targets flying up to the tank. Information about the parameters of the target's movement is transmitted to the on-board computer. The computer issues a command to launch the protective ammunition. This entire process, from the detection of an incoming munition to its destruction, lies in the time range from milliseconds to seconds. The IDF became the first army in the world in which all serial Merkava Mk4 tanks are equipped with Trophy active protection systems.
However, the development of means of active protection of tanks unexpectedly led to a seemingly paradoxical conclusion - if armored vehicles are now not threatened by anti-tank missiles and shells, then the armor itself turns out to be useless.
It turns out that any mobile platform equipped with active protection systems and devoid of heavy armor will be much lighter, cheaper and faster than a traditional tank.
In the Israeli military department, a special group of tank officers and engineers was created to determine the principles of building a "tank of the future." Their task was to formulate conceptual ideas for an armored combat vehicle capable of providing mobile and powerful fire support on the battlefield.
The group faced the following questions:
1. Will the tank of the future be lighter than the current 70-ton "Merkava". After all, the active protection means of armored vehicles already existing today, destroying anti-tank missiles on the approach, make it possible to painlessly abandon thick multi-layer armor, which reduces the speed of the tank, and also increases fuel costs and production costs.
2. What crew is needed to service the tank of the future. The development of computer systems and telecommunications makes it possible today to abandon a number of crew members and even make it completely "unmanned".
3. The tank of the future will use a traditional turret gun or a different system. “When we think about what the tank of the future should be, we need a broad view of all existing technologies,” said General Yigal Slovik, until recently the commander of the IDF's armored forces. - For example, electromagnetic and laser cannons, which are now too large in size, and it is impossible to use them. However, in the near future, such weapons will become a reality."
4. What kind of tank engine is needed. For example, a hybrid engine can be used as a power plant in a tank, which, by burning fuel, charges the batteries, and then uses them to keep the vehicle moving for a long time, and whether the "tank of the future" will be wheeled or will remain on a caterpillar track.
Israeli experts, based on these polls, came to the following conclusion:
The tank of the future will be radically different from traditional tanks. It is even doubtful that it can even be called a tank - it will be so different from the usual armored vehicles.
