IDF's new weapon trick down their sleeve

The recent developments in Gaza, where the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are mobilizing to confront Hamas, are marked by a significant shift in ground warfare. The use of Active Protection Systems (APS) is transforming the effectiveness and nature of land warfare, reducing casualties, protecting armored vehicles, and altering the role and necessity of heavily armored tanks. As these APS technologies become more widespread, the Telegraph has tackled the questions that are arising about the future of heavily armored vehicles and their suitability in modern warfare, where lighter, APS-equipped vehicles may offer greater protection and flexibility. Caliber.Az reprints this article.

"Following the terrible events of the weekend, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have placed the Gaza Strip under siege. Some 300,000 reservists are being mobilised. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that the IDF will 'destroy' Hamas, the terrorist pseudo-government which rules the Strip and its two million inhabitants.
It seems clear that for the fourth time since Hamas took over Gaza back in 2007, the IDF will go into the Strip on the ground. But this time, things are going to be different. The Israelis are going to attempt what they have never managed or even seriously tried: to actually eliminate Hamas, rather than 'mowing the grass' as they have done before. And this time, the IDF has a special technological edge which might let them actually achieve their goal – and incidentally, change the entire nature of land warfare at the same time.

The way things have played out during Israeli ground incursions against its cross-border terrorist opponents is now very familiar. In order to avoid taking massive casualties, the IDF moves using a lot of armoured vehicles, including heavy Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) and armoured infantry carriers. To deal with urban-combat menaces such as improvised bombs, booby-traps and mines, much use is made of the well-known D9 armoured bulldozer.
In theory, armoured vehicles can easily overrun lightly equipped enemies who don’t have heavy armour. Tank soldiers still like to pretend that the only true defence against enemy tanks is to have MBTs of one’s own.
In the real world, it turns out that there are many ways to defeat tanks and other armoured vehicles. As the Russians have learned during their invasion of Ukraine, modern portable anti-tank missiles, which use shaped-charge warheads to defeat armour, are extremely hard for armoured forces to deal with. Back in 2006, when the IDF were fighting Hezbollah rather than Hamas, even heavy MBTs were knocked out in significant numbers by portable guided missiles including the Russian Kornet and Metis-M. Even common-as-dirt, unguided RPGs can be a big problem close up, especially for vehicles less heavily armoured than MBTs, or if an MBT is hit from somewhere other than in front.

The threat of such weapons, especially in urban environments, tends to mean that the IDF will shoot first if it can – even if a tank or vehicle commander doesn’t know for sure if there’s an enemy there to shoot at, as opposed to a building with civilians in it. The danger to ground troops also leads to very heavy use of artillery and airpower: sometimes they are all that gets used, as in 2021, and that tends to mean even more civilian deaths. In order to deal with the booby-traps, tunnels, suicide bombers and land mines, the D9 armoured dozers cause huge amounts of destruction – so much so, indeed, that these pieces of militarised construction equipment sometimes seem to attract more criticism than the use of tanks and airpower.

Despite the amount of damage they dish out, the IDF can suffer heavy casualties when they go in on the ground: more than 500 Israeli soldiers were killed or wounded in six weeks during Operation Protective Edge in 2014 (aka 'the 2014 Gaza War'), the last time they went into the Strip.

In previous IDF incursions, the civilian death toll has climbed, casualties have mounted, international opinion (especially in the all-important USA) has turned against Israel … and in due course the IDF has withdrawn, having mown the grass once again but leaving it to grow back.

But this time, not only are the Israelis much more angry than usual – justifiably – they have a new, potentially game-changing piece of kit. This is called an Active Protection System (APS).

An APS involves mounting flat-panel radar scanners on a vehicle – up to this point, typically an MBT. The scanners can see all around. When they detect something fast-moving like a missile, they can tell if it will hit the vehicle or not. If it will, the APS instantly fires one or another kind of projectile at the inbound missile, blowing it up in midair. Whether the missile will hit or not, the system can backtrack its flight and automatically train a weapon system – for instance, if the APS is mounted on a tank, the tank’s main gun – on the point from which the missile was fired. The gunner only needs to pull the trigger.

The effects of this are three-fold: first, many fewer armoured vehicles are knocked out and many fewer IDF troops are killed or wounded. Secondly, the IDF don’t feel the same pressing need to shoot, blow up or flatten anything that looks suspicious, as they are in much less danger. Fewer civilians are hit and there is less destruction. Thirdly, when someone makes a missile or RPG attack on IDF armour, he is much less likely to survive and do it again.
In 2014 for Protective Edge, the IDF had the Trophy APS, but only on their Merkava MBTs: other vehicles, the infantry carriers, D9 dozers etc, didn’t have such protection. It was noticeable that not a single tank was lost that time, with the Trophy knocking down previously deadly threats like the Kornet, Metis-M and RPG-29 'Vampir': but the IDF were still badly bloodied, as not everyone can ride in a tank. At the time, Trophy was too heavy and power-hungry to be mounted on lighter vehicles.

But since then, the Israelis have been working hard on APS technology, and it has spread across the IDF. There are lighter versions of Trophy, and a new line of systems called Iron Fist. Various classes of armoured infantry vehicles have been equipped with APS, and so have the D9 dozers. This time, when the Israelis go into the Strip, most of them are likely to be riding in APS-equipped vehicles.

That should mean fewer IDF casualties, fewer civilians killed, and more dead Hamas terrorists. Perhaps, this time, the Israelis will not be compelled to pull out and leave the grass to grow again: though even with APS on every vehicle, a perpetual war of occupation in the Strip may eventually come to seem no more attractive than it did back in 2005, when the Israelis gave up running Gaza themselves.

Meanwhile out in the rest of the world, armies everywhere have taken note of the Israelis’ APS success. The British army, in the process of turning some of its aged and unreliable Challenger 2 MBTs into enormously heavy Challenger 3s, will add the Trophy system to them. The US has fitted Israeli APSs to some of its Abrams MBTs, and is also equipping other classes of vehicle.

Russia for its part has claimed to have APS since the 1970s, but like so much supposedly advanced Russian military technology, the 'Drozd' and 'Arena' systems have been ineffectual or simply not there. There has certainly been no sign of them delivering any useful protection for Russia’s armour in Ukraine.

But the Israelis can make a working APS, and the latest versions will not only swat down relatively slow-moving missiles, rockets, recoilless-rifle rounds and such like. Elbit, maker of the Iron Fist, says that its latest models can also defeat the hypervelocity penetrators fired from MBT main guns – so-called armour-piercing fin stabilised discarding sabot (APFSDS) rounds.

At this point, then, it’s possible to think a bit more creatively than just bolting APSs onto existing vehicles. If an APS can protect even against enemy tank cannon, we need to start wondering if it really makes sense to hang many tons of armour on fighting vehicles any more, and whether it’s worth having long, heavy, highly specialised smoothbore cannons firing APFSDS.

At the moment, tank soldiers are seeing APS technology as the saviour of their beloved heavy armour, finally nullifying the threat of irritating lightly-equipped enemies with portable missiles and rockets. But in a future world where pretty much any military vehicle would have APS – and thus, would only need light armour plating able to stop bullets, while remaining safe from APFSDS tank penetrators – the need for tanks and other heavy metal might be difficult to see".