Bulletins and News Discussion from November 6th to November 12th, 2023 - Apartheid Antony's Asinine Adventure

I haven't yet seen much footage of attacks in highly urban areas (though it's hard to tell sometimes because, well, half the buildings aren't fucking there anymore) A few videos with houses and gardens and such, and more than a few videos of rural areas. The only video that comes to mind that's a little more built up was the one where they slapped their flag on the destroyed bulldozer. This generally supports the assertion that Israel is having a hard time entering the city proper, or doesn't want to yet for some reason.

Most of the hit videos I've seen are just outside urban areas, the shooters are using scrub brush to hide. They're usually just sitting in place without any infantry screen around them. The only tank-in-urban-area video I've seen was the one from a few days ago where a Merkava watches a carload of civilians frantically turn around when they spot it, then the Merkava hits it with an HE shell once it's almost turned around to flee.

Yeah, there's a lot of sayings that go like "The army is always prepared to fight the last war".

I think the officer corps fossilizing is a big part of it. They learn how to fight one kind of war, move up the ranks to where they're not doing real fighting anymore, and never really change. Plus a lot of officers have contempt for enlisted. And the whole miltiary of most countries is at the whims of the civilian government that doesn't want to re-tool the whole military every couple of years to deal with emerging circumstances.

And then, in the end, it turns out that conventional near-peer wars still just come down to having absolutely shitloads of artillery guns and most of the hypertech wunderwaffen just aren't all that important.

Maybe it's because if you make a bed decision in the military, you end up dead and can't tell anyone about it.

yeah, I mean if Ukraine can recover its damaged/destroyed tanks and send them to Poland to be repaired and then bring them back to the front line, sometimes multiple times per tank, against one of the strongest armies on the planet, then Hamas certainly isn't permanently destroying all the tanks Israel sends. perhaps if Hezbollah or Ansarallah can knock out Israeli infrastructure or power generation or transportation then it might be managed, but we aren't there yet. An advantage that the Resistance has here that they don't have in Ukraine is that all the relevant facilities are either inside Israel itself and thus free to strike, or across a sea, adding time and some vulnerability to resupplying (airports can be damaged, seaports can be too), as opposed to Ukraine, where their western border with other countries is a total sieve. I guess they could ship their broken shit, or fuel, or whatever else through Jordan or Egypt and then onwards somewhere else and I doubt those regimes would oppose it if events came to that, but if it does come to that then we're already in a totally different paradigm and current analysis is useless.

nonetheless, guerrilla wars aren't typically won through industrial attrition anyway. I have a feeling that even if all the Merkavas in Israel were destroyed, then the US would start training the IDF on Abrams and just send even more tanks. It's gonna end through internal collapse and/or Israel becoming too exhausted/demoralized on the home front.

For all practical purpose a mobility kill is still a kill. Totally destroying the tank is certainly preferable, but knocking it out of that battle or even just forcing it to retreat is still a win. I do agree that many of the videos of attacks on tanks likely resulted in limited damage, just because a lot of portable AT weapons aren't that effective against modern tank armor.

Israeli tactics do seem bad, with no infantry along with tanks in the urban environment.

My guess would be they don't have the stomach for it. Urban fighting is brutal, and while politically Gaza is comparable to Warsaw, the Palestinian troops are far better equipped and prepared than the Warsaw ghetto was. I think sending infantry in large numbers would result in large numbers of dead IDF grunts and I suspect that Bibi and company want to avoid large casualties as much as possible. i remember what bin Laden said long ago about the US being weak and unable to stomach even small troop losses, and how this made the US vulnerable. I think he was talking abou the Black Hawk Down incident in Somalia, and how despite losing only a dozen or so troops the US put so much political pressure on Clinton he was forced to withdraw. The Israeli leadership might be thinking along similar lines; Too many body bags and they'll lose support for the genocide when people realizes that war has consequences and this isn't like sending fighters on raids to blow up random civilian infrastructure in Libya and Iran.

I've remained hesitant to post this take, mainly to avoid "doomer" accusations, but I have also been skeptical of some of the Resistance videos of tank attacks. Pretty much all of the videos show an explosion and a big cloud of smoke/dust, but we don't see any videos of a destroyed tank after the fact. I know some of that is likely due to the hit and run tactics being employed, but it does remain hard to tell what exactly the results have been on the ground.

Another thing to consider is that even if it doesnt destroy the tank it’s going to make the crew inside panic a bit probably, so even in the worst case scenario of no meaningful damage it’s still harming israeli morale imo

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I would believe that. The manufactures blew smoke up their asses and they didn’t realize it.