0 evidence for this.
Israel can still fight modern tanks.
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Merkava Mk.1 was designed to be impenatrable to the T-62 and early T-72. Mk.2 had similar but slightly better armor.
Mk.3 was designed to withstand any hit from 120 mm / 125 mm tank rounds at the time (circa 1990, so it won’t tank a DM53 but will do so with a 3BM42).
Mk.4 was designed to be frontally invulnerable to ANY 120 / 125 mm tank round in the modern world, and as an upgrade, also to Kornets (though only from the front, sadly enough).
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Well there is a Chinese source regarding Mk.3 armor effectiveness. During the 90´s they had a lot of exchange with Israel over military tech, including of course, tanks. General Tal, father of Merkava, even went to China to meet Chinese tank designers, and they had a surprising access to Israeli armor technology of the time.
For starters, they describe that Israel integrates ERA into tanks differently than Soviet enigneers. Whereas the latter mount ERA on the outside of the tank, the Israeli layout sees the ERA mounted on the interior of armor modules.
Secondly, the armor estimate for Merkava Mk.3
Frontally up to 400mm on the UFP (including the composite add on) and 450mm on the turret cheeks. This would resist most of contemporary 125mm APFSDS except maybe for BM42 depending on range.
This is the side armor representation, likely at 10-20 deg angle of impact.
Now to estimate Mk.4 protection requirements is much more complicated because apart from patents and commercial materials by Rafael we have few written sources. We can also look into damaged modules that have inner elements exposed. But nevertheless if I had to guess depending on the likely requirements IDF set up by that time, -we have to take into account that Egypt had already aquired Abrams- its highly likely MK.4 was required to be protected against 120mm KE ammo available to Egypt, which would translate as no less than 600-650mm. Also the fact that its the heaviest tank in service supports the hypothesis that protection requirements were very demanding.
Lastly, while the buff to Mk.4 is way overdue, Gj could also balance it by diminishing the armor effectiveness of the modules after succesive impacts, which is in line to what we see with real tanks that took hits.
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Lol ong tiktok knowladge
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This looks very clasified tbh
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It actually came out in a Chinese military magazine about the visit of General Tal to China.
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I’ve got a link here that proves the armor data for the Merkava is wrong. You can’t just increase its weight based on incorrect armor data. It’s like only focusing on one side of the coin and ignoring the other — that’s just not fair.
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/1eYOWMuJWJ3n
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We’re well aware of this report and that it’s gone uncorrected for 2 years
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can I see the the whole magazine for this excerpt？It is really rare
You can download it from here