Merkava 4 armor is long overdue to be buffed

The simple fact is that the Merkava 4 is no longer competitive at 11.3-11.7 when compared to other modern MBTs like the Leopard 2A7 and T-80BVM. This is because Gaijin has decided that the armor of the Merkava 4 must be piss poor in order for the tank to be “balanced”.

The armor is modelled with the strength of a cardboard box against sabot, and Gaijin has listed the armor multiplier for the composite as 0.10x, which is lower than rubber fabric screens (0.20x). A tank using a cold war era APFSDS round can quite reliably frontally penetrate the UFP and even the turret. The chemical protection (although good) is 300-400mm less than what has been observed IRL.


For context, a tank from 1971 using a Cold War ERA APFSDS can easily penetrate the UFP of the Merkava, with the UFP only offering around 350mm of KE protection.

The turret armor is slightly better, but still horrendous.

Bear in mind that these images are not even comparing “modern” (in WT terms) APFSDS like DM43 and M829. Toptier APFSDS like DM53 and M829A2 are guaranteed to penetrate the Merkava basically anywhere frontally.

The Merkava does have some good things about it, like the LWS/APS, M332, decent chemical protection, and the good reverse, but there are plenty of numerous other issues (such as the absence of SLERA and the rear door being modelled as 30mm although the thickness is clearly much higher in photos IRL) that have not been addressed because Gaijin does not bother to take a look at them whatsoever.

And yes, I do understand the point of balancing to make sure that a few or one specific tanks are not overly powerful at a BR, but the Merkava shouldn’t be nerfed to a point where the armor makes it target practice for enemy APFSDS.

Please Gaijin, give players a reason to play the Merkavas and show the Israel tech tree some more love in general.

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It’s so sad and pathetic… it should be the most well protected MBT ingame, and not just chemically like many people seem to believe. Not to mention the fact it’s 15 tons underweight… (meanwhile the Sholef V1 is 15 tons overweight, bet there’s some gaijin lore there lmaooo)
Give me my damn Modern Maus Gaijin, it’s just update after update of nothing changing and it really getting tired of it… I should be eating Konret for breakfast, and even on the sides sometimes, not getting lolpenned at every single angle against even worse missiles than that! Biblically accurate Merkava Mk.4 when gaijin!? I can’t take it anymore man…

I’ve nearly lost all faith in it ever getting fixed at this point, but gaijin doing gaijin things… and bug reports just left to rust and be forgotten as always…
image

Edit:

Meanwhile BMP-2M 30mm 102mm of flat pen lawn darts penning it reliably with sustained fire 💀

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Cold War era darts shouldn’t really be penetrating the UFP, or anywhere frontally. I wouldn’t mind Gaijin decreasing the mobility but adding the actual armor and upping the weight to 80t.

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I believe that back when the Mk.4 was initially added, it had much stronger armor on a dev server, however it was nerfed to its current state after devs said, get this, “if the armor was that strong it would weigh more”. Like man…

Also

Well uh, the BMP-2M/2S38 would like to talk to you :)))

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“if the armor was that strong it would weigh more”

And hell, it does. the IDF has stated that it is 80 tons IRL… but honestly if gaijin could be convinced of that, I guarantee they’d increase the weight, and not even add the armour to go with it

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btw after the major update the APS is broken and don’t work properly!

They also don’t bother looking into fixing their own ussr vehicles even the iconic ones, almost 4 months since someone reported that object 279 no longer resist to bombs and dies to every fire crackers like they were paper light tanks. Report is still open and unattended.

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The same thing happened to the Namer 30. Weight increased from 60 to 64 tons, no change to armor whatsoever.

Funny thing is the Namer 30 is missing its entire side composite array so the side protection is like 50mm. :(

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no magic soviet ERA or magic soviet rocks means nerf

It’s funny, but it’s also sadly realistic…

I have no doubt with Merkava armour be better IRL but from Palestine videos the APS is working poorly. There seem to be 2 modes one open and one close, whilst the radar seem to be working the entire time the crew of Merkava seem to be more using the closed mode which means slower reaction. The accuracy of the APS also seem to be inconsistent to say the least as many slow speed anti tank weapons are missed by the APS despite reacting in time. Anyone have additional stuff on APS modes or stats on that?

Tbf the testbed Merkava Mk.4M with the Iron Fist APS would solve your problems :)))

Got more info about it?

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I’ve only ever seen a picture of it from offek’s suggestion where I first heard about it’s existence:

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I found the same image on twitter but u couldn’t find any links to external websites but if you look closely at the picture you can see that it was taken from a book of some sort

https://techtime.news/2016/12/29/iron-fist/
I found this article that shows a image of a merkava 4 with the iron fist

I have had a look. Iron fist should be optimising in these areas, but I find it weird that they have it hidden under armour still, like on VT4 and the newly spotted ZTZ99A the APS is just standing on top which would of course have made the view and reaction faster. Any reason for this design on both Iron fist and Trophy?

Honestly couldn’t tell ya. I didn’t design the tank lol. All I know is that the Trophy APS was chosen over iron fist for Merkava Mk.4M production. Anything related to the APS’s effectiveness, placement, and design are mostly unkown to me.

That’s a great find, and the Merkava Mk.4 seems to be depicted in relatively high quality!

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Action against APFSDS, interesting.

The Iron Fist found in the Black Night ingame can do this if I’m not mistaken, that’s why I was so excited when I found out about this prototype/TTD.