Once again, you’re being a bit foolish. If it was NERA, that might be the case, but this isn’t NERA. It’s a hybrid of ERA and NERA.
Russian ERA can stop around 250 KE. This would be that but much more advanced, much larger, and capable of taking multiple hits before being degraded.
The Achzarit in testing was capable of stopping 3BM42 without an issue, so I don’t see why Israel’s heaviest MBT couldn’t easily sweat off even 3BM60 frontally.
Unfortunately, Gaijin did this…
Merkava 4 Weight underestimated. // Gaijin.net // Issues
Despite the IDF literally bragging about the Merkava being 80 tons, it’s apparently “Insufficient” evidence.
I’m actually tired of Gaijin’s BS.
So we will likely not get a fixed Merkava weight and improved armor.
Ah, yes, THE LITERAL ISRAEL DEFENCE FORCES IS NOT A GOOD ENOUGH SOURCE FOR THE ISRAELI TANK.
Checks out.
Makes sense.
Brilliant.
It’s always the same story.
Anything short of manuals is discarded.
But then manuals are discarded too for being classified.
They basically just want to do whatever they want disregarding reality.
Gaijin in a nutshell:
Just made a forum post if you want to go check it out.
i didnt say it was NERA?
lol where did that come from
in game maybe but irl ERA doesnt have a value in mm but in % of stopping potential.
SLERA acts like autistic ERA because its not very good with exploding and not very good with not exploding.
expansion of SLERA is far slower than expansion of ERA (as no doubt you are aware) and thats because the thicker the round the more affected it is from SLERA while the faster the round the more affected it is from ERA.
614mm of a composition which may or may not (probably not) be designed to work against the Anti-ERA capabilities of modern western ammunition?
I’ll take sources on this gladly. I’ve never heard anything about this before.
Israel makes most of the DM projectiles. They’re an Israeli Export, believe it or not, so yes.
As it stands in-game, the armor blocks can be shot off and have less effective thickness that RHA per millimeter.
This image shown here famously shows the impact point of a Kornet missile. In-game, the armor can only stop 1000mm CE, but in this image, it’s clearly demonstrated that at minimum, it can stop 1200mm CE.
Since the armor can be blown off and is used to stop massive hits at least once, it should be higher in effective protection for balance reasons.
For example, I believe the Merkava 4 in-game should have armor that can stop the largest shells in-game at least once before becoming less effective. It’d be more of a dynamic armor like it should be.
Also, three other issues with the Merkava that aren’t related to SLERA are as follows.
Trophy Reaction Speed is too slow.
Merkava is missing its IRST tracking for the HE shell.
Weight is wrong. Should be 80 tons.
What “modern western ammunition”? Merkava Mk.4 can’t even take 3BM42 ingame lmao
I can understand if it can’t take DM53 from L/55… but the armor not being able to take 3BM46 or even 3BM42 is a joke.
If Merkava Mk.4’s armor had the same KE multipliers as Challenger 2, it would be on the 550mm KE range for the hull and 700mm KE for the turret cheeks. I think that makes way more sense for a present day, modern military power’s workhorse MBT than an armor incapable of withstanding 1980s shells.
yeah probably why they dont expect to be hit by their own ammo lol
this hit shows that kornet or whatever it was (HEAT warheads dont cause deflection scars) obviously hit at a very extreme angle. as you can see the carved armour goes upwards with the collapsed plate.
so its either an extreme angle shot or it isnt exactly a kornet. (ive seen too many cases of mis identified attacking weapons/ammunitions).
while it is obviously not as accurate in game as irl, the capabilities of the merkavas protection seem waay overblown in my opinion.
im sure there are sources from the producer about this no?
all MBTs are
agreed
i am not opposed to that
But they actively do testing against their own ammunition?
The Merkava can’t even stop a Kornet projectile in-game after it’s been hit by Trophy. That’s sad and wrong.
I disagree. Israel is on the forefront of Military Technology. Many countries use their technology. SLERA is one of the most advanced armors in the world. There’s a reason why the Merkava tanks take hits from missiles so much better than Leopards and Abrams. Their armor coverage is just better due to the weight.
There is, but the bruchure page has been removed.
Trophy APS should have higher target speed // Gaijin.net // Issues
Gaijin has acknowledged it for 2 years though.
Kinda. The Merkava has a special mode, not called IRST.
Merkava 3B - 4M should have OTT (Optical Target Tracking) // Gaijin.net // Issues
It’s called OTT and has also been acknowledged for 2 years.
Possibly… you would be the expert im kinda working on deduction here lol.
Gaijin has proven incapable of making APS work. They always suffer from ping and the HEAT pre detonating
CE?
Yes
KE?
Im not inclined to beleive it as much.
Yeah but sadly all sorts of target tracking (present even on the earlier leos and abrams etc are not implemented for ‘balance’
While it is true that I’m extremely invested, even I’m not omniscient.
To a degree, yeah. Even then, the reaction speed is labeled 400 meters a second too slow, I believe.
Merkava 4 (all) armor values too low and mislabeled. // Gaijin.net // Issues
This bug report has been accepted involving how the front is biased for Kinetic while the sides are biased for Chemical. It breaks it down much better than I can.
Even if it’s not for tanks, it would be nice to have to combat helicopters.
my reason for thinking that Kornets could actually penetrate a large area of the merk is because its a tandem warhead and as we know all types of reactive armour dont fare well against tandem.
the one picture you shared…
this one…
i beleive this is showing a NxRA armour system.
it would have an inert layer between two RHA layers. this i would call a NxRA cell. a NxRA battery (as probably shown here) would be a series of such cells with multiple layers.
There is obviously no inner explosive layer here or the reaction wouldve shown signs. i think the first time i saw this i called this a heat or HE shell blast but it seems like a penetration hole with a significant upwards blast mark. im puzzled what kind of weapon makes such a mark unless the layer we see was originally much more angled than now (probably due to the impact etc).
i think currently only IFVs and SPAA have IRST or target tracking for air units only. helicopters and TGP equipped aircraft have ground target tracking based on TV, IR or radar but thats pretty much it. i would love tanks (MBTs) to have target tracking whether optical or IR (its usually both).
also one small… actually its a pretty significant issue.
if you take two shells that both penetrate… suppose 400mm…
but theyre not the same shell they wont show equal penetration in the WT penetration calculator. it took me a while to realise this but the system calculates parameters separately for each shell according to its back-end density etc variables so even two shells of 120mm fired at 1600m/s penning 400mm in the statcard will perform different on the same piece of armour.
a helpful piece i found.
however, the patent used by the report states little about relations to merkava and admits to less effectiveness than pure ERA.
The armor reads explosive on it. And in this image, the explosive charge has been used. This is Raphael’s patented SLERA.
It also has bolts that are typically associated with reactive armor instead of NERA.
When I said I think the armor should degrade, it would basically just mean it has a certain health amount to draw from that each shell would damage and chip away at. It wouldn’t be arcadey, but rather just a durability thing.
Since the armor is kinda meant to take a huge hit from the strongest ground-based missiles we have in-game at least once on the front pieces at least
This document is labeled as 2001, which would likely mean it’s from an early version of SLERA. The Merkava Mk.4A wasn’t very good.
The modern Merkava Mk.4M or even the Mk.5 have way better armor.
is it possible that only the direct frontal arc has the SLERA?
fair but as admitted by the patent itself, SLERA is no where near as effective on single hits as ERA. its more focused on durability towards multiple hits (as is reflected by the IDF doctrine against rpg-like weapons)
ye just sharing it for the info lol
Not really. The sides are made of the same stuff, but they’re a bit thinner overall. The front is around 600-800mm LOS of sight while the hull sides are 400mm LOS and the Turret sides are probably around 500-600mm LOS.
The Front plate might be the only bit that isn’t SLERA, though I could be wrong about that part.
Merkava 4 (all) armor values too low and mislabeled. // Gaijin.net // Issues
I’ll link back to this cause it’s a solid bug report.
A lot can change in 20 years. Just think of how far computers have come since then. The way that SLERA tends to work is that it’s basically just ERA that doesn’t get detonated easily on weaker warheads. The ERA part of the armor is designed to activate only when the armor is penetrated past it’s NERA shell.
And yes, but the armor was known to have flaws 2 decades ago.
There’s a huge gap in armor effectiveness between the 4A and 4B and up.
Is there any source of information about that?
