Tank Warfare In The Gaza Battlefield

The tactical success of the Israeli military incursion into Gaza over the past week confirms a lesson I noted after the five-day Russian conquest of one-third of Georgia in the Caucasus last August: Main Battle Tanks still rule ground war, whatever the high-tech, guerrilla-war and minimum-army enthusiasts say to the contrary.

In the first four days of its ground forces' incursion into Gaza, Israel inflicted an estimated 500 military fatalities on the forces of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement. But the Israeli army forces involved suffered only five or six fatalities.

This obviously reflected the extremely poor military performance of Hamas so far. Hamas' military weakness has been in striking contrast to the very impressive performance against the Israelis of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite Party of God, in the mini-war in southern Lebanon in July 2006. On that occasion, Hezbollah forces were well dug in and they used improvised explosive devices very effectively against Israel's much vaunted, homemade Merkava (Chariot) Main Battle Tanks.

Hamas had had plenty of time to equip itself with IEDs and to train its cadres how to use them. Also, the densely populated urban maze of Gaza City should have provided plenty of opportunities to inflict significant casualties on the Israeli Main Battle Tanks. But so far Hamas forces have had negligible impact on them.

Part of the contrast obviously reflects the renewed emphasis on training, unit cohesion and sheer disciplinary toughness that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and his highly respected Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi have had upon the Israel Defense Forces -- Zahal.

But there is another factor as well: While tanks have many vulnerabilities in different aspects of modern ground and guerrilla war, it is impossible to conquer a country, win a full-scale battle or hold occupied hostile territory without them.

The striking success of Russian Main Battle Tanks in the five-day conflict with Georgia last August, like the current fighting in Gaza, proves once again how crucial tanks remain to the conduct of modern war.

In the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Russia used a concentration of its state-of-the-art T-90 Main Battle Tanks, which also have been sold in large numbers -- 657 in all -- to India, backed up by significant numbers of older, supposedly obsolete but still highly effective models, especially the more than a quarter-century-old T-72.

The failure of Hamas so far to come up with any tactical solution to the Israeli deployment of its venerable but still effective Merkavas. The Merkavas, like the old Soviet-era T-72 Main Battle Tanks the Russians used to such effect in Georgia, proved that masses of tanks don't have to be state-of-the-art technological wonders to be highly effective war winners. Concentrations of older models kept running through effective maintenance can get the job done quickly and cheaply.