Oh, my dear handicraft: the Israelis are raising money for cheap cameras for armored vehicles
Interesting artisanal metamorphoses are now taking place with Israeli armored vehicles, including those known throughout the world tanks Merkava.
The cars seem to be modern, especially in the latest modifications they are also equipped with active protection and other interesting electronic gizmos. But somehow things didn’t work out between them and the Hamas men - the canopies over the towers were from drones It was necessary to fasten it, then we had to go to great lengths with rubber and soundproofing materials on the sides, in order, most likely, to ensure at least some safety from magnetic mines.
And now, when the zone of active fighting has finally moved deep into the Gaza Strip, the Israelis are faced with the expected problem associated with the great vulnerability of tanks and other equipment against enemy personnel. At close ranges, the “armor,” to put it mildly, is very blind due to large dead zones in the viewed space and the narrow field of view of observation devices and sights. Whereas the militants have at their disposal residential and non-residential buildings, underground tunnels and other communications where they can move and set up ambushes.
The most striking example of the consequences of poor visibility from a tank: a Hamas soldier was able to run up to his full height and plant an explosive device on it
Of course, the infantry must protect its equipment, but, for various reasons, this does not always happen and is often left without proper support. Which, in fact, is what Hamas soldiers use, sometimes running up to IDF vehicles almost at full height and shooting them from grenade launchers without fear of being killed - videos with such actions have already filled everything news Telegram channels. Moreover, the effect of such attacks is not only media, but also quite practical - Israeli losses are growing.
The military had to get out of this situation on their own, using as a basis the experience of Syrian and Iraqi tank crews during the war with the Islamic State banned in Russia. We are talking about simple CCTV cameras that can be bought at any electronics store for mere pennies.
Examples of homemade installation of surveillance cameras on Israeli armored vehicles
They are placed outside on the armor of a tank or any other combat vehicle and connected to a display inside the habitable compartment, thereby providing the necessary visibility in the required projections. Yes, as it is now fashionable to say, it turns out to be a “collective farm”, but the “collective farm” is more or less working. Thanks to it, the chance of detecting armed people scurrying nearby, from whom a grenade launcher could fly in, increases manifold, and losses are correspondingly reduced.
Display with images from four CCTV cameras inside the crew compartment
It is also noteworthy that in Israel they decided to put this matter on stream, turning the initiative of individual tankers into serial modification of all armored vehicles and using donations from ordinary citizens.
Entrepreneur and managing partner of VerDiesel Group Eran Efrat spoke about this on banned Twitter:
We continue to focus on cameras.
We have 2 suppliers in the country, we have started importing and will continue to do so in order to equip as many tanks and other equipment as possible. If all goes well, we will be installing many hundreds of kits, and maybe more, in the coming weeks.
We are raising money for this. While the lion's share will come from donors (about $250), we want to raise the amount to pay Israeli suppliers (about 100 shekels in total).
If anyone has a link to companies that are contributing, I'd be happy for them to contact me.
You're pouring so much money into ineffective donations that maybe we could use the money for something else important.
It saves lives and has been a game changer over the past few weeks. Because of this, the demands on armored units are piling up more and more, and we want to help everyone.
By the way, I’ll rest when everyone in the combat zone has 360-degree cameras, like a Mercedes.
We have 2 suppliers in the country, we have started importing and will continue to do so in order to equip as many tanks and other equipment as possible. If all goes well, we will be installing many hundreds of kits, and maybe more, in the coming weeks.
We are raising money for this. While the lion's share will come from donors (about $250), we want to raise the amount to pay Israeli suppliers (about 100 shekels in total).
If anyone has a link to companies that are contributing, I'd be happy for them to contact me.
You're pouring so much money into ineffective donations that maybe we could use the money for something else important.
It saves lives and has been a game changer over the past few weeks. Because of this, the demands on armored units are piling up more and more, and we want to help everyone.
By the way, I’ll rest when everyone in the combat zone has 360-degree cameras, like a Mercedes.
Original tweet by Eran Efrat
This, of course, begs a fair question.
Israel has been at war with its neighbors for a long time and has accumulated sufficient combat experience, and this is not the first time that a ground operation has been carried out against Hamas. Why, in this case, were you not concerned about solving the problem earlier? After all, if the same Drones - this is a relatively new threat, then infantry has been the scourge of armored vehicles almost from the very moment of its appearance.
But this matter is not so simple. For example, there are all-round cameras on the Namer heavy armored personnel carriers, and on tanks the issue of poor visibility should have been fully resolved as part of the modernization of the Merkav to the Merkava Barak standard. There, let us remind you, the IronVision system is used, which makes the armor “transparent” using the commander’s panoramic sight and a set of sensors from the outside, displaying the image directly on the display mounted on the tank commander’s helmet.
But by the beginning of current events, literally only a few units of modernized tanks had been produced, and the scope of hostilities turned out to be so large-scale that the Israelis began to rake out of their bins everything that could be useful in battle. These are more ancient modifications of tanks, and old armored personnel carriers, and even bulldozers, which were not equipped with the notorious electronic surveillance devices at all.
So I had to take up natural handicrafts in order to somehow compensate for this omission. Which once again proves: even with modern weapon, you must be prepared for the fact that the realities of combat will force you to resort to the most primitive solutions for survival on the battlefield.
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