Israel: World's Deadliest Defensive Force

You know, I was at first going to sneer at this thread, and say something along the lines of, "Yeah, the Israeli military is great...against lame enemies."

But then I started to read up on the subject, and I gained a newfound respect for their fighting force. Thanks for the thread, Achilles.

Originally posted by Harlequin and if you actually do some digging you would find out that israel had armed nukes ready on the six day war. that and USS LIBERTY may i suggest you read up on that attack.

In direct response to you Harlequin, may I suggest that YOU do some research.

Israel did possess free fall nuclear bombs during the Six Day War but, as she was winning, why would she have put these bombs in an 'armed' state ready for use? No my friend!

I think you are confusing the Six Day War with that of Yom Kippur, when Egypt was storming across the Suez Canal and destroying aircraft after aircraft whilst the Syrians were overrunning the Israeli 'Golani' Division.

That was the only time when Israel 'considered' using her nuclear weapons but superb tactics and a certain esprit de corps held the day and allowed Israel to overcome superior Arab forces. Again!

Incidentally, the Chel Ha Avir used to have a 'turn round' time of just under three hours - refuel, rearm and battlefield maintenance but, during Yom Kippur and post war engagements, the IDFAF managed to get this down to 20 minutes. Now THAT is professionalism!

reply to post by fritz


i tip my hat to you - in the spirit of correctionism ; although i do stand by the ready available of nuclear weapons for the fear of the breakthrough, they were going to use them.

edit: by correction i mean the wrong war - there has been 1 or 3 down that way over the years

[edit on 10/7/08 by Harlequin]

In conventional warfare terms, how was it that the formidable IDF had much difficulty in Lebanon, a couple of summers ago, with an adversary that did not have nearly the might, equipment, etc. and resorted to destroying civilians and non-combatants out of frustration?

Frankly, the radical Jews, Muslims, and their Christian counterparts will keep this up until they destroy everyone along with themselves. Alas, no one will be left to beat their chests as to the prowess and might of anyone's army!

p.s. Strangely enough the IDF fiasco in Lebanon was commanded by an Iranian ex pat!

reply to post by Harlequin[/url]

No probs my friend. I knew what you were on about but there are certain people on these hallowed pages who take everything they read as fact.

Good call both of you. This is a point that israel has been in so many wars, that i think every citizen of israel has to pull at least 2 years in the reserve. And thanks kontagion for the compliment , thats why im doing this thread, because Israel is one of the only countries that has a equally powerful force as the USA, and that its history is very interesting. The Russians, # em, because they use quantity instead of quality, Israel and USA is all quality, thats why you don't mess with the best, or die like the rest If you do read the article in wikipedia about IDF, some historians believe its the modern sparta! This is SPARTA!

SwiftFootedAchilles, I wouldn't go that far and claim Israel is the new 'Sparta' because even the 'Guys' as they are known, number over 300!

Could it be quite simply down to the fact that the Arab nations have since 1948 been at war with the State of Israel - some 60 years.

Unless some idiot decides to side with Syria, Iran or possibly a resurgent Iraq [once UK/US have gone] to completely re-equipe them with modern vehicles, aircraft and have the time and money to invest in serious training of all their armed forces, then no nation state will be able to stand up to Israel.

Israel is a formidible fighting machine, even without support from the United States.

The Israeli Military Industries produce some of the best towed artillery pieces anywhere in the world - thanks to a certain Mr Bull, they have a battle proven MBT in the Merkava Mk 4. [To me at least, the Merkava is more of an armoured personnel carrier with a very big gun and superior armour]

The Chel Ha Avir is probably the most battle hardened air force, anywhere in the world.

Nuff said really!

Isreal? Defensive? Hardly......they attack attack attack, bombing, blasting killing, hold people in walled cities, hold large groups of people hostage by cutting off the water and power. They invade innocent nations and bomb them almost to the 1700s but they are defensive? Which nation is the only nation that possesses and is threatening to use weapon the deny having in the first place? They want to be the only kid on the block that has a baseball bat....ugly.

Originally posted by SwiftFootedAchilles
Good call both of you. This is a point that israel has been in so many wars, that i think every citizen of israel has to pull at least 2 years in the reserve.

And thanks kontagion for the compliment , thats why im doing this thread, because Israel is one of the only countries that has a equally powerful force as the USA, and that its history is very interesting. The Russians, # em, because they use quantity instead of quality, Israel and USA is all quality, thats why you don't mess with the best, or die like the rest

If you do read the article in wikipedia about IDF, some historians believe its the modern sparta!

This is SPARTA!

I suggest you re-read Russia's weapons systems and campair to Is/U.S. they (Rus) use quality and quantity.

Originally posted by fritz
SwiftFootedAchilles, I wouldn't go that far and claim Israel is the new 'Sparta' because even the 'Guys' as they are known, number over 300!

Could it be quite simply down to the fact that the Arab nations have since 1948 been at war with the State of Israel - some 60 years.

Unless some idiot decides to side with Syria, Iran or possibly a resurgent Iraq [once UK/US have gone] to completely re-equipe them with modern vehicles, aircraft and have the time and money to invest in serious training of all their armed forces, then no nation state will be able to stand up to Israel.

Israel is a formidible fighting machine, even without support from the United States.

The Israeli Military Industries produce some of the best towed artillery pieces anywhere in the world - thanks to a certain Mr Bull, they have a battle proven MBT in the Merkava Mk 4. [To me at least, the Merkava is more of an armoured personnel carrier with a very big gun and superior armour]

The Chel Ha Avir is probably the most battle hardened air force, anywhere in the world.

Nuff said really!

The 6 day/73 air wars do NOT campair ANYTHING to what Rus/U.K./U.S. went threw in WW2 so your assesment is 100% wrong.

[edit on 16-7-2008 by Lambo Rider]

pffffffttt! Israel's "badass" hype is all just that, hype. they get their butts handed to them regularly by camel armies. if it wasn't for th US backing and training they would be riding camels themselves.

yeah. We did get them started but they are a strong military allaince with us. We don't give them much help anymore. And anyways, Russia does have some good quality, but not the best. A M4 can outgun an AK47, a LAW is more accurate than an RPG, the M1A1 can take out their main battle tank. Remeber, the gun is always was made by the lowest bidder. Israel does the same thing with thier weapons, they advance them, while russia just stockpiles everything for a planned overkill, with no new technology. And they do HAVE THE QUANTITY, thier army is over 1,000,000 soldiers, and we have about 300,000

Originally posted by SwiftFootedAchilles
yeah. We did get them started but they are a strong military allaince with us. We don't give them much help anymore. And anyways, Russia does have some good quality, but not the best. A M4 can outgun an AK47, a LAW is more accurate than an RPG, the M1A1 can take out their main battle tank. Remeber, the gun is always was made by the lowest bidder. Israel does the same thing with thier weapons, they advance them, while russia just stockpiles everything for a planned overkill, with no new technology. And they do HAVE THE QUANTITY, thier army is over 1,000,000 soldiers, and we have about 300,000

"We don't give them much anymore" HA!! where do you get your ideas from?

1. U.S. to sell 5,000 smart bombs to Israel - World news - MSNBC.com
www.msnbc.msn.com...

2. LAW Tpckets have been surpassed by RPO/RPG-26/29 my friend.
LAW: en.wikipedia.org...

RPG-26 www.warfare.ru...
RPG-29 www.warfare.ru...
RPO Shel www.warfare.ru...

3. The M4 is camparable to the AK-74/101/102/103 not the AK-47 the M-14 is campaired to the 47, in which the 47 is WAYY better son.

AK-101 look better at "muzzle velocity" to me
M-4 en.wikipedia.org...

AK-101 en.wikipedia.org...

4. The Russians NEVER sold Russian T-72's to client-states, what they sold is "downgraded" export versions, which didn't have many Russian weapons/defensice systems, everybody know that.

A. en.wikipedia.org...

had the Russian's sold the Kontakt-5 ERA's with DU rounds to Iraq in DesertStorm the out come would have been much different for the M1A1

B. Jane's International Defence Review 7/1997, pg. 15:

"IMPENETRABLE RUSSIAN TANK ARMOUR STANDS UP TO EXAMINATION

"Claims that the armour of Russian tanks is effectively impenetrable, made on the basis of test carried out in Germany (see IDR 7/1996, p.15), have been supported by comments made following tests in the US.

"Speaking at a conference on Future Armoured Warfare in London in May, IDR's Pentagon correspondent Leland Ness explained that US tests involved firing trials of Russian-built T-72 tanks fitted with Kontakt-5 explosive reactive armour (ERA). In contrast to the original, or 'light', type of ERA which is effective only against shaped charge jets, the 'heavy' Kontakt-5 ERA is also effective against the long-rod penetrators of APFSDS tank gun projectiles.

"When fitted to T-72 tanks, the 'heavy' ERA made them immune to the DU penetrators of M829 APFSDS, fired by the 120 mm guns of the US M1 Abrams tanks, which are among the most formidable of current tank gun projectiles.

"Richard M. Ogorkiewicz"

C. search.yahoo.com...

D. www.google.com...

Originally posted by Lambo Rider

Just shows how much you actually know about the Arab-Israeli Conflict and I find your comment about the UK, US and Russian Air Forces and the combat they saw in WWII quite ridiculous.

True, the Allies lost a great many aircrew but these were much easier to replace than the aircrew lost by Israel, especially in Yom Kippur.

You must try to be objective about this and remember that compared to the UK, US or Russia Israel simply could not afford to loose aircrew at the rate they were loosing them in 1973.

It takes time and money to train a half decent fighter/ground attack pilot and when you're fighting on two fronts, back to the wall, you don't have the luxuary of reinforcements.

I know more than you about those conflicts which the jews started, and don't think it didn't take time to train those Rus/U.S./U.K. pilots during WW2 because it DID, all that talk from Isreal about, they were fighting for urvible has always been exaggerated in order to give them a "Mythilogical" image, they're wars against the Arabs was easy because 1. The Arabs didn't at that time have good fighting skills, so any nation that figured this out could use special "tatics" to over come them.

2. They attacked Egypt at "coffee" time in 67 so they got 2/3 of they're airforce while they were on the ground, and NON of the Arabs nations ever had "over-lapping" air-defeance (SAMs) networks, so the Isreal could easily enter they're air-space.



[edit on 17-7-2008 by Lambo Rider]

I like a good laugh, Israel and the US the best armed forces, what a joke, only recently the invincible IDF got its ass wupped by a rag tag force of freedom fighters and the USA's record on combat is abismal. Wupped by men and women wearing pyjamas in Vietnam, fought to a standstill in Korea and embroiled in the ME where the freedom fighters are wupping that big superpower ass big time.

Israel only exists and continues to do so becuause the US props it up if a real shooting war starts in the ME the US is out and Israel is finished. Its simple math, Israel with a population of just over 7 million of which 4 million are aged between 15-64 simply cannot afford any type of protracted war with anyone. It does not matter what they or the US does to Iran, Iraq or any one else because there is hundreds of millions of Muslims to take there place of any who are lost and if you think they will all just go away then your sadly mistaken.

How can the IDF be so invincible when itn cannot even stop one terrorist attack on its people and most of the fighting it does do is against unarmed civillians same as the Americans really just a bunch of hired killers doing the dirty work for the rich and powerful. Yes what a bunch of hero's they are how proud they must be that they are commiting genocide against the Palestinian people.

Originally posted by SwiftFootedAchilles 'the M1A1 can take out their main battle tank'

Probably true but, unless I am mistaken, the United States has not recently sold any M1s to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Eqypt and they certainly would not, could not, sell them to Iran now, could they?

So your much trumpeted shout about 'the M1 can take out their main battle tank' does not stand up to close scrutiny and is therefore irrelevent!

Originally posted by Lambo Rider They attacked Egypt at "coffee" time in 67 so they got 2/3 of they're airforce while they were on the ground, and NON of the Arabs nations ever had "over-lapping" air-defeance (SAMs) networks, so the Isreal could easily enter they're air-space.

Err................No!

I suggest you order a book entitled The 6 Day War, published [thinks] by Salamander or IMI. The forward is written by the late Moshe Dyan and has detailed maps of all the campaigns mounted by Israel, including your so called 'coffee-break' air attacks!

However, if you can't be bothered, here's a synopsis:

The pre-emptive airstrike against the air forces of Egypt, Syria and Lebanon in 1967, took place at approximately 04:30 hours [local] with the
Chel Ha'Avir executing the attack from the northwest, coming in [as they had to] from over the Mediterranian Sea.

The air attack against Jordon commenced at 05:30 just as the first rockets and bombs were hitting their tgts in the aforementioned countries. Attacks against Iraq and Iran also took place about the same time.

By 07:45 hours [local] all the major Arab air forces were all but destroyed on the gound with only a few brave but foolhardy Arab pilots defending what was left of their airfields, as the second strikes that were sent in to mop up arrived on or about 08:15 [local].

1973

On October 6, 1973, when the Egyptian and Syrian forces attacked Israel, they did so on the Israeli holiday called 'The Day of Atonement' or 'Yom Kippur'.

Through brilliant strategy on behalf of the Egyptians and very bad Int from the Israelis, the Egyptians forced the Suez Canal and, under an umbrella of SA2, SA3, SA 6 missiles, made good headway as they thrust into the East Sinai up to a depth of 10 miles.

The Israelis lost over 100 pilots in a desperate battle to destroy the Egyptian AFVs whilst the Egyptian soldiers were destroying tank after tank with their new AT-3 'Sagger' ATGW warheads.

Once the Chel Ha'Avir turned from near suicidal air attacks against the enemy armour and bridgeheads and came down low, they were more often than not destroyed by SA 7 'Grail' SAMs backed up by the formidible ZSU-23-4s!

This forced another change of tactics by the Chel Ha'Avir who took a leaf out of the American 'Wild Weasel' textbook, written during the air war over Viet Nam.

The switch from high - low - to medium SEAD ops, took the Egyptians by surprise and within a short period of time, the Chel Ha'Avir had despite appalling and irreplacable losses, won the day.

www.tacticaloperationscenter.com...
www.historynet.com...
www.au.af.mil/au/aul/bibs/yomkw/ykip99.htm