GarryB wrote:In addition to not being cheap with lots of fragile components... for most countries standard ERA would be more cost effective where the threat from rivals is not large enough to warrant the costs of APS systems.
It is right that I have not your knowledges regarding APS, and every military areas. Iam far to have your knowledges at all, however, what Iam sure, regarding military history, I've never seen in human history where hardware was decisive. Hastings battle showed that the cavalry was decisive, but in fact, it is not regarding cavalry itself, nor technology used, but among reasons was at first tactics, and because Harold's soldiers were tired.
During the battle of Azincourt many thought the english won because of their "miracle" weapon nammed "Longbow". If indeed, the longbow contributed to the english victory, and the time of cavalry was started to end, the miracle weapon was mostly because of frencheese disaster tactic.
The tank started to be used extensively in the battlefield during 1914-18 with mitigate results. Moreover, many said that during the secund world war this hardware was decisive because of german's blitz. Again, the blitz as the tank's "miracle" was stopped in winter 1941 by Marshall Jukov. If, indeed during Kursk battle, many tanks was used, nevertheless, the aircraft was the decisive weapon, mostly because german tactic was poor, and the german potential started to decline.
During October 1973's war, AT-3 Sagger inflcted heavy losses to israelis tanks, israelis admited that at least 800 of their tanks were blown by the very wonderfull AT-3 Sagger. During the battle of the Bekaa, Israelis lost several dozens of their state-of-art Merkava because of anti tank missiles, the history repeated itself during 2006.
If I observe now what's happened in Gaza, the tank with their Trophy could -if it is right ?- contributed to slow israelis losses, but the Trophy is far to be unvulnerable to the very effective AT-14 Kornet, or even every anti-tank hardwares.
Seeing the israeli result presently, I realized that IDF is very reluctant to launch the ground invasion as they did in 2008 ?
My question to you is why ? Fear from heavies losses ? I recall, Israel is helped by nearly all western countries, moreover, helped by Egypt, Saudi tribes, and many other arab-muslim countries.
In the other side, Palestinians and uncommonly Hamas organisation is isoled by nearly all the world, including muslim world. The blockade deter any help from outside Gaza. They are nearly prisonners back to the wall.
After nearly 4 weeks of war, untill now, Israel did not progress into Gaza, worse, palestinians launching recursively deadly incursion inside Israel, killing several dozens of israelis soldiers. No worth to add that many cities in Israel have no electricity because of palestinian missiles targeting most the power plant, they even blockade the Ben Gurion airport, strategic Haifa port, losing billions of $ du to this war.
And many of you support mordicus that this so-called APS nammed "Trophy" seems to be a miracle weapon!
I have not your knowledges, but seeing what I've seen this recent days, I can easily concluded that there are no another western miracle weapons -only with the hype and propaganda's imagination-. If Trophy could be effective -if it could ? We have the only israeli view-, it could be contributed to slightly decrease israelis armored vehicles losses.