Timeline for Did the IDF use armored personnel carriers as remote-controlled bombs during the Gaza War?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
28 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Oct 22 at 7:01 | comment | added | future of civ6n is ass3d | @Oddthinking: Russia even posted 'how-to' photos, LOL militarnyi.com/en/news/… | |
| Oct 21 at 15:26 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | Also, I'm not sure whether what's going on is even properly called sympathetic detonation. It might well be acting on the trip/trigger, as the booby traps in buildings are presumably designed to go off if a soldier walks up to them, while those in roadways might be designed to be triggered by vehicle traffic. | |
| Oct 21 at 15:21 | comment | added | Andrew Henle | @BenVoigt Fair enough. But if you're delivering a few tons of explosives, losing a little bit of the energy because it's inside an armored vehicle is a small price to pay when an armored vehicle is the only way to get the explosives to the target because the target shoots back. | |
| Oct 21 at 15:18 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | @AndrewHenle: Ok, so outside is not clearly advantageous. But I still think inside shouldn't be assumed. Explosives placed inside are going to lose a lot of their energy into the APC structure and not have as much of the desired effect per unit of explosive. Are these actually being used where there are Hamas combatants defending the booby-traps (basically sitting on top of a pile of their own explosives)? The reason for remote operation is not the amount of explosives carried in, but the amount of Hamas-placed explosives that sympathetically detonate. | |
| Oct 21 at 15:11 | comment | added | Andrew Henle | (cont) Using a APC like an M113 in this role likely means the use of hundreds or thousands of kg of explosives. There's no need to go through all the trouble of rigging an APC with remote controls for a few tens of kg. And that much explosive is going to kinetically disassemble the entire APC anyway so it doesn't matter if it's inside or outside. Whether or not the IDF is actually doing this hasn't been definitively documented yet AFAICT. | |
| Oct 21 at 15:08 | comment | added | Andrew Henle | @BenVoigt If the explosives were on the outside, they could be set off prematurely by the target simply by doing things like shooting incendiary rounds or RPGs at the approaching APC. Other bomb robots have their payload on the end of an arm. Those are for explosive charges in the handful of kg range. The IDF literally has thousands of M113s that are obsolete and headed for the scrap heap - and using it as a bomb carrier doesn't really reduce its scrap value. | |
| Oct 21 at 14:38 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | There seems to be an unfounded assumption in the comments that "explosive-laden" "rigged with explosives" means that the explosives are placed inside the APC. That's unlikely to be true, since the point is to explode booby-traps and other improvised explosive devices with minimal risk of loss of Israeli equipment. Other bomb robots have their payload on the end of an arm. If the APC accomplishes that mission with minimal damage and can be used again, all the better. So almost certainly carrying the explosives on the outside. | |
| Oct 21 at 7:30 | comment | added | Rekesoft | You are speculating too much about nothing. The effect of an explosive charge inside a vehicle is a extremely complicated event to analyze, depending of the shape of the vehicle, its structure, the amount of explosive, its disposition, chemical power and brissance. A whole PHD could be made about the use of APC as bombs. It appears by this answer that the IDF used them extensively, so be sure they used the precise amount of the right explosive to achieve the desired effect with enough efficiency that they decided to keep using them. | |
| Oct 20 at 1:59 | comment | added | future of civ6n is ass3d | @Oddthinking: BMP from Syria reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/nv63g4/… | |
| Oct 20 at 1:55 | comment | added | future of civ6n is ass3d | @Oddthinking: also found on Twitter x.com/CalibreObscura/status/1670510694838546436 | |
| Oct 20 at 1:30 | comment | added | future of civ6n is ass3d | @Oddthinking: here's a 'classic' from when Russia tried this reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/14csmt1/… You may need a reddit acount to watch it. | |
| Oct 20 at 1:25 | comment | added | future of civ6n is ass3d | @Oddthinking: no, it won't contain it. See some videos from Syria and Ukraine. (The used BMPs over there for that purpose, or even old tanks!) I'll see if I can find some links later. | |
| Oct 19 at 22:08 | history | edited | A Dark Divided Gem | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Use news articles that use IDF sources. Clarify the M113 in the video might not be a robotic explosive.
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| Oct 19 at 20:51 | comment | added | Andrew Henle | (cont) And they still wind up looking a lot worse than the M113 in the image here: google.com/search?q=exploded+tank | |
| Oct 19 at 20:51 | comment | added | Andrew Henle | @Colombo Tanks aren't made of 3 cm-thick aluminum like M113s are. Outside of the 20 kg or so of explosives in each HE round, tanks don't have any high explosives inside them, and most modern US and European tanks have ammo compartments designed to direct the blast from exploding ammo upwards. Russian tanks like the T72 lose their turrets because the ammo is stored in and directly under the turret without any other protection, and the turret is a separate part mostly held in place by gravity. Nevermind the HE rounds that are present won't go off all at once. | |
| Oct 19 at 18:55 | comment | added | Colombo | @AndrewHenle Shaped charge from an anti-tank RPG that is designed to penetrate armor (and then kill the crew inside) is a different problem than just a strong explosion. Just because your armoured vehicle can't stop an RPG doesn't mean that it can't reduce and direct explosives from inside. This is the case with many tanks, who get penetrated by an RPG, this sets their internal magazine on fire, and the resulting explosion throws away the tower. But the troops around the tank are still fine (if the tower doesn't hit them). | |
| Oct 19 at 18:12 | comment | added | Aaargh Zombies | Weren't the explosives strapped to the outside? | |
| Oct 19 at 12:45 | comment | added | Andrew Henle | @Oddthinking I'd bet a good sum that image is not an M113 that had that much explosives set off inside it. That much explosive is going to do something like this: youtube.com/watch?v=VHhB2XoCeP4&t=145s | |
| Oct 19 at 12:25 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | @AndrewHenle: The confusion arose because the pictured tank, post-explosion, isn't just shrapnel. | |
| Oct 19 at 12:01 | comment | added | Andrew Henle | @Oddthinking If the M113 is being phased out of service because it can't protect occupants from the few kg of explosive in an RPG, it's probably not going to be all that effective in containing the explosion of 1,000+ kg of explosives set off inside it. Just a few hundred kg of high explosives is enough to turn 10+ cm-thick solid steel armor piercing battleship shells into shrapnel when it explodes. OK, splinters instead of shrapnel for any pedantic naval-history types. | |
| Oct 19 at 11:25 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | @weathervane: I get that it might "shape" the direction of the explosive force. I guessed it might go upwards, which would be inefficient. The latest video the OP provided in comments suggests the force may have shot out of the other side, behind what we can see. | |
| Oct 19 at 11:23 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | [Again, I want to be clear, I am not making a positive claim, except that I am ignorant and confused.] @quarangue: Yeah, I imagine that works because the grenade case fragments, and because humans are vulnerable to small objects, but the vehicle is largely intact and buildings have been levelled. | |
| Oct 19 at 9:35 | comment | added | Weather Vane | @Oddthinking I understand that confining an explosion has a stronger effect, for example a heap of gunpowder doesn't have the same explosive force as when contained by say a shell and a cartridge case. The expanding gases just dissipate. | |
| Oct 19 at 8:11 | comment | added | A Dark Divided Gem | @Oddthinking In the video, it looks like the IDF placed the explosives in the troop compartment. One thing I could clarify in the answer is that I was unable to confirm whether the M133 in the video was used as a remote explosive device or destroyed in combat. | |
| Oct 19 at 7:30 | comment | added | quarague | @Oddthinking I don't know anything about explosives either but note that a typical hand grenade consists of explosives inside a solid metal shell. I think the idea is to produce lots of deadly metal bits flying around. | |
| Oct 19 at 6:38 | comment | added | Oddthinking♦ | [This is not an attack on the answer, but a bewildered question from ignorance about explosive weapons.] If you put explosives inside an armoured shell, won't it contain much of the blast (and send a lot of the explosive force straight upwards)? If it all blew the whole chassis apart, that would be one thing, but the structure in the photo looks intact. Are they putting the explosives on top? | |
| Oct 18 at 21:27 | vote | accept | hb20007 | ||
| Oct 18 at 20:46 | history | answered | A Dark Divided Gem | CC BY-SA 4.0 |