In military history it is said that the great armies of the world have always sought what, with a certain mythological air, is called a silver bullet. In reality, this expression with vampiric reminiscences in the war field means the discovery of a weapon that solves everything, that completely decants the conflict in favor of whoever possesses it. The armored Namer of the Israeli ground forces is not a silver bullet, but one of the important tools they have for the planned incursion into Gaza; putting boots on the ground, to use another expression taken from the military tradition, in this case, the United States.
The Namer has a key character in the invasion of Gaza due to several elements, but the most decisive is its very high level of armor. He has a very powerful armor. Not surprisingly, it weighs 65 tons and its main purpose is to transport infantry. It is not a battle tank like the Leopard or the Israeli Mercaba itself, as these do have artillery capability and space only for the crew.
This Namer armored personnel carrier has the capacity to accommodate nine stormtroopers and three crew members. Its construction is based on the barge (to put it in a simple and understandable way: the chassis) of the Mercaba, another of the armored pieces that will be decisive for the Israeli side, which, despite its power, also damage as has been demonstrated after the incursion of Hamas into Hebrew territory.
"The Namer is a monster, it is very heavy and very armored and it is designed to ensure as much as possible the survival of the crew", explains the professor of Law at the University of La Laguna, Luis V. Pérez Gil, an expert in theory of the conflict
As Pérez Gil already points out, in the equation between armament and protection, the Israelis have opted, in the case of the Namer, for armor. "It was one of the lessons they learned in 2006 when they tried to destroy Hizbullah in Lebanon, without succeeding, by the way," comments the professor of Political Science at the University of Granada and director of the digital publication Global Strategy, Javier Jordan. The Namer did not enter service until 2008.
Its shielding is also electronic, since it has an anti-missile and anti-rocket system that generates a kind of protective bubble around the vehicle that makes it safe from guided projectiles with very good levels of effectiveness. It is capable of launching counter-missiles that "blind" (confuse) the enemy projectile and render it inert or useless.
But what about RPG-type or other anti-tank grenade launchers with pure marksmanship? They are much less sophisticated weapons, more based on the bravery of infantry soldiers and the accuracy of the marksman, but which can be very accurate in certain circumstances, as has been seen in recent months in the war in Ukraine.
"A highly motivated and well-trained platoon can do a lot of damage if it carries the right portable weaponry like what seems to be arriving in large quantities to Hamas from Iran," says Pérez Gil.
Professor Jordán warns of another risk: that the attack on the Namer will be carried out by the armored base. "A powerful explosive of enormous weight buried and ready to be activated when a cart passes by can burst it and kill the entire crew. It has already been seen other times", he says.
The improvement of armored personnel carriers became an obsession for Israel after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Then the Hebrew forces obtained a good number of Soviet tanks with which Syria and Egypt, countries who led the Arab coalition against Israel, launched their offensive. The Israeli military industry transformed them and adapted them to move infantry.
The two experts consulted agree that technology in itself does not win battles, it is not the longed-for silver bullet, but the state of training of the combatants, always speaking in general terms, since there are more elements that affect the development of operations.
In any case, since the reduction of own casualties to a minimum is one of the obsessions of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, the Namer is a crucial tool, but the factors to be taken into account are so many that the result of the operations is all uncertain A prolonged settlement of personnel and vehicles in Gaza, which will increase exposure to ambushes and IEDs (Improvised Explosives), will not mean the same to the attackers as a big hand: get into the city, be there for the minimum amount of time essential to achieve certain objectives and withdraw from the field.
"In any case, a ground operation always results in the loss of non-combatants and, obviously, combatants", comments Jordán, beyond the armoring that the armament of one side and the other may have. "I am not very sure that it is a realistic option. The Israelis may find themselves in a strategic impasse. In addition, they may lose all the moral capital they now have after the brutal attack by Hamas", predicts this professor from the University of Granada.
Street-by-street and house-by-house fighting is a gigantic machinery of creating casualties, especially if, as is the case, it is done against terrorist militias like those of Hamas. The campaigns led by the United States in Iraq or Afghanistan, or more recently the destruction of the Islamic State in Syrian and Iraqi territory are a clear example of the high human cost of this type of operation and the enormous risks faced by advancing soldiers.
