Whether New Or Old, Tanks Just Not For This War

No matter how sophisticated, tanks are inconsistent with this country's objectives of rescuing a failed state and creating a light, fast and flexible armed forces capable of responding to a new century's chaotic threats. Designed for set-piece, Cold War confrontations, the 55-tonne behemoths are hardly the weapons of choice in the close and often urban encounters of today's hearts-and-minds wars. Too often they cause the collateral damage that turns locals against foreigners and isolates soldiers from the civilians they were sent to help. Worse still, even the world's best battle tanks – and the new Leopards are among them – are vulnerable to fast-evolving insurgent tactics and improvised weapons. During last summer's failed Israeli incursion into Lebanon, a minimum of 18 of its tanks, all various generations of the highly regarded Merkava series, were seriously damaged and at least two destroyed. http://www.thestar.com/columnists/article/200180

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