[Yahoshua]

The reason why is to prevent other tanks from disabling/destroying the Merkava(Chariot) type III/IV. The version we see most in the news is the type III tank. Type IV has been repeatedly delayed but I'm not sure if it was tested in Lebanon or not.

Anyway, when a tank fires at another tank it fires in a near straight line, save for the arc of the round. So what you have is a shallow arc that needs to hit a solid object at the right andle in order to penetrate and detonate within an armored vehicle. The Merkava was designed with this in mind, with live-fire tests bouncing off the tank from ranges of over 3,000 meters to point-blank range.

Also, learning from lessons in the war of 1973/1982 is that Anti-tank rockets were successfully stopped from penetrating the tanks' turret, but would jam the turret itself and leave a dangerous situation in which a live missile had to be removed. The response to that was to lower the profile of the turret, making the Merkava less identifiable, and less prone to jamming. However, the rear of the turret was still vulnerable to jams by missiles that strike true. So chans hanging from the back of the turret are for the express purpose of stopping these missiles. (Also, the balls on the end of the chains are magnetic, so that magnetic mines will not jump onto the tank and stick to it.

So far, there have been only two known wasy to positively destroy the Merkava tank. One, was a direct hit by an artillery round in live-fire testing and hit the tank at a near 90 degree angle on the left side of the turret(can also be done with air support via precision bombs?).

The second means was by a buried bomb that killed 4 crewmembers in Jenin when apx. 1,300 kg of high explosives blew the turret completely off the tank, killing the crewmen inside. The tank commander would've survived since he was thrown clear of the turret, but the turret itself landed ontop of him.