Israeli vehicles wrecked in Gaza may have been remote-controlled bombs

Since 2013, Israel has been experimenting with turning obsolete armoured vehicles into unmanned guided systems

An Israeli army unmanned M113 vehicle being tested in 2013, when Israel's military began experimenting with Photo: Israel Defence Force

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Photos emerged on X on Thursday showing two destroyed Israeli M113 tracked troop-carrying vehicles in Shujaiya, Gaza, now a ghost town after a month-long Israeli operation that involved heavy aerial bombardment and mass displacement of civilians.

The vehicles, introduced in US service in the Vietnam War, are being phased out by Israel's army and replaced with far more heavily armoured Namer and Eitan armoured personnel carriers, raising the question of why the two obsolete vehicles were used on a major military operation, only to be destroyed.

The two vehicles may have been unmanned ground vehicles, with at least one – which was left barely recognisable after a huge explosion – used as a guided bomb. The second was more intact, suggesting it might have had a reconnaissance, rather than self-detonation role.

Neither had additional side armour which is sometimes fitted to the poorly protected M113, suggesting crew safety was not a concern.

An Israeli army reservist and security expert, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the vehicles may well have been the latest intentional deployment of unmanned M113s. If so, Thursday's images are the first to show the aftermath of one of their attacks.

In May, Israeli publication Haaretz pointed out a video on X of an Israeli M113 bristling with antennas, claiming it was being remotely controlled, near Rafah close to the border with Egypt.

Haaretz quoted an Israeli officer as saying the vehicles were sometimes used as guided bombs to blow up buildings in sites that “needed to be exposed,” as occurred in Rafah where the Israeli army has levelled entire neighbourhoods to create “buffer zones”.

The Israeli army has been experimenting with remote-controlled M113s since 2013. Other countries, such as Ukraine and Russia, have experimented with unmanned ground systems in combat, with varying success.

Many countries are now working on entirely uncrewed vehicles, such as the US TRX made by General Dynamics, which The National saw at a defence expo in Riyadh this year.

The third battle of Shujaiya

There are reasons why Israel would not use crewed M113s in combat in Shujaiya, or even Gaza as a whole.

Ten Israeli soldiers were killed in the town in December in an ambush, while in 2014, the neighbourhood was the scene one of the worst battles of the Israel-Gaza war that year, during which seven Israeli troops were killed in one thinly armoured “battle taxi”. Sixteen Israeli troops were killed and 56 injured in the district alone in the 2014 battle.

This provoked anger in some quarters in Israel as people asked why soldiers had been sent into battle in obsolete vehicles. No armoured vehicle is invulnerable - and even heavily protected Namer troop carriers have been destroyed in Gaza, adding to the unlikelihood that thinly armoured M113s may have been sent to battle.

The Israeli reservist and security expert told The National the destroyed M113s pictured on Thursday were probably without any crew and the vehicles, while still in service as they await redundancy, are not sent into high-intensity combat.

“The tip of the spear when it comes to manoeuvring into new areas (or raiding areas that were withdrawn from) are still Namer, Eitan and others with Active Protection Systems,” he said, referring to automated anti-missile and rocket systems that destroy incoming anti-tank weapons.

He noted that some lightly armoured vehicles were still being used in Gaza, in areas where “there's a relative freedom of operation that allows to employ thinly armoured and even unarmoured vehicles”.