Originally Posted by rocco

alex, im guessing the underbelly is VERY well armored, IDF has learnt from experince of MANY road bombs and mines to armor its tank, and up armor its existing m113's etc with steel plates for the floors... even the unarmored cards have steel plates for mines atleast up to say, 10kg.

i would also like to state, that the merkava 4 is very new, alot of the other top tanks are a few years old already...

another point is that the morter is used to conserve vital ammo from the main gun (only carries 50), this is handy for use against bunkers etc...