When Hamas terrorists breached the wall between Israel and the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, a prelude to a dayslong campaign of murder and abduction, they quickly overran an Israeli army base in Nakhal Oz.

The bounty was significant. In capturing the base, the terrorists also captured around a dozen Achzarits: super-heavy armored personnel carriers with chassis the Israelis took from captured Arab T-55 tanks.

But the 49-ton Achzarits weren’t the heaviest APCs Hamas seized in Nakhal Oz. They also grabbed at least one Namer. The heaviest, best-protected personnel carrier in the world.

At 70 tons, the Namer is massive. There are some, but not many, tank types that slightly outweigh the Namer: the latest American M-1A2, for example. But a tank’s turret and main gun account for at least a third of its weight; the Namer has a remotely-operated machine gun that weighs less than two tons.

No, all that weight comes from the APC’s protection. Layers and layers of ceramic, steel and nickel underneath bricks of explosive reactive armor.

The Namer is uniquely Israeli. Its development began in the aftermath of Israel’s 1982 war in Lebanon. When Israeli brigades rolled into the city of Tyre in ‘82, Palestinian anti-tank missile teams were waiting for them.

The Israeli Defense Forces’ M-113 APCs were easy targets for the missileers, who quickly destroyed several of the 14-ton vehicles. “Soon IDF infantry would only move dismounted in urban areas,” U.S. Army captain James Leaf explained in a 2000 article in Armor, the official journal of the American tank corps. “APCs were quickly relegated to support roles.”

The 1960s-vintage M-113 with its thin aluminum armor was, and still is, poorly protected against anti-tank fires. The Israelis relearned this hard lesson in 2014, when Hamas fighters struck an IDF M-113 with a rocket-propelled grenade and killed seven soldiers.

In the aftermath of the 1982 war, the Israeli army was determined to make APCs relevant again. It had to get heavier. A lot heavier. So it popped the turrets of several hundred captured Arab T-55 tanks and transformed the hulls into Achzarit APCs.

But the Achzarit was a stopgap. The army eyed its new Merkava tank as the basis for a new, even heavier APC. The Namer’s development was lengthy and controversial. It quickly proved its worth, however, when the first two copies participated in the 2008 Gaza War. And as many as 120 of the APCs were in service six years later when the Israelis again went to war with Hamas.

The super-heavy vehicles reportedly shrugged off rocket and missile strikes during Israel’s 2014 incursion into Gaza. The Namer that Hamas captured on Oct. 7 is the first Namer Israeli forces have lost in combat; it’s telling that a terrorist sneak-attack, rather than a missile or rocket, accounted for this loss.

The Namer’s war is just beginning. The Israeli brigades massed along the border with Gaza operate around 300 Namers. Expect to see them in action soon.