Direct fire in the context of "Tank destroyer"

A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engine; their main armament is often mounted within a turret. They are a mainstay of modern 20th and 21st century ground forces and a key part of combined arms combat.

Modern tanks are versatile mobile land weapons platforms whose main armament is a large-calibre tank gun mounted in a rotating gun turret, supplemented by machine guns or other ranged weapons such as anti-tank guided missiles or rocket launchers. They have heavy vehicle armour which provides protection for the crew, the vehicle's munition storage, fuel tank and propulsion systems. The use of tracks rather than wheels provides improved operational mobility which allows the tank to overcome rugged terrain and adverse conditions such as mud and ice/snow better than wheeled vehicles, and thus be more flexibly positioned at advantageous locations on the battlefield. These features enable the tank to perform in a variety of intense combat situations, simultaneously both offensively (with direct fire from their powerful main gun) and defensively (as fire support and defilade for friendly troops due to the near invulnerability to common infantry small arms and good resistance against heavier weapons, although anti-tank weapons used in 2022, some of them man-portable, have demonstrated the ability to destroy older generations of tanks with single shots), all while maintaining the mobility needed to exploit changing tactical situations. Fully integrating tanks into modern military forces spawned a new era of combat called armoured warfare.

An infantry fighting vehicle (IFV), also known as a mechanized infantry combat vehicle (MICV), is a type of armoured fighting vehicle, light tank, and armoured personnel carrier used to carry infantry into battle and provide direct-fire support. The 1990 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe defines an infantry fighting vehicle as "an armoured combat vehicle which is designed and equipped primarily to transport a combat infantry squad, and which is armed with an integral or organic cannon of at least 20 millimeters calibre and sometimes an antitank missile launcher". IFVs often serve both as the principal weapons system and as the mode of transport for a mechanized infantry unit.

Infantry fighting vehicles are distinct from general armored personnel carriers (APCs), which are transport vehicles armed only for self-defense and not specifically engineered to fight on their own. IFVs are designed to be more mobile than tanks and are equipped with a rapid-firing autocannon or a large conventional gun; they may include side ports for infantrymen to fire their personal weapons while on board.

Saturation fire is a saturation attack using an intense level of artillery bombardment or rapid direct fire (from automatic weapons such as machine guns, autocannons or rotary guns) that is designed to overwhelm a target area with lethal firepower, for the purpose of suppression, area denial or mass destruction of the enemy.

A main battle tank (MBT), also known as a battle tank, is a tank that fills the role of armour-protected direct fire and maneuver in many modern armies. Cold War-era development of more powerful engines, better suspension systems and lighter composite armour allowed for the design of a tank that had the firepower of a super-heavy tank, the armour protection of a heavy tank, and the mobility of a light tank, in a package with the weight of a medium tank. The first designated MBT was the British Chieftain tank, which during its development in the 1950s was re-designed as an MBT. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the MBT replaced almost all other types of tanks, leaving only some specialist roles to be filled by lighter designs or other types of armoured fighting vehicles.

Main battle tanks are a key component of modern armies. Modern MBTs seldom operate alone, as they are organized into armoured units that include the support of infantry, who may accompany the tanks in infantry fighting vehicles. They are also often supported by surveillance or ground-attack aircraft. The average weight of MBTs varies from country to country. The average weight of Western MBTs is usually greater than that of Russian or Chinese MBTs.

A machine gun (MG) is a fully automatic and rifled firearm designed for sustained direct fire. Automatic firearms of 20 mm (0.79 in) caliber or more are classified as autocannons rather than machine guns.

As a class of military kinetic projectile weapons, machine guns are designed to be mainly used as infantry support weapons and generally used when attached to a bipod or tripod, a fixed mount or a heavy weapons platform for stability against recoil. Many machine guns also use belt feeding and open bolt operation, features not normally found on other infantry firearms.

A tank gun or tank cannon is the main armament of a tank. Modern tank guns are high-velocity, large-caliber artillery capable of firing kinetic energy penetrators, high-explosive anti-tank, and cannon-launched guided projectiles. Additional weapons, such as anti-aircraft guns, heavy machine guns and rocket launchers can also be mounted to tanks.

As the tank's primary armament, they are almost always employed in a direct fire mode to defeat a variety of ground targets at all ranges, including dug-in infantry, lightly armored vehicles, and especially other heavily armored tanks. They must provide accuracy, range, penetration, and rapid fire in a package that is as compact and lightweight as possible, to allow mounting in the cramped confines of an armored gun turret. Tank guns generally use self-contained ammunition, allowing rapid loading (or use of an autoloader). They often display a bulge in the barrel, which is a bore evacuator, or a device on the muzzle, which is a muzzle brake.

Fire support is a military tactics term used to describe the use of weapons and munitions aimed to support friendly forces by engaging, destroying or suppressing enemy forces, facilities, or materiel in combat. It is often provided through indirect fire (artillery) launched from the rear, though the term may also be used for some direct fire or aerial attacks performed by front line units to support other friendly units.

The United States Department of Defense defines fire support as "fires that directly support land, maritime, amphibious, and special operations forces to engage enemy forces, combat formations, and facilities in pursuit of tactical and operational objectives."

Indirect fire is shooting a projectile without relying on a direct line of sight between the gun and its target, in contrast to the case of direct fire. Aiming of indirect fire is instead performed by predicting a parabolic ballistic trajectory via calculation of the azimuth and inclination, and may include calibrating the aim by observer feedback about the actual point of impact of the preceding shot and thus readjusting to new firing angles for subsequent shots.

Indirect fire is the principal method of long-range artillery fire support, both from land and naval platforms. Due to the projectile's longer flight time (which exposes it more to deflectional factors such as drag and crosswind), curved trajectory, and the far and often obstacled "beyond-visual-range" nature of the targets, indirect fires are inherently harder to aim accurately than direct fires, resulting in a more unpredictable external ballistics and thus a much more scattered shot grouping. This, coupled with the significant blast distance of the explosive ordnance and their shrapnels, translates to a much higher risk of collateral damages and friendly fires, especially when firing danger-close.