High-explosive anti-tank in the context of Anti-tank missile

An anti-tank guided missile (ATGM), anti-tank missile, anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) or anti-armor guided weapon is a guided missile primarily designed to hit and destroy heavily armored military vehicles. ATGMs range in size from shoulder-launched weapons, which can be transported by a single soldier, to larger tripod-mounted weapons, which require a squad or team to transport and fire, to vehicle and aircraft mounted missile systems.

Earlier man-portable anti-tank weapons, like anti-tank rifles and magnetic anti-tank mines, generally had very short range, sometimes on the order of metres or tens of metres. Rocket-propelled high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) systems appeared in World War II and extended range to the order of hundreds of metres, but accuracy was low and hitting targets at these ranges was largely a matter of luck. It was the combination of rocket propulsion and remote wire guidance that made the ATGM much more effective than these earlier weapons, and gave light infantry real capability on the battlefield against post-war tank designs. The introduction of semi-automatic guidance in the 1960s further improved the performance of ATGMs.

Composite armour is a type of vehicle armour consisting of layers of different materials such as metals, plastics, ceramics or air. Most composite armours are lighter than their all-metal equivalent, but instead occupy a larger volume for the same resistance to penetration. It is possible to design composite armour stronger, lighter and less voluminous than traditional armour, but the cost is often prohibitively high, restricting its use to especially vulnerable parts of a vehicle. Its primary purpose is to help defeat high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) projectiles.

HEAT had posed a serious threat to armoured vehicles since its introduction in World War II. Lightweight and small, HEAT projectiles could nevertheless penetrate hundreds of millimetres of the most resistant steel armours. The capability of most materials for defeating HEAT follows the "density law", which states that the penetration of shaped charge jets is proportional to the square root of the shaped charge liner density (typically copper) divided by the square root of the target density. On a weight basis, lighter targets are more advantageous than heavier targets, but using large quantities of lightweight materials has obvious disadvantages in terms of mechanical layout. Certain materials have an optimal compromise in terms of density that makes them particularly useful in this role.

Slat armor (or slat armour in British English), also known as bar armor, cage armor, and standoff armor, is a type of vehicle armor designed to protect against high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) attacks, as used by anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

A shaped charge, commonly also hollow charge if shaped with a cavity, is an explosive charge shaped to focus the effect of the explosive's energy. Different types of shaped charges are used for various purposes such as cutting and forming metal, initiating nuclear weapons, penetrating armor, or perforating wells in the oil and gas industry.

A typical modern shaped charge, with a metal liner on the charge cavity, can penetrate armor steel to a depth of seven or more times the diameter of the charge (charge diameters, CD), though depths of 10 CD and above have been achieved. Contrary to a misconception, possibly resulting from the acronym HEAT (high-explosive anti-tank), the shaped charge does not depend in any way on heating or melting for its effectiveness; that is, the jet from a shaped charge does not melt its way through armor, as its effect is purely kinetic in nature; however, the process creates significant heat and often has a significant secondary incendiary effect after penetration.

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.

A rocket launcher is a device, most often a weapon, that launches an unguided, rocket-propelled projectile. The projectile contains at least one component of what is called a warhead, which is usually explosive.

The purpose of the projectile launched, the "rocket", depends on the situation. For example, there are rockets with warheads designed specifically to explode and pierce through heavy vehicle armor such as those of tanks (HEAT warheads), and are hence anti-tank explosive weapons. Rockets may contain a guidance system and an ability to steer towards targets, these guided rockets are called "missiles"; however this article will be focusing on the launchers of unguided rockets. The launcher itself is usually a tube or multiple tubes containing the rockets and can be carried by a crew or be attached to a vehicle.

The FGM-148 Javelin, or Advanced Anti-Tank Weapon System-Medium (AAWS-M), is an American-made man-portable anti-tank system in service since 1996 and continuously upgraded. It replaced the M47 Dragon anti-tank missile in US service. Its fire-and-forget design features automatic infrared guidance, allowing the user to seek cover immediately after launch, in contrast to wire-guided systems like the system used by the Dragon, which require a user to guide the weapon throughout the engagement. The Javelin's high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warhead can defeat modern tanks by top-down attack, hitting them from above, where their armor is thinnest, and is useful against fortifications in a direct attack flight. The Javelin uses a tandem charge warhead to circumvent an enemy tank's explosive reactive armor (ERA), which would normally render HEAT warheads ineffective.

As of 2019, according to claims by the manufacturer, the Javelin had been used in around five thousand successful engagements. By August 2021, fifty thousand missiles had been delivered to customers.