Helicopters could be used as well to rapidly deliver scattered anti-tank mines. Designers also developed new varieties of artillery munitions in the form of top-attack shells, and shells that were used to saturate areas with anti-armor bomblets. This led to the development of improved guided anti-tank missiles, though similar design work was being performed in Western Europe and the United States.īoth sides in the Cold War also recognized the utility of the light anti-tank weapon, and this led to further development of man-portable weapons used by the infantry squad, while heavier missiles were mounted on dedicated missile tank-destroyers, including dedicated anti-tank helicopters, and even heavier guided anti-tank missiles launched from aircraft. To achieve this, Soviet military theorists such as Vasily Sokolovsky (1897–1968) realized that anti-tank weapons had to assume an offensive role rather than the traditionally defensive role of the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) by becoming more mobile. The Warsaw Pact arrived at the solution of maneuver warfare while massively increasing the number of anti-tank weapons. In the Soviet sphere of influence the legacy doctrine of operational maneuver was being theoretically examined to understand how a tank-led force could be used even with the threat of limited use of nuclear weapons on prospective European battlefields. In the NATO countries, little if any development took place on defining a doctrine of how to use armed forces without the use of tactical nuclear weapons. While previous technology had developed to protect the crews of armored vehicles from projectiles and from explosive damage, now the possibility of radiation arose. Through the Cold War, the United States, Soviet Union and other countries contemplated the possibility of nuclear warfare. A British 17-pounder anti-tank gun towed behind half-track in Italy, 1 September 1944 Both the Soviet Red Army and the German Army developed methods of combating tank-led offensives, including deployment of static anti-tank weapons embedded in in-depth defensive positions, protected by anti-tank obstacles and minefields, and supported by mobile anti-tank reserves and by ground-attack aircraft. ![]() ![]() ![]() Technology and tactics based around countering and immobilizing tanks A soldier preparing to fire the FGR-17 Viper, an American experimental one-man disposable antitank rocketĪnti-tank warfare evolved rapidly during World War II, leading to the inclusion of infantry-portable weapons such as the Bazooka, anti-tank combat engineering, specialized anti-tank aircraft and self-propelled anti-tank guns ( tank destroyers).
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