The assumption that only a tank could destroy a tank was undermined, in World War II, by the introduction of antitank artillery (like Germany’s versatile 88-millimeter cannon), mines, hand-carried “satchel charges” of high explosive, and unguided rockets like the American bazooka. All three types of weapon offered some defense against armored attacks, but each had drawbacks. Artillery had to be sited, and mines sown, in advance; they were effective in defense of fixed points, but less so in dealing with unexpected breakthroughs by enemy tanks. Satchel charges and unguided rockets could be used without extensive preparation, but only at close range and without any guarantee of lethal damage to the target. Antitank missiles, pioneered by French designers in the mid-1950s, combined the portability and flexibility of rocket launchers with the accuracy and hitting power of artillery. Carried by small teams of soldiers or mounted on wheeled vehicles, they allowed Cold War–era infantry to engage enemy tanks on something like equal terms.

Technologically, antitank missiles were less complex than antiaircraft or antiship missiles. Unlike aircraft, tanks are slow-moving targets capable of maneuvering in only two dimensions. Unlike ships, they have no means of detecting incoming missiles and no defensive weapons to use against them. Missile designers assumed that most antitank missiles would be fired at relatively close range by operators who could follow their progress and could adjust their course as needed. Effective guidance for antitank missiles was, therefore, a relatively straightforward problem: one solved initially with optical guidance systems and later with infrared, laser, and wire-guidance systems. The French SS-11, introduced in the late 1950s, automated the process of adjusting the missile’s course. The operator kept the launcher’s sights centered on the target, and the guidance system adjusted the missile’s course as needed. Warhead design was also straightforward, since missile designers could easily adapt armor-piercing techniques developed for artillery shells.

Antitank missiles became a dependable, effective weapon more quickly than antiaircraft or antiship missiles. As a result, they were the first class of tactical missile to have a significant impact in combat. Israeli forces used French SS-10s to destroy Egyptian tanks in the Sinai Desert during the 1956 Arab-Israeli war, and two years later Britain’s secretary of state for war announced that a new missile then in development would “remove the heavy tank from the battlefield” (Gunston 1993, 248). The prediction was premature, but the United States, the Soviet Union, and their European allies invested heavily in antitank missiles during the 1960s and early 1970s, preparing for the massive tank battles that were expected to take place on the plains of central Europe if a U.S.-USSR war broke out. Antitank missiles also continued to play roles in smaller wars outside Europe. Both Arab and Israeli forces used them in the Six-Day War of 1967, and North Vietnamese forces used Soviet-made AT-3s against American tanks during their spring 1972 invasion of South Vietnam.

It was the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, however, that established antitank missiles as a major force in armored warfare. The missiles had, by 1973, achieved “one shot, one kill” capability, and both sides used them with devastating effect. Israeli forces armed primarily with American-made TOW (tube-fired, optically tracked, wire-guided) missiles destroyed 1,270 Egyptian and Syrian tanks—more than a third of the two nations’ combined tank forces. In the Sinai Desert, however, Egyptian forces enjoyed even greater success. Israel had deployed 290 tanks to the Sinai, the southern theater of a two-front war; Egyptian troops armed with Soviet AT-3s and rocketpropelled grenades destroyed 180 of them—a staggering 62 percent. Observers on both sides of the war concluded that missiles, not other tanks, were now the most potent threat to armored forces. The world’s major armies adjusted their plans accordingly in the late 1970s and 1980s— searching for ways to make their antitank missiles more deadly and their tanks less vulnerable.