Cold War
In the Cold War era, HEAT became an almost universal choice outside of artillery and tank units. The British had developed the High explosive squash head (HESH) warhead as a weapon for attacking fortifications during the war, and found it surprisingly effective against tanks. Although these systems allowed infantry to take on even the largest tanks, and, like HEAT, its effectiveness was independent of range, infantry typically operated at short range. A major influence in anti-tank warfare came with the development and evolution of anti-tank guided missiles (ATGW) that could be fired by infantry operators, from ground vehicles and by aircraft. Increasing use of combined arms tactics allowed the attacking infantry to suppress the anti-tank crews effectively, meaning that they could typically get off only one or two shots before being countered or forced to move.
Read more about this topic: Anti-tank Warfare
Famous quotes containing the words cold and/or war:
“our philosophy
Which stops, as cold and bare
As headless hair,
As lifeless as your bones,
Obtuse as meadow stones ...”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It was obviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)