Anti-tank warfare

Anti-tank warfare are any measures, taken on the battlefield or its direct support areas, that prevent the effective operation of tanks, which are a subset of armored fighting vehicles (AFV). Attacking a tank factory, or a refinery that makes fuel, is not part of the scope of these terms.

Anti-tank warfare can be kinetic (i.e., producing physical damage) or nonkinetic (i.e., restricts the use of the tank). Nonkinetic measures can interfere with the systems of the vehicle, such as sensors, or prevent essential direct support from reaching it (e.g., fuel and ammunition).

Anti-tank warfare can be direct, causing an immediate kinetic or nonkinetic effect, or indirect, not directly affecting the AFV but limiting its operation. Indirect attacks can threaten kinetic attack (e.g., a minefield in the path of the tanks), or fall into a wide range of countermobility measues (e.g., destroying the only bridge that can support the weight of a tank).

Indirect attacks may either present a threat of damage or destruction, or prevent the vehicle from using desired positions or transportation routes, interfere with its electronic or other nonlethal systems, or interfere with direct support to the AFVs. To clarify the last, destroying a refueling truck is indirect and kinetic. Destroying the refinery that produces the fuel to fill that truck, however, is outside the scope of anti-tank warfare

Direct attack
Direct attacks employ anti-tank weapons.

Local methods not using precision-guided munitions
The most basic methods, still a threat in urban and other areas where a tank cannot maintain a zone of control around itself, involve using explosives that may be hand-attached to the AFV, or fired from a short-range weapon such as an antitank grenade launcher or unguided rocket with a shaped charge warhead.

Nonkinetic
Electronic warfare against the communications or sensing systems of a tank are a modern version of what began with covering a vision slit or periscope with mud.

Indirect attack
Placing an anti-tank minefield in the direction of movement of tanks is a form of kinetic but indirect antitank warfare. Destroying the only bridge that can support a bridge is a form of anti-tank warfare, but it is not kinetic, but rather countermobility.

Interfering with the sensors of a tank, even with a means as basic as covering its periscopes with mud or paint, is a direct, nonkinetic attack.