page_title: Armoured warfare
section_title: Light tanks and tank destroyers
hierarchical_section_title: Armoured warfare / 21st century / Light tanks and tank destroyers
caption_attribution_description: English: French AMX-10RC reconnaissance vehicles move across the desert as part of a display of Allied armor during Operation Desert Shield. Deutsch: Französische AMX-10RC-Aufklärungs-Radpanzer bewegen sich durch die Wüste während einer Zurschaustellung.
context_page_description: Armoured warfare or armored warfare, mechanised warfare or tank warfare is the use of armoured fighting vehicles in modern warfare. It is a major component of modern methods of war. The premise of armoured warfare rests on the ability of troops to penetrate conventional defensive lines through use of manoeuvre by armoured units.
  Much of the application of armoured warfare depends on the use of tanks and related vehicles used by other supporting arms such as infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled artillery, and other combat vehicles, as well as mounted combat engineers and other support units. The doctrine of armoured warfare was developed to break the static nature of World War I trench warfare on the Western Front, and return to the 19th century school of thought that advocated manoeuvre and decisive battle outcomes in military strategy.
context_section_description: While tanks are integral to armoured warfare, when power projection is required, the inability to perform rapid deployment has always been a limitation of heavy main battle tanks.
  It takes a few weeks to transfer tanks and their supporting equipment by air or sea. Some tanks and armoured vehicles can be dropped by parachute, or carried by cargo airplanes or helicopters. The largest transports can only carry one or two main battle tanks. Smaller transports can only carry or air drop light tanks and APCs such as the M113.
  The desire to create air-portable armoured vehicles that can still take on conventional MBTs has usually resulted in ATGM-armed light vehicles or in self-propelled gun style vehicles.  The lack of armour protection is offset by the provision of a first-look/first-hit/first-kill capability through the mating of a powerful gun to superior targeting electronics, a concept similar to that of the US tank destroyers of World War II.
  Vehicles which have put such considerations into practice include the Stingray light tank, AMX 10 RC and B1 Centauro. Most such US projects to create such vehicles have been abortive, e.g. the M8 Armored Gun System. The most common was the flawed M551 Sheridan light tank. This was an air-portable tank capable of destroying heavier tanks using the revolutionary (for the time) 152 mm CLGP launcher.  The combat effectiveness of this tank was limited by the unreliable MGM-51 missile.  The latest iteration of the mobile anti-tank gun platform in American service is the M1134 Anti-Tank Guided Missile Vehicle, a Stryker variant equipped with TOW Missiles; most modern militaries operate comparable vehicles.
  Though limited conflicts (such as the insurgency in Iraq) rarely involve direct combat between armoured vehicles, the need to defend against insurgent attacks and IEDs has resulted in the application of armour to light vehicles and the continued use of armoured transports, fighting vehicles and tanks.
caption: French AMX-10RC during the Operation Desert Shield phase of the Gulf War
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