page_title: Tank destroyer
section_title: Soviet Union
hierarchical_section_title: Tank destroyer / 20th century / World War II / Soviet Union
context_page_description: A tank destroyer, tank hunter, or tank killer is a type of armoured fighting vehicle, armed with a direct-fire artillery gun or missile launcher, with limited operational capacities and designed specifically to engage enemy tanks.
  Tanks are armoured fighting vehicles designed for front-line combat, combining operational mobility and tactical offensive and defensive capabilities; tanks perform all primary tasks of the armoured troops. The tank destroyer on the other hand is specifically designed to take on enemy tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles. Many are based on a tracked tank chassis, while others are wheeled.
  Since World War II, gun-armed tank destroyers have fallen out of favor as armies have favored multirole main battle tanks. However, lightly armored anti-tank guided missile carriers are commonly used for supplementary long-range anti-tank work.
context_section_description: As with the Germans of 1943, most of the Soviet designs mounted anti-tank guns, with limited traverse in casemate-style turretless hulls, in a general design format looking much like the Germans' own Jagdpanzer vehicles. The results were smaller, lighter, and simpler to build weapons that could carry larger guns than any contemporary tank, including the King Tiger. The Soviets produced high numbers of the 85 mm SU-85 and 100 mm SU-100 self-propelled guns based on the same chassis as the T-34 medium tank; the heavier-duty powertrain and hull of the IS-2 heavy tank were instead used to produce the heavier-hitting 122 mm-armed ISU-122 and 152 mm-armed ISU-152, both of which had impressive anti-tank capabilities earning each of them the Russian nickname Zveroboy ("beast killer") for their ability to destroy German Tigers, Panthers and Elefants. The predecessor of the ISU 152 was the SU-152, built on the KV-1s chassis and shared many similarities (including its gun) with the ISU-152. The ISU-152 built as a heavy assault gun, relied on the weight of the shell fired from its M-1937/43 howitzer to defeat tanks. In 1943, the Soviets also shifted all production of light tanks like the T-70 to much simpler and better-armed SU-76 self-propelled guns, which used the same drive train. The SU-76 was originally designed as an anti-tank vehicle, but was soon relegated to the infantry-support role.
caption: Soviet ISU-122, a casemate tank destroyer of the Second World War, shown here with postwar Polish Army markings
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