Besides the usual, taking out the gunner and reactive armor, what are some other devices against an anti-tank missile? ECM?

rapid turn into the missile

 

Sincerely,

 

Keith

Besides the usual, taking out the gunner and reactive armor, what are some other devices against an anti-tank missile? ECM?

Israel has two systems of active defense it's fielding- one on the Merkava and one on the Namer.  Russia has been talking about fielding such a system for years.

 

Many types of slat or stand off armor have been used since WWII with varying degrees of effectiveness. 

 

Direct and indirect fire are the classic ways to deal with AT weapons.  Enough artillery and mortars and one can suppress just about anything.

 

The attacker gets to concentrate his forces at the time and space of his choosing while the defender has to spread out to one degree or another.  1973 indicates that a side that could not overcome a given defense centered upon ATGW's within a few days developed new tactics to overcome the previous successful defenders.  In fact they were old tactics and doctrine forgotten.

 

One suspects in the future there will be more active and passive defenses vs ATGW and that the missiles will get more lethal every year and every year someone will tell us why the dominace of the tank is over in modern combat.  As if shock, firepower, and protection are factors that can be removed from warfare.

 

The best defense is aggressive recon.  The US Army seems to keep wanting to forget the basic lesson is that it's not sharing information per se but fighting for information that is the key.

 

Fairly soon we'll see micro air UAVs designed to shoot down other micro air UAVs.  Aerial warfare was born in WWI from this exact same dynamic.