Anti-Tank Missiles > State Of The Art Tanks

In a nutshell, the civil war in Syria and several other recent conflicts have repeatedly shown that relatively small, infantry carried anti-tank missiles can defeat state of the art tanks with the best available reactive armor and active defense systems. Also, when tanks have been defeated, the main battle guns of other tanks are usually not the means by which this happens.

In part for this reason, in part because tanks can be at a disadvantage in urban warfare and narrow mountain roads and in jungles, and in part because deploying heavy main battle tanks to battlefields is very challenging, these military systems have grown far less important.

The U.S. Marine Corps has wisely discontinued using tanks. The U.S. Army, like almost every other major military force in the world, has greatly reduced the number of tanks in their active forces in the recent decades.

Heavy slug throwing "dumb" self-propelled and towed artillery is likewise receding in importance, relative to guided missile delivering military systems. Like tanks, they are vulnerable to anti-tank missiles, are difficult to deploy because they are so heavy, and are inferior in offensive clout and accuracy to guided missiles.