An anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) or anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) is a guided missile primarily designed to hit and destroy heavily-armored tanks and other armored fighting vehicles.

ATGMs range in size from shoulder-launched weapons which can be transported by a single soldier, to larger tripod-mounted weapons which require a squad or team to transport and fire, to vehicle and aircraft mounted missile systems.

The introduction of smaller, man-portable ATGMs with larger warheads to the modern battlefield has given infantry the ability to defeat light and medium armored tanks at great ranges, though main battle tanks using composite and reactive armors have proven to resistant to smaller ATGMs. Earlier infantry anti-tank weapons such as anti-tank rifles, anti-tank rockets and magnetic anti-tank mines had limited armor-penetration abilities and/or required a soldier to approach the target closely.

From Wikipedia under the GNU Free Documentation License
Wed Sep 1 16:05:16 2010