MILAN Anti-Tank Missile

The MILAN is a wire-guided anti-tank missile jointly developed by France and West Germany, its name an acronym for the French Missile d'infanterie leger antichar, or light infantry anti-tank missile, entering service in 1972 as a shoulder- or tripod-fired weapon intended to give infantry units an effective means of destroying armored vehicles at ranges of up to roughly two thousand meters. It uses a semi-automatic command to line-of-sight guidance system in which the operator simply keeps the target centered in the sight while an automatic tracker measures the missile's position via an infrared beacon on its tail and sends steering corrections down a pair of thin trailing wires, a comparatively simple and jam-resistant approach that became a common pattern for infantry anti-tank missiles of its generation. Adopted by dozens of countries' armed forces and produced in several improved versions over multiple decades, the MILAN saw combat in conflicts including the Falklands War, the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War, and though increasingly superseded by newer fire-and-forget missile designs, older MILAN systems remain in service with some forces.