War and Military Atlas

How Battles Were Fought
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Weapons System

NLAW

Armored Vehicles

The NLAW, an acronym for Next generation Light Anti-tank Weapon, is a shoulder-fired, disposable anti-tank missile jointly developed by Sweden and the United Kingdom and brought into service in 2009, designed to give a single infantryman a lightweight, man-portable weapon capable of defeating modern armored vehicles at short to medium range. It uses a predicted line of sight guidance system, in which the operator tracks the moving target briefly before firing so the missile's onboard system can calculate and follow the target's path, and it is capable of firing either directly at a target or in an overfly top-attack mode that strikes the thinner armor on top of a vehicle. The weapon drew wide international attention and was credited with inflicting significant losses on Russian armored vehicles during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, after Western nations supplied large numbers of NLAW systems to Ukrainian forces, bringing the weapon prominent contemporary public recognition beyond its original design specifications.

Facts
Weapon Class
man-portable anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) 1
Introduced Year
2007 2
Introduced Year
2009 1
Year the first UK order of 14,000 units began delivery (2009 to 2010) per the cited source, consistent with this entity's own description ('brought into service in 2009').
Weapon Class
Weapon Class (category)
Guided Missile 1
Weapon Class (category)
Tank / Armored Vehicle 1
Classification
Service Status
In Service 1
Connections

Used In

Source Wikipedia: NLAW
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Wikipedia: NLAW
Wikipedia
  • Operators section, United Kingdom entry
    14,000 units ordered in 2002, and delivered in 2009-2010.
  • service-status
    service = 2009-present
  • Used In: Russo-Ukrainian War, infobox wars field: 'Russo-Ukrainian War'
View the Source
2. Wikidata: NLAW
Wikidata Q3112988, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source
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