Atlas Trail
Cheap Weapons, Costly Targets: Mines, Torpedoes and Tank Killers
A recurring pattern in modern war is a simple, inexpensive weapon threatening something far larger and costlier. This path follows it from the torpedo and the naval mine at sea, through the depth charge, to the improvised and shoulder-fired weapons that infantry used against armor, and to the anti-materiel rifle, ending with the guided missiles that put the same idea in a single soldier's hands.
Stop 1 of 8.
Weapons Systems
The torpedo set the pattern. Robert Whitehead's 1866 design used compressed air to drive an underwater explosive at a ship below the waterline, which let small, cheap torpedo boats and submarines threaten far larger and more expensive capital ships and shaped fleet doctrine in both World Wars.
Stop 2 of 8.
Weapons Systems
The naval mine is the patient version: an explosive device left in the water rather than aimed. Tethered contact mines saw significant use in the American Civil War, and later magnetic, acoustic and pressure mines each demanded a different method of minesweeping, so a cheap device could deny a harbor, strait or shipping lane.
Stop 3 of 8.
Weapons Systems
The depth charge answered the submarine. The Royal Navy introduced it in 1916 against German U-boats, and a hydrostatic fuse detonated the charge at a set depth so its shock wave could damage a submarine without a direct hit. Dropped in patterns by escorts working with sonar, it became the main anti-submarine weapon of both World Wars.
Stop 4 of 8.
Weapons Systems
On land the same logic reached the individual soldier. Finnish forces coined the name in the Winter War of 1939 to 1940 and used a bottle of flammable liquid and a wick against Soviet tanks, aiming at weak points where burning fuel could disable engines or blind vision ports. It needs no specialized manufacturing.
Stop 5 of 8.
Weapons Systems
The Panzerfaust made the idea industrial. This German single-shot weapon, mass-produced from 1943, pairs a disposable launch tube with a shaped-charge warhead, was simple enough for poorly trained soldiers and Volkssturm militia, and inflicted heavy losses on Soviet armor in close fighting such as the Battle of Berlin in 1945.
Stop 6 of 8.
Weapons Systems
The TOW added guidance. Entering United States service in 1970, it is tube-launched, optically tracked and wire-guided: the gunner keeps the target in the sight and steering corrections travel to the missile along a thin wire, a system that resisted the electronic jamming that could defeat some radio-guided designs.
Stop 7 of 8.
Weapons Systems
Not every costly target is a tank. Ronnie Barrett's rifle, introduced in 1982 and chambered in .50 BMG, was meant as an anti-materiel weapon, and in the 1991 Gulf War it was used from a safe standoff distance against parked aircraft, radar equipment, light armored vehicles and unexploded ordnance.
Stop 8 of 8.
Weapons Systems
The path ends with the NLAW, a disposable shoulder-fired missile developed by Sweden and the United Kingdom and in service from 2009. Its predicted line of sight guidance and overfly top-attack mode strike the thinner roof armor, and after Western supply it was credited with significant losses to Russian armored vehicles in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
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