h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When Desert Storm was about to start some statistics on the weapons opposing each other were published. I am sure I have some details wrong as I did not keep any records of what I read but basicly the end of the tank was foretold by the infomation that a Humvee could carry 4 TOW anti-tank missles which had a range of 5 km compared to the Iraqui/soviet tank's gun range of 4 km and the Humvee was capable of 55 km/hr in terrain where the tank was only able to reach 45 km/hr.
Obviously the tank was at a serious disadvantage compared to the relatively cheap Humvee. Then of course there were the TOW equiped helicopters.

For every weapon developed, someone will find an effective defence - eventually. The TOW means Tube-launched, Optically tracked, Wire guided which means that there is a man (or woman) keeping it on target. There at least is a failible element in the chain.

It is not so much the weapon as the sighting arrangements, Tanks and many anti-tank weapons have thermal imaging which can visualise the target through smoke. Some of the helicopter missiles are fire and forget and tracks the assigned target by radar. Some missiles have a TV camera in the nose so that the operator can see where it is going.

It's all getting a mite technical.

Just looking for other entries I can cross-reference to mine:
A4345599

which covers use and development of tanks in ww2.

Cheers!

They're always foretelling the end of the tank.

No-one's going to replace their tanks with Humvees for the simple reason that a Humvee can be destroyed by small-arms fire and a tank can't.