The tank — a multi-ton, heavily armed beast with cross-country mobility — has dominated battlefields since World War I. Armoured mobility shattered trench deadlock then and powered mobile warfare in World War II.Today, tanks still lead many assaults, and specialised platforms from the A-10 to attack helicopters exist primarily to counter them.Infantry, too, carry weapons to stop these metallic beasts: in 1965 Company Quartermaster Havildar Abdul Hamid won the Param Vir Chakra after destroying Pakistani tanks with a jeep-mounted recoilless gun. For the modern soldier, Anti-Tank Guided Missiles (ATGMs) are the frontline defence.The Indian Army’s ATGM inventory is designed to meet contemporary armoured threats across varied terrain.Its backbone has long been the 9M113 Konkurs, a Russian wire-guided missile produced under licence in India. Reliable and battle-tested, it remains widely deployed with infantry and mechanised units.Complementing it is the MILAN, the Franco–German system also manufactured domestically, which has served as a versatile infantry ATGM for decades. Both reflect early efforts to build an indigenous anti-armour capability through licensed production.In recent years the Army has inducted Israel’s Spike — a fire-and-forget missile that brings advanced targeting flexibility and precision. With stand-off ranges and top-attack profiles, Spike represents a significant technological leap over legacy wire-guided systems.On the platform side, the Refleks missile, integrated with T-90 main battle tanks, lets tanks fire guided missiles through their main guns, extending lethality against heavily armoured foes.The AGM-114 Hellfire on AH-64E Apache helicopters adds aerial precision strike to the anti-armour mix, enabling attacks on tanks and hardened positions from the air.Together, these systems give the Army a layered anti-tank capability across infantry, armoured and aviation platforms. From legacy wire-guided workhorses to modern fire-and-forget and airborne precision weapons, the inventory shows both continuity and transformation.As India pushes for greater indigenisation, future ATGM programs are likely to build on this foundation, keeping the Army ready for evolving armoured threats in high-intensity, multidomain warfare.
